VMware vSAN: Management and Operations [VMVSANMO]

OVERVIEW

In this three-day course, you learn about managing and operating VMware vSAN™ 7. This course focuses on building the required skills for common Day-2 vSAN administrator tasks such as, vSAN node management, cluster maintenance, security operations and advanced vSAN cluster operations. You also gain practical experience through the completion of instructor-led activities and hands-on lab exercises.

Product Alignment:
VMware ESXi™ 7.0 U1
VMware vCenter Server® 7.0 U1
VMware vSAN 7.0 U1

OBJECTIVES

By the end of the course, you should be able to meet the following objectives:

• Define the tasks involved in vSAN node management
• Updating and upgrading vSAN using VMware vSphere Lifecycle Manager™
• Explain vSAN resilience and data availability features
• Reconfigure vSAN storage policies and observe the cluster-wide impact
• Perform vSAN cluster scale-out and scale-up operations
• Describe common vSAN cluster maintenance operations
• Control vSAN resync operations
• Configure vSAN storage efficiency and reclamation features
• Use VMware Skyline™ Health to monitor cluster health, performance, and storage capacity
• Describe vSAN security operations
• Configure vSAN Direct for cloud native applications
• Configure remote vSAN datastore and vSAN native file services
• Manage two-node cluster and stretched cluster advance operations

AUDIENCE

Storage and virtual infrastructure administrators who are responsible for production support and administration of VMware vSAN 7.

CONTENT

1 Course Introduction

• Introductions and course logistics
• Course objectives

2  vSAN Node Management

• Recognize the importance of hardware compatibility
• Ensure the compatibility of driver and firmware versioning
• Use tools to automate driver validation and installation
• Apply host hardware settings for optimum performance
• Use vSphere Lifecycle Manager to perform upgrades

3  vSAN Resilience and Data Availability Operations

• Describe vSAN storage policies
• Recognize the impact of a vSAN storage policy change
• Describe and configure the Object Repair Timer advanced option
• Plan disk replacement in a vSAN cluster
• Plan maintenance tasks to avoid vSAN object failures
• Recognize the importance of managing snapshot utilization in a vSAN cluster
• Configure the vSAN fault domains

4  vSAN Cluster Maintenance

• Perform typical vSAN maintenance operations
• Describe vSAN maintenance modes and data evacuation options
• Assess the impact on cluster objects of entering maintenance mode
• Determine the specific data actions required after exiting maintenance mode
• Define the steps to shut down and reboot hosts and vSAN clusters
• Use best practices for boot devices
• Replace vSAN nodes

5  vSAN Storage Space Efficiency

• Discuss deduplication and compression techniques
• Understand deduplication and compression overhead
• Discuss compression only mode
• Configure erasure coding
• Configure swap object thin provisioning 
• Discuss reclaiming storage space with SCSI UNMAP
• Configure TRIM/UNMAP

6  vSAN Cluster Performance Monitoring

• Describe how the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) enables VMware to improve products and services
• Use vSphere Skyline Health for monitoring vSAN cluster health
• Manage alerts, alarms, and notifications related to vSAN in VMware vSphere® Client™
• Create and configure custom alarms to trigger vSAN health issues
• Use IO Insight metrics for monitoring vSAN performance
• Analyse vsantop performance metrics
• Use a vSAN proactive test to detect and diagnose cluster issues

7  vSAN Security Operations

• Identify differences between VM encryption and vSAN encryption
• Perform ongoing operations to maintain data security
• Describe the workflow of data-in transit encryption
• Identify the steps involved in replacing Key Management Server (KMS)

8  vSAN Direct

• Discuss the use cases for vSAN Direct
• Understand the overall architecture of vSAN Direct
• Describe the workflow of vSAN Direct datastore creation
• Explore how vSAN Direct works with storage policy tagging

9  Remote vSAN

• Discuss the use cases for remote vSAN
• Understand the high-level architecture
• Describe remote datastore operations
• Discuss the network requirement
• Interoperability between remote vSAN and VMware vSphere® High Availability

10  vSAN Native File Service

• Discuss the use cases for vSAN file service
• Understand the high-level architecture of vSAN file service
• Discuss the authentication model
• Configure file shares
• Monitor file share health and capacity utilization

11  Manage Advanced vSAN Cluster Operations

• Describe the architecture for stretched clusters and two-node clusters
• Understand the importance of witness node
• Describe how stretched cluster storage policies affect vSAN objects
• Create and apply a vSAN stretched cluster policy to meet specific needs
• Discuss stretched cluster failure scenarios and responses