vSphere 6.5 Foundations: Administer Virtual Machines and vApps

Create and Deploy Virtual Machines
Hello, and welcome to Pluralsight. You're watching Create and Deploy Virtual Machines. In this module, we'll kick it off by identifying the capabilities of virtual machine hardware versions. There are various versions of virtual machine hardware, and you need to be able to know which version of virtual machine hardware you have and what the capabilities are of that virtual machine hardware. From there, we'll identify methods to access and use the virtual machine console. At some point, you'll need to access virtual machine consoles, and it will probably be right from the start when you go to install a guest operating system for the first time. From there, I'll cover how to configure and manage virtual machine templates, how to place virtual machines into hosts, clusters, and resource pools, how to configure and deploy your first guest operating system into a new virtual machine. I'll show you how to configure and modify virtual hardware, things like vCPU, virtual memory, virtual disks, and virtual network adaptors. After that, I'll show you how to create new virtual disks and also convert those virtual disks from thinly provisioned to thickly provisioned virtual disks. I'll walk you through the process of installing and upgrading virtual machine tools, as well as virtual machine hardware. We'll cover PCI passthrough and Direct I/O, and we'll wrap it up by configuring virtual machine time synchronization. As you can see here, we've got a lot to cover, so with that, let's get started.

Create and Deploy vApps
VMware vSphere vApps are very powerful abstraction layers that allow you to control multiple virtual machines all at the same time, export those groups of virtual machines, import those groups of virtual machines, and even allocate resources on a per-vApp basis. In this module, we'll start off by identifying the requirements that you'll need to meet in order to utilize vApps in your vSphere infrastructure. From there, I'll walk you through the process of creating, deploying, and cloning VMware vSphere vApps. I'll show you how to add objects to an existing vApp, how to edit your vApp settings, how to configure IP pools, and then finally, we'll wrap it up with how to suspend and resume a VMware vApp. We've got a lot to cover, so with that, let's get started.

Manage Virtual Machine Clones and Templates
Now veteran administrators have found that the easiest way to create new virtual machines is to create virtual machine templates. So these templates are just like any other template. When you go to create something, you use that template to very quickly create something new, in this case, a virtual machine. Another fast way to create a new virtual machine is through cloning. So you can clone an existing virtual machine and essentially make a copy, or a duplicate, of that virtual machine that you can then use for something else. This is exactly what we'll talking about in this module on Managing Virtual Machine Clones and Templates. In this module, we'll kick it off by explaining cloning and templating options. From there, I'll show you how to create a clone of an existing virtual machine, and then we'll create a template from an existing virtual machine. You'll find out the differences between the two, and then we'll deploy a virtual machine from that template. We'll update an existing virtual machine template, and then we'll deploy virtual appliances, or vApps, from an OVF template. Finally, we'll use the content library feature that was new in vSphere 6 and has been upgraded in vSphere 6. 5 to create a local content library. After that, we'll import an OVF template. From there, we'll deploy a virtual machine from the content library. We'll create a remote library with and without external storage. We'll discuss publishing, subscribing, and sharing content libraries. And finally, we'll cover what's new in content libraries with vSphere 6. 5. We've got a lot to cover, so let's get started.

Administer Virtual Machines and vApps
One of the most common tasks that a vSphere administrator does is to administer virtual machines, things like virtual machine power states, snapshots, storage policies, virtual disks, and so forth. In this module, Administer Virtual Machines and vApps, that's exactly what we'll be covering. We'll kick it off by explaining the files that are used by virtual machines. We'll jump to the command line, and you'll see the files that make up a virtual machine and learn which file does what. From there, I'll explain the common practices for securing your virtual machines. I'll show you how to hot extend a virtual disk. After that, we'll review the virtual machine options, power, and boot settings. We'll cover how to administer virtual machine snapshots, how to assign storage policies to a virtual machine. We'll verify storage policy compliance, and then we'll cover virtual machine resources. From there, we'll wrap this module up by differentiating between power states of a virtual machine. We've got a lot to cover, so with that, let's get started.