Fundamentals of Server Virtualization

Course Overview
Server virtualization can make your life far easier whether you're an IT professional at one of the largest datacenters in the world or a student who needs to run multiple operating systems on their own laptop. My name is David Davis, and my latest course is the Fundamentals of Server Virtualization. I've been writing, teaching, and speaking about Enterprise technologies, such as virtualization and cloud computing for well over 10 years now, and during that time I've created over 50 Pluralsight courses, and this is one of the best courses yet. Now I was an IT manager when we implemented server virtualization in our datacenter, and I can tell you that it changed our entire world. After learning more about server virtualization I'm betting that you're going to have the same reaction. In this course you'll learn about the benefits of server virtualization, the architecture behind it. You'll see it in action, both in the datacenter and on the desktop. You'll also learn how companies are using tools to move applications running in physical servers to virtual machines. you'll find out how to test and deploy server virtualization and even discover multiple options for building a server virtualization lab of your own. The best part is that you'll see numerous server virtualization tools in action, including VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware Fusion, and more. By the end of this course you'll have a solid understanding of the fundamentals of server virtualization, and one of the great things about this course is that you don't need to know anything to get started. However, if you haven't seen my Virtual: The Big Picture course I encourage you to check out that course first. So buckle up, grab a beverage, and join me on this short adventure into the world of server virtualization.

Introduction
Hello, and welcome to the Fundamentals of Server Virtualization. This is the course introduction, and my name's David Davis. I'm a 10 time VMware vExpert, and I'm honored to be your instructor for this course. I want to welcome you to the world of server virtualization. Server virtualization is being used in just about every datacenter in the world, and even in the public cloud. Server virtualization can make the life of an administrator far easier than physical servers. Trust me. I managed a datacenter before and after virtualization, and as we went through the conversion of converting the physical servers into virtual machines and I saw the change first hand. Now I want to take a second before we jump into it to mention briefly that this course you're watching on server virtualization is the second course in the virtualization fundamentals learning path. The first course in the path is called Virtualization: The Big Picture, and if you haven't watched that course already, I encourage you to check it out because it gives you a great foundation, not only for this course on server virtualization, but for future courses in the virtualization fundamentals learning path. We've got a lot to cover in this course on server virtualization. In this introduction I'll talk about why you need to watch the course and what you'll learn in the course. So with that, let's get started.

Benefitting from Server Virtualization
Frankly, the only reason to implement server virtualization is if you or your company receives some benefits, and that's exactly what we'll be covering in this module on Benefitting from Server Virtualization. Here's what you'll learn. We'll talk about all the benefits one by one, starting off with efficiency. What sort of efficiency gains do you as an administrator or does your company gain in the datacenter from server virtualization? I'll show you. From there we'll discuss the agility benefit, the business agility that your company will gain by implementing server virtualization. There's also a tremendous availability benefit by being able to keep all the applications up and running, and to enhance your disaster recovery capabilities. From there we'll discuss the time benefits that you and your company will gain from implementing server virtualization, which kind of goes back to the efficiency and the agility. We'll also discuss the monetary benefits from implementing server virtualization, and then we'll wrap it up with the job security benefits from server virtualization. We've got a lot of great things to cover in this module. Let's get started.

Exploring Server Virtualization Architecture
At this point in the course you've learned that server virtualization offers a ton of benefits, but we haven't dived down into the architecture. What makes server virtualization tick? How does it really work under the covers? That's exactly what you'll find out in this module on Exploring Server Virtualization Architecture. Here's what you'll learn. We'll talk about first, how does server virtualization work at the most basic level? From there we'll dive into the hypervisor, the different types of hypervisors, what virtual hosts are, what virtual machines and virtual resources are, and how they work with the hypervisor. We'll cover resource sharing and over commitment of resources, and then the availability features that are built-in to server virtualization. After that we'll talk about performance optimization, virtualization management, and then we'll do a demo of administering virtual machines with VMware vSphere. We've got a lot to cover, so let's get started.

Consolidating with Server Consolidation
Most companies in the world today have started their server consolidation project; however, most of those companies also have not completed it. In other words, they haven't gotten to 100% virtualized in their datacenter. Because of that there's a lot of opportunity in the world today to use server virtualization to consolidate physical servers into virtual servers. That being said, there's even a lot of companies out there who still have not yet started their server consolidation. In this module we'll talk about how to consolidate servers using server virtualization. Here's what you'll learn. We'll answer the question first, why consolidate servers at all. Why should you be using server virtualization to reduce the number of physical servers and convert them into virtual machines? We'll walk through the process of how to consolidate servers, I'll demonstrate some P2V or physical to virtual migration tools that you might want to consider using, and then finally, we'll discuss how server virtualization prepares your company for the cloud. We've got a lot to cover, so let's get started.

Testing and Deploying Server Virtualization
Now that you've learned about the benefits of server virtualization and the architecture behind it, you may be ready to learn how you can test server virtualization for yourself and consider deploying it in your own environment. In this module that's exactly what you'll learn. We'll talk about the comfort level that you need to deploy server virtualization in production, and how to get there. We'll discuss the test lab that you might want to use to test server virtualization for yourself. You'll learn what you need to know to select the right hypervisor for your environment, and finally, you'll see a demo of how server virtualization utilizes shared storage and why it's important. We've got a lot to cover, so let's get started.

Building a Virtualization Lab
One of the best things that you can do to further your learning and get hands on experience with server virtualization is to build a virtualization lab. In this module I'll walk you through some of the things that you need to know, and give you a demonstration of two different forms of virtualization labs. With that let's get started. Here's what you'll learn. We'll talk about why you should build a virtualization lab, we'll cover multiple ways to build it, the limitations of a virtual lab, what nested virtualization is, I'll discuss some cloud-based virtualization labs, and give you a demo of my VMware Fusion virtual lab and my VMware vSphere physical lab. We've got a lot to cover, so let's get started.