This powerful 5-day 10hr/day class is an intensive introduction to VMware vSphere including VMware ESX 5.5 and vCenter. Assuming no prior virtualization experience, this class starts with the basics and rapidly progresses to advanced topics. 40+ percent of class time is devoted to labs so concepts, skills and best practices are developed and reinforced.

Labs start with installation and configuration of stand-alone ESXi servers and progress to shared storage, networking and centralized management. The class continues to advanced topics including resource balancing, high availability, power management, back up and recovery, performance, vCenter redundancy, VM redundancy. Disaster recovery, rapid deployment, hot migration and workload consolidation are also covered.

This class is unique in its approach; which is to identify and eliminate common IT pain points and then to use virtualization to delivers clear, tangible benefits. Each topic is presented from the perspective of delivering key business value; not just the technical or mechanical aspects of the software.

The 10hr/day format gives attendees the time to learn about and use advanced VMware topics and develop superior VMware management, deployment and troubleshooting skills. By the end of the class, attendees will have learned the benefits, skills, and best practices of virtualization. Attendees will be able to design, implement, deploy, configure, monitor, manage and troubleshoot VMware vSphere 5.5.

Attendees should have user, operator or administrator experience on common operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, Linux, UNIX, etc. Experience installing, configuring and managing operating systems, storage systems and or networks is useful but not required. We assume that all attendees have a basic familiarity with PC server hardware, disk partitioning, IP addressing, O/S installation, networking, etc.

System Architects, Security Specialists, Operators, Performance and Capacity Analysts, Backup Administrators, Business Continuity Specialists, Storage administrators and Managers.