This two-day, hands-on training course provides you with the knowledge, skills, and tools to plan and deploy a VMware vSAN™ cluster. In this course, you are taught the many considerations that the end vSAN configuration has on the initial planning of the vSAN datastore. You also perform a fully manual configuration of a vSAN cluster.

Intended Audience

Experienced VMware vSphere® administrators

Objectives

By the end of the course, you should be able to meet the following objectives:

• Explain the key features and use cases for vSAN
• Detail the underlying vSAN architecture and components
• Describe the different vSAN deployment options
• Detail vSAN cluster requirements and considerations
• Apply recommended vSAN design considerations and capacity sizing practices
• Determine and plan for storage consumption by data growth and failure tolerance
• Design vSAN hosts for operational needs
• Explain Maintenance Mode use and its impacts on vSAN
• Apply best practices for vSAN network configurations
• Manually configure a vSAN cluster using VMware vSphere® Client™
• Explain and configure vSAN fault domains
• Understand and apply vSAN storage policies
• Define encryption in the vSAN cluster
• Describe the architecture and use cases for stretched clusters
• Describe the architecture and use cases for two-node clusters
• Understand the steps involved in creating the vSAN iSCSI target services

Prerequisites

You should have the following understanding or knowledge:

• Understanding of concepts presented in the VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage course
• Knowledge of basic storage concepts
• Experience using vSphere Client to perform administrative tasks on vSphere clusters

Product Alignment

• VMware vSAN 7.0 U1

Course Outline

1 Course Introduction

• Introductions and course logistics
• Course objectives

2 Introduction to vSAN

• Describe vSAN architecture
• Identify vSAN objects and components
• Describe the advantages of object-based storage
• Describe the difference between All-Flash and Hybrid vSAN architecture
• Explain the key features and use cases for vSAN
• Discuss the vSAN integration and compatibility with other VMware technologies

3 Planning a vSAN Cluster

• Identify requirements and planning considerations for vSAN clusters
• Apply vSAN cluster planning and deployment best practices
• Determine and plan for storage consumption by data growth and failure tolerance
• Design vSAN hosts for operational needs
• Identify vSAN networking features and requirements
• Describe ways of controlling traffic in a vSAN environment
• Recognize best practices for vSAN network configurations

4 Deploying a vSAN Cluster

• Deploy and configure a vSAN cluster using the Cluster Quickstart wizard
• Manually configure a vSAN cluster using vSphere Client
• Explain and configure vSAN fault domains
• Using VMware vSphere® High Availability with vSAN
• Understand vSAN cluster maintenance capabilities
• Describe the difference between implicit and explicit fault domains
• Create explicit fault domains

5 vSAN Storage Policies

• Describe a vSAN object
• Describe how objects are split into components
• Explain the purpose of witness components
• Explain how vSAN stores large objects
• View object and component placement on the vSAN datastore
• Explain how storage policies work with vSAN
• Define and create a virtual machine storage policy
• Apply and modify virtual machine storage policies
• Change virtual machine storage policies dynamically
• Identify virtual machine storage policy compliance status

6 Introduction to Advanced vSAN Configurations

• Define and configure compression and deduplication in the vSAN cluster
• Define and configure encryption in the vSAN cluster
• Understand the remote vSAN datastore topology
• Identify the operations involved in managing the remote vSAN datastore
• Understand the steps involved in creating the vSAN iSCSI target service

7 vSAN Stretched and Two-Node Clusters

• Describe the architecture and use cases for stretched clusters
• Detail the deployment and replacement of a vSAN witness node
• Describe the architecture and uses case for two-node clusters
• Explain the benefits of vSphere HA and vSphere Site Recovery Manager in a vSAN stretched cluster
• Explain storage policies for vSAN stretched cluster