This is a page about VMware certification.

Format: Classroom
Length: 5 Days

This hands-on training course explores installation, configuration, and management of VMware vSphere™, which consists of ESX/ESXi and vCenter Server. The course is based on ESX/ESXi 4.1 and vCenter Server 4.1. Completion of this course satisfies as a prerequisite to take the VMware Certified Professional 4 exam.

Students who complete this course may enroll in any of several more-advanced vSphere courses. See www.vmware.com/education for advanced course options.

• Install and configure ESX or ESXi
• Install and configure vCenter Server components
• Configure and manage ESX/ESXi networking and storage using vCenter Server
• Deploy, manage, and migrate virtual machines
• Manage user access to the VMware infrastructure
• Use vCenter Server to monitor resource usage
• Use vCenter Server to increase scalability
• Use VMware vCenter Update Manager to apply ESX/ESXi patches
• Use vCenter Server to manage higher availability and data protection

• System administrators
• Systems engineers
• Operators responsible for VMware® ESX™, ESXi, and VMware vCenter™ Server

System administration experience on Microsoft Windows or Linux operating systems

• Introductions and course logistics
• Course objectives

• Introduce virtualization, virtual machines, and vSphere components

• Introduce the architecture of ESX and ESXi
• Manually configure ESX/ESXi

• Install and configure vCenter Server components
• Manage vCenter Server inventory objects

• Create, configure, and manage vNetwork standard switches, network connections, and port groups

• Configure ESX/ESXi with iSCSI, NFS, and Fibre Channel storage
• Create and manage vSphere datastores

• Deploy virtual machines using the Create New Virtual Machine wizard, templates, cloning, and VMware vCenter Converter
• Modify and manage virtual machines
• Perform Storage vMotion migrations

• Control user access through roles and permissions

• Control virtual machine access to CPU, memory, and I/O resources
• Introduce VMkernel methods for optimizing CPU and memory usage
• Monitor resource usage using vCenter Server performance graphs and alarms

• Back up and recover virtual machines using VMware Data Recovery

• Manage multiple vCenter Server inventories using VMware vCenter Linked Mode
• Manage ESX/ESXi configuration compliance using Host Profiles
• Create, configure, and manage vNetwork distributed switches, network connections, and port groups
• Perform VMware vMotion™ migrations
• Configure and manage a VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler cluster
• Configure and manage VMware Distributed Power Management

• Configure and manage a VMware High Availability cluster
• Configure fault-tolerant virtual machines using VMware Fault Tolerance

• Manage patching and patch compliance using vCenter Update Manager

• Introduce ESX and ESXi Installable installation

Source

Source

http://www.simonlong.co.uk/blog/vcp-vsphere-4-practice-exam/
http://mylearn.vmware.com/quiz.cfm?item=15211&ui=www_cert
http://www.vcpcert.com/vcp-410-qa-index-section-1-plan-install-and-upgrade-vmware-esxesxi.html
http://www.aiotestking.com/category/vmware/
http://www.vcp410.com/

Since the Configuration Maximums you need to know change from version to version here are the original configuration maximum pdfs:

vSphere 4.1
vSphere 4.0
VMware Infrastructure 3.5
VMware Infrastructure 3

This website hosts a number of reference cards and overview sheets which are really handy when preparing for an exam.

• iSCSI
• VMWare Fiber Channel
• Upgrade and post upgrade considerations
• RDMs Virtual / Phuysical - difference, when what option
  • Voordeel virtual mode tov physical mode
• Mogelijkheden Fault Tolerance / wanneer NOT protected
• VMware Alarms
• VMWare Resources: Reservations - Limits - Shares
• Wat te doen om af en toe pieken op te vangen qua netwerk
• vCenter Scheduled Task
• VMWare Memory Management
• VMWare Permissions and Roles
• Enable Web access for ESX hosts
• VMWare Update Manager
• wat is de oorzaak als de hba niet gevonden kan worden tijdens de installatie bij een active/active array
• op welke 2 manieren kan je een vm migreren van vSS naar vDS

Comparison of product offerings for vSphere 4.x and VMware Infrastructure 3.x

• Whitepaper: Whats New in VMware vSphere 4: Virtual Networking
• Whitepaper: VMware vNetwork Distributed Switch: Migration and Configuration
• KB: vNetwork Distributed Switch on ESX 4.x - Concepts Overview
• KB: Configuring vNetwork Distributed Switch using vCenter
• KB: Migrating Service Console and/or VMkernel port from Standard Switches to Distributed Switch
• Youtube: VMware vNetwork Distributed Switch and vSphere

• Considerations when moving an uplink from a standard switch to a distributed switch:
  • The adapter can be added to a distributed switch without a warning
  • If the Standard Switch has no uplinks left, port groups depending on these uplinks will lose their connectivity. See the knowledgebase article above for more information.

See VMware vCenter Installation

• ESX(i) requires NFS version 3 over TCP
  • ESX Server requires a connection to be made and maintained to the NFS server, and thus requires TCP support on your NFS Server.
  • NFS version 2 only supports a 32 bit offset for WRITE requests, meaning that you can't have a file larger then 4 GB.
  • If an ESX host accesses a VMs disk file on an NFS-based datastore, a .lck-XXX lock file is generated in the same directory where the disk file resides to prevent other hosts from accessing this virtual disk file
• VLANs can only be configured on the port group level, not on the vSwitch level
• If you crate a Service Console port, the gateway device:
  • Is the network adapter used for the default route
  • Is required ehen using 2 or more uplinks are using the same subnet
  • The default name for the (first) gateway device is vswif0
  • The default isolation address is the ESX service console gateway
• Plugins
  • Standard installed plugins:
    • vCenter Storage Monitoring
    • vCenter Service Status
    • vCenter Hardware Status
  • Through Plug-in manager it's possible do download/install plugins and to disable them
  • Data Recovery plug-in gets installed on the system running the vSphere Client
• Data Recovery
  • Can have a maximum of 2 deduplication stores
  • Can have 8 simultaneous runnig jobs (restore or backup)
  • Processor utilization must not exceed 90% to start a single job and 80% to start multiple jobs
  • Needs 10 GB for indexing and processing restore points and 5 GB per VM to be backed up
• Cluster Settings
  • VM restart priority:
    • Disabled, Low, Medium, High
  • Host Isolation Response:
    • Leave Powered On, Power Off, Shut down
  • DRS Automation Level:
    • Manual, Partially Automated, Fully Automated
  • Power Management:
    • Off, Manual, Automatic
• Memory allocation tab for VM:
  • Host memory usage: Consumed: Actual consumption of physical memory that has been allocated to the virtual machine
  • Guest memory usage: Private: Amount of memory backed by host memory and not being shared.
• The following items can be viewed from the Network Adapters section of the Configuration tab:
  • Speed
  • MAC address
  • Observed IP Ranges
  • Wake on LAN
• If FT is enabled for a VM in an HA/DRS cluster without host monitoring enabled it could happen that if the primary FT VM fails, a new secondary FT VM is not created and the VM is no longer redundant
• The Adaptive Scheme utilizes a small number of large LUNs
• The Predictive Scheme utilizes several LUNs with different storage characteristics
• VMotion can be used with NPIV enabled virtual machines, but not with disks in multiple datastores
• Storage VMotion cannot be used on a virtual machine with NPIV enabled
• Storage vMotion is not allowed if the VM has a snapshot and is turned on
• To enable Jumbo Frame support for the Software iSCSI Initiator you have to modify both the virtual switch and the VMkernel port
• Disk shares are enabled on the virtual disk in the VM
• High Priority vMotion
  • On hosts running ESX/ESXi version 4.1 or later, vCenter Server attempts to reserve resources on both the source and destination hosts to be shared among all concurrent migrations with vMotion. vCenter Server grants a larger share of host CPU resources to high priority migrations than to standard priority migrations. Migrations always proceed regardless of the resources that have been reserved.
  • On hosts running ESX/ESXi version 4.0 or earlier, vCenter Server attempts to reserve a fixed amount of resources on both the source and destination hosts for each individual migration. High priority migrations do not proceed if resources are unavailable.
• Standard Priority vMotion
  • On hosts running ESX/ESXi version 4.1 or later, vCenter Server reserves resources on both the source and destination hosts to be shared among all concurrent migration with vMotion. vCenter Server grants a smaller share of host CPU resources to standard priority migrations than to high priority migrations. Migrations always proceed regardless of the resources that have been reserved.
  • On hosts running ESX/ESXi version 4.0 or earlier, vCenter Server attempts to reserve a fixed amount resources on the source and destination hosts for each migration. Standard priority migrations always proceed. However, the migration might proceed more slowly or fail to complete if sufficient resources are not available.
• datastore/Device information:
  • Home → Inventory → Datastores shows location of datastore, nr of hosts, nr of VMs, capacity and free space
  • Host → Configuration tab → Storage → Datastores shows path selection, paths, capacity, free space, location, extents, storage I/O Control
  • Host → Configuration tab → Storage → Device shows location, owner (NMP), ID, capacity, primary partitions, transport (Fibre Channel)
• Notify switches in the case of failover
  • Yes, whenever a virtual NIC is connected to the vSwitch or whenever that virtual NIC’s traffic is routed over a different physical NIC in the team because of a failover event, a notification is sent over the network to update the lookup tables on the physical switches. In almost all cases, this is desirable for the lowest latency of failover occurrences and migrations with vMotion.
    • The physical switch is notified when the location of a virtual NIC changes
    • A NIC team failover of failback has occurred.
    • When a NIC team member fails, or fails back, the virtual NIC connected to the switch will change.
• Read Latency: Average amount of time taken during the collection interval to process a SCSI read command issued from the Guest OS to the virtual machine
• Write latency: Average amount of time taken during the collection interval to process a SCSI write command issued from the Guest OS to the virtual machine
• vCenter Foundation supports a maximum of 3 hosts
• If a cluster gets a Host profile Compliance Check and there is none the cluster get checked for normal cluster requirements (HA/DRS/DPM)

[root@esx01 etc]# esxcfg-firewall
esxcfg-firewall <options>
-q|--query                                      Lists current settings.
-q|--query <service>                            Lists setting for the
                                                specified service.
-q|--query incoming|outgoing                    Lists setting for non-required
                                                incoming/outgoing ports.
-s|--services                                   Lists known services.
-l|--load                                       Loads current settings.
-r|--resetDefaults                              Resets all options to defaults
-e|--enableService <service>                    Allows specified service
                                                through the firewall.
-d|--disableService <service>                   Blocks specified service
-o|--openPort <port,tcp|udp,in|out,name>        Opens a port.
-c|--closePort <port,tcp|udp,in|out>            Closes a port previously opened
                                                via --openPort.
   --ipruleAdd <host,cport,tcp|udp,REJECT|DROP|ACCEPT,name>  Adds a rule
                                                to block/allow hosts to access
                                                specific COS service;'cport' can
                                                be specified like 'a:b'. For ex:
                                                0:65535 blocks all the ports;
                                                'host' can specified like 'a/b'.
                                                For ex: 0.0.0.0/0 blocks all the
                                                hosts.
   --ipruleDel <host,cport,tcp|udp,REJECT|DROP|ACCEPT>    Deletes the host rule
                                                previously added via --ipruleAdd
   --moduleAdd <module>                         Loads an iptables module, and
                                                adds it to the peristent
                                                firewall configuration.
   --moduleDel <module>                         Removes an iptables module, and
                                                removes it from the persistent
                                                firewall configuration.
   --blockIncoming                              Block all non-required incoming
                                                ports  (default value).
   --blockOutgoing                              Block all non-required outgoing
                                                ports (default value).
   --allowIncoming                              Allow all incoming ports.
   --allowOutgoing                              Allow all outgoing ports.
-h|--help                                       Show this message.