VCAP5-DCA Objective 2.1 – Implement and Manage Complex Networking

Objectives

• Configure SNMP
• Determine use cases for and applying VMware DirectPath I/O
• Migrate a vSS network to a Hybrid or Full vDS solution
• Configure vSS and vDS settings using command line tools
• Analyze command line output to identify vSS and vDS configuration details
• Configure NetFlow
• Determine appropriate discovery protocol
• CDP
• LLDP

UPDATE: 2012-07-03

Mindmapping the ESXCLI command

UPDATE: 2013-12-01

One of the most interesting vSphere CLI commands is ESXCLI. In fact ESXCLI is a complete set of commands. With the vSphere 5 edition of ESXCLI many new features were introduced.

ESXCLI is available in various forms:

• On a ESXI server in the shell
• In the vSphere CLI package, available for Windows and Linux
• As part of the commands in the vMA
• Even the vSphere PowerCLI has a Get-EsxCli cmdlet

VCAP5-DCA Objective 1.3 – Configure and manage complex multipathing and PSA plugins

Objectives

• Install and Configure PSA plug-ins
• Understand different multipathing policy functionalities
• Perform command line configuration of multipathing options
• Change a multipath policy
• Configure Software iSCSI port binding

Install and Configure PSA plug-ins

Official Documentation:
vSphere Storage Guide, Chapter 17, “Understanding Multipathing and Failover , page 153.

Summary:
Starting from page 158, the vSphere Storage guide presents a very clear explanation on the pluggable Storage Architecture. Some highlights.

Figure 1 – Graphic provided by VMware

VCAP5-DCA Objective 1.2 – Manage storage capacity in a vSphere environment

Objectives

• Apply space utilization data to manage storage resources
• Provision and manage storage resources according to Virtual Machine requirements
• Understand interactions between virtual storage provisioning and physical storage provisioning
• Apply VMware storage best practices
• Configure Datastore Alarms
• Analyze Datastore Alarms and errors to determine space availability
• Configure Datastore Clusters

Last update: 14-06-2012

VCAP5-DCA Objective 1.1 – Implement and Manage complex storage

Objectives

• Determine use cases for and configure VMware DirectPath I/O
• Determine requirements for and configure NPIV
• Determine appropriate RAID level for various Virtual Machine workloads
• Apply VMware storage best practices
• Understand use cases for Raw Device Mapping
• Configure vCenter Server storage filters
• Understand and apply VMFS resignaturing
• Understand and apply LUN masking using PSA‐related commands
• Analyze I/O workloads to determine storage performance requirements
• Identify and tag SSD devices
• Administer hardware acceleration for VAAI
• Configure and administer profile-based storage
• Prepare storage for maintenance (mounting/un-mounting)
• Upgrade VMware storage infrastructure

Last update 16-09-2012