To follow up to our uber-popular vSphere 5 video training course with Elias Khnaser, I have started producing a vSphere 5.1 New Features video training course. This course will be authored by me, David Davis, and will be released around March 2013.

Over the last five years, I've created over 15 video training courses for TrainSignal including VMware Workstation & Server, VMware ESX Server, vSphere 4, vSphere 5, vSphere Performance, vSphere Troubleshooting, vCloud Director Essentials, and more.

I want to make sure that this vSphere 5.1 course is the BEST vSphere course we have ever released. To do that – I NEED YOUR HELP!

I need help from our readers, customers, and vSphere admins to:

• Review my outline
• Tell me if you love it
• Tell me if it needs improvement
• Tell me what topics are missing
• Tell me if the topics need to be covered from a different angle

And, if you don't have anything to say about the vSphere 5.1 course – then tell me what other virtualization-related courses you would like to see from TrainSignal in 2013.

My outline for the new vSphere 5.1 video training course (in progress) is below. Please post your questions, comments, and feedback in the comments section at the bottom of this article. I look forward to hearing from all of you and will do my best to address each question and consider all feedback.

Note: the outline that follows is a DRAFT outline of the course and not a promise of the lesson titles or topics. The lesson bullets are potential topics, ideas, or notes - not an official list of what that lesson will contain.

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TITLE: vSphere 5.1 New Features

Lesson 1 – Course Intro

• About your instructor

• Course prerequisites (vSphere 5)

• Overview of new vSphere 5.1 features list

Lesson 2 – vCloud Suite 5.1 – What's New

• What is the vCloud Suite 5.1?

• Where does vSphere fit in?

• What's new?

Lesson 3 - Virtual Machine Improvements

• Larger virtual machines

• New virtual machine format (VM HW 9)

• How the new disk format is great for VDI (from the storage improvements section)

• Upgrading virtual machines to the new format

• Zero downtime upgrade for VMware Tools (from the availability section)

Lesson 4 – vSphere Distributed Switch Improvements

• Network health check

• Configuration backup and restore

• Roll back and recovery

• Link aggregation control protocol

• SR-IOV

• VXLAN support

Lesson 5 – vSphere Storage Appliance

• New version, new enhancements, support for additional drives, can increase storage capacity while online, vCenter can run on the VSA cluster

Lesson 6 - vSphere vMotion Enhancements

• Zero downtime migration without the need for shared storage config and how vmotion capabilities apply to the entire network

Lesson 7 - vSphere Data Protection (VD) – Intro and Installation

• What's new in it and how to install it

Lesson 8 - vSphere Data Protection (VDP) – Backup and Recovery

• How to backup and recovery VMs as well as other features

Lesson 9 – Interview - of an Expert in the topic

Lesson 10 - vSphere Replication – Intro and Installation

• What's new in it and how to install it

Lesson 11 - vSphere Replication – Replicating and Recovering VMs

• How to use it for replication and recovery of VMs

Lesson 12 – Storage DRS (SDRS) and Profile-Driven Storage Improvements

• SDRS and profile driven storage is now integrated with VCD

Lesson 13 – Interview – of DRS/HA/SDRS Expert

Lesson 14 – AutoDeploy Enhancements

• Two new methods for deploying vSphere hosts (will have to research to see if this is worth making an entire lesson about)

• Autodeploy GUI

Lesson 15 – PowerCLI Enhancements in vSphere 5 and 5.1

• What's new?

• New tools?

Lesson 16 – vCenter Operations Manager Foundation

Lesson 17 – Interview – Expert in vCenter Operations Manager

Lesson 18 – vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) - Installation

• New version and new interface

• Installation

Lesson 20 – vSphere Web Client – All New!

• New interface, the standard for the future

• Two ways to enable it

• What's different – save your work, etc

• What it can and can't do

• vCenter single sign on (SSO)

• vCenter Orchestrator enhancements?

Lesson 21 – Interview – Expert in vCenter Web Client

Certification

Lesson 22 – What's New in VMware Certification

• VCP = VCP-DV

• And more

Lesson 23 – How to upgrade to vSphere and vCenter 5.1

• The process

• Demonstration – step by step

Please post your comments, questions, or feedback! Remember - I'm counting on you to help make this course the best vSphere training that we've ever created and I need your help to do it!

If you want to hear more about virtualization from David Davis, register for his free Top 10 New Features of Windows 2012 Hyper-V webinar on February 12.

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