Course Overview
The ICM hack, a 5-day true hands-on experience, operates on the learning-by-doing principle, emphasizing research and teamwork as its core strengths. Participants will be organized into teams, collaborating to tackle a series of challenges designed to enhance their knowledge significantly. These challenges are interconnected, with each one building upon the preceding one. Following lunch, all participants engage in a quiz to test their knowledge using a quiz-experience app such as Kahoot or AhaSlides. Each day concludes with a Q&A session and an exam preparation segment for attendees.
Challenges
Every challenge consists of the following:
- SITUATION DESCRIPTION – Describing the real-world scenario behind the specific challenge
- DEFINITION OF DONE – Clearly described elements of the completion for the specific challenge
- RESOURCES – Documentation, Blogs, Hints, and Tips ’n’ tricks, Connection to official VMware materials
Who should attend
System administrators System engineers
Prerequisites
This course has the following prerequisites:
- System administration experience on Microsoft Windows or Linux operating systems
Outline: VMware Install, Configure, Manage, v8: Hack The Cert (VICMHACK)
Challenge 1: Host install & Initial Config
- Basic config of the first host using embedded host client.
- Change client theme.
- Configure ntp.
- Add hosts to AD.
- Enable SSH and ESXi Shell.
Challenge 2: vCenter Install & Initial Config
- Deploy VCSA, choose size and number of vCenters.
- Create vCenter inventory objects.
- Add hosts.
- Add licenses.
- Join domain and add identity source.
- Set permissions.
- Configure syslog.
Challenge 3: Networking
- Create standard virtual switches and portgoups, edit policies.
- Create Distributed virtual switch.
- Migrate VMs from VSS to VDS.
- Backup VDS.
- Enable heath check.
- Configure Port Mirroring.
- Restore VDS
Challenge 4: Storage
- Configure iSCSI on ESXi hosts.
- Create, Expand, Remove & Add Additional iSCSI datastores.
- Datastore Maintenance Mode.
- Add NFS datastore.
- Add vSAN Disk Group
- Create vSAN storage policies
Challenge 5: Working with VMs
- Create VM and install a Guest OS.
- Adding VMs into the Inventory.
- Deploy VM from OVF Template.
- Edit VM Settings.
- Adding resources into a VM.
- Expanding Virtual Disks.
Challenge 6 – Creating VMs and Content Libraries
- Create VM Template.
- Create Customisation specification.
- Deploy VMs from Template.
- Content Library.
- Clone a VM Template to Library.
- Deploy a VM from Content Library
Challenge 7 – vMotion, SvMotion and Cross vCenter vMotion
- Configure network for vMotion.
- Migrate VMs across hosts with vMotion.
- Migrate VMs between Datastores with SvMotion.
- Cross vCenter vMotion
Challenge 8 – VM Resources and vSphere Clusters, DRS
- Manage CPU and Memory resources.
- Enable Shares, Limits and Reservations.
- Create and manage Resource Contention.
- Create Clusters
- Enable EVC
- Enable DRS and create DRS Groups / Rules.
- Maintenance Mode
Challenge 9 – Additional Cluster Features HA / FT / vSAN
- Enable and test vSphere HA and FT.
- Configure management redundancy.
- Edit Datastore Heartbeat settings and Advanced HA settings.
- Edit Admission Control policies.
Challenge 10 – Host, vCenter and VM maintenance
- Create and manage VM Snapshots.
- Backup VCSA.
- Configure Product Locker location.
- Backup Hosts and vCenter.
- Explore Lifecycle Manager.
- Upgrading Hosts and vCenter.