Reddit reviews Mastering VMware vSphere 5.5

As another poster said, you don't necessarily need a SAN, these days you would be best off starting with storage connected over your network (VLANed and QoSed), you could start with a NAS device and use NFS datastores.


If you wanted to go for a SAN you can get an iSCSI SAN as also already mentioned Dell EqualLogic is a good option

A couple of books to read :

Scott Lowe et al. Mastering VMware vSphere 5.5

http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-VMware-vSphere-Scott-Lowe/dp/1118661141

Storage Implementation in vSphere 5.0

http://www.amazon.com/Storage-Implementation-vSphere-VMware-Press/dp/0321799933/

The latter book is a good in depth look at storage from VMware press.

The main thing to be aware of for storage is IOPs and latency, these are the biggest performance killers as you scale. So design around desired IOPs (Input/Output Operations Per Second).

Check out Scott Lowe's mastering vSphere 5.5

Mastering vSphere 5.5 by Scott Lowe is the bible imo. If you're going to buy one book for the VCP, it should be this one.

Using Braindumps isn't the way to go. You'll only be cheating yourself.

I recommend picking up copy of Mastering VMware vSphere 5.5 and watching Keith Barkers VMware vSphere 5.5 VCP5-DCV CBTNuggets course.

Get on the waiting list for the ICS class at stanly community college its like $250 for an official vmware course (training partner) you can buy the lab books, take the class and you get access to a bunch of free vmware software esxi, workstation, cloud offerings as well as discount voucher codes.

https://vmware.stanly.edu/

Then pick up mastering vsphere 5.5 by scott lowe, and read that and the documentation.

http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-VMware-vSphere-Scott-Lowe/dp/1118661141

https://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-55/index.jsp
(There is a zip file of the all the documentation you can get and they are pdfs. at the bottom of the contents section)

Sign up at vmware learning and they have a free practice exam, as well as materials for the vca you can run through.

https://mylearn.vmware.com/mgrReg/login.cfm?ui=Full

You can build a lab if you dont have one a laptop using vmware workstation just max out the ram, I recommend building the lab from scratch a couple times to get use to it then from there you can use autolab for working on learning to use the software without having to manually rebuild.

http://www.labguides.com/

>For example: If I have a hardware server with 1 CPU, 4 cores, and 8 gb of RAM, can I run 4 simultaneous machines with 1 core and 2gb RAM assigned to each? Or does ESXI handle it by how much each one is being used?

If you don't want to overcommit the host at all (e.g. you want a hard guarentee that all of those VMs will always have 100% of their resources available, yes. Most people, however, expect to do some overcommitment. The extent to which you can do this is completely workload dependent, but it ranges from 1:1 on the lowend (your example) to 10:1 or even higher (e.g., you have 4 cores phsyically and you've built 40 cores worth of VMs, or 80GB worth of VM memory).

>I noticed that if I boot up a machine with 2gb of RAM assigned, it seems to allocated 2gb used in the ESXI summary page. To me, that implies I need that much physical RAM to really be there.

Allocated != Used (which does not equal 'Active', or 'Shared' or 'Granted', etc). Allocated is just the amount you put in when you configured the virtual machine. The most 'relevant' value for what you are looking for is probably 'Active' and/or 'Granted' - this is a better indication of what the VM is actually using currently.

>CPU seems different though. Do I need a core per PC, or could I assign 2 cores per PC and still run 4 PCs simultaneously without issues?

CPU and memory can be overallocated in the same ways. For every physical core in your system, you can allocate up to (I believe) 25 virtual cores. So your system could reasonable have 100 virtual CPUs running at the same time....Now, with a 25:1 virtualCore:physicalCore ratio, you have a pretty reasonable chance of some serious contention issues if all those VMs need to execute something at the same time, so you probably wont be able to actually achieve that but that brings your next question

>I guess a lot of this depends on how hard the machines are each being run as well.

Exactly. Some environments I've seen hit 20:1 ratios (vCore:pCore, or vMem:pMem), some maxed out at 3:1 based on their workload. You just have to try it and see (and VMware has tools to help try and estimate this).

>If someone could clarify this for me, or point me in the direction I can go for this info, that would be great! Thanks!

This is a good start. There's an in depth guide on memory management here: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/perf-vsphere-memory_management.pdf

If you want proper documentation, 'Mastering vSphere 5.5' by my buddy Scott is very good, and almost the bible for this stuff: http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-VMware-vSphere-Scott-Lowe/dp/1118661141

Lastly, the VMware ICM (Install, Configure Manage) course is very good (albeit a bit pricy).

I've got almost a decade of using VMware products under my belt. I thumbed through Mastering VMware vSphere 5.5 and focused on the things I didn't use on a daily/weekly/monthly basis. I passed with flying colors.

If you're not up to speed on a certain topic, don't lie to yourself, review it and you'll be fine.

Start with this book, Mastering VMware vSphere 5.5 and start looking for a VCP5-DCV class.

Mastering VMware vSphere 5.5

The book itself is really just one big lab, you just follow along using whatever you can. Personally I used the 60 day free trial of vSphere and built a 3 host environment inside of VMware Workstation.

• Jot down a list of areas you were unsure of during the test (i.e. vMotion requirements, HA, SSO, etc) and then research them more.
  
• Take the practice tests again. At the end of each one, look at the chapters you were lacking in the results and reread those areas.
  
  I would also pick up the Mastering vSphere 5.5 book and use that to fill in gaps on the areas you're not doing well with.
  
  Another training resource would be CBT Nuggets. They do a free 7 day trial, sign up when you have 7 days to spend going through their VCP550 material (don't forget to cancel if you don't want to continue with their videos).
  
  Then also lab lab lab. Everything that is explained in the book, you should be doing in a lab. Doing it will help you remember and it will also allow you to hit problems when you do it incorrectly (it happens). When you hit a problem, fixing it is very beneficial to learning about the technology. If you don't hit any problems, break stuff on purpose and fix it.
  
  You can get a trial of all the software and then use an OpenSource system for the NAS/SAN pieces (FreeNAS/Openfiler) or even use the free EMC vVNX appliance (resource hog though).
  
  Those were the steps I took for the test.

The vSphere Install/Config class is more for a person first coming into VMware. I did not learn much from the class whatsoever because I already had 3 years of experiencing in administration.

The book I did use was:

https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-VMware-vSphere-Scott-Lowe/dp/1118661141/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Not sure if there is a comparible one for vSphere 6.

Also the VMware VCP Exam Blue Print was a huge one. Make sure understand each bullet and you'll do fine on the exam.

Agreed...these 3 books, in my opinion, are the holy trinity of PowerCLI/vSphere information.

Managing VMware Infrastructure with Windows PowerShell TFM

VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration

Mastering VMware vSphere 5.5

Links for anyone looking to purchase a copy of these books

 

Mastering VMware vSphere 5.5
Amazon |
Barnes and Noble |
Google Play |
iTunes |
O'Reilly |
Wiley

Mastering VMware vSphere 6
Amazon |
Barnes and Noble |
Google Play |
iTunes |
O'Reilly |
Wiley

 

Happy VMing!

If you go down the VMware route (which is what I did):

Free online entry level training: VMware Data Center Virtualization Fundamentals

Free Automated Lab Builder: http://www.labguides.com/autolab/

CBT Nuggets or Pluralsight have training videos available (not free)

An excellent book on the subject is: Mastering VMware vSphere 5.5 (Amazon UK) / Mastering VMware vSphere 5.5 (Amazon US)

Ignore the poor reviews on the Amazon UK page, it's just a bunch of people whining about the Kindle price (check the previous edition, or the US store for more representative reviews).

My VCP class was pretty sparse as well.

Word of warning: it gave you a basic overview but it did NOT prepare you for the exam. I took the class, studied for six months, built an infrastructure at work with shared storage etc, and still failed the test two weeks ago (albeit by a small margin).

That doesn't mean it's not doable, you're on the right track for sure.

You will want these two books as well.

This is indispensable: http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-VMware-vSphere-Scott-Lowe/dp/1118661141/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406551332&sr=8-1&keywords=vmware

And this is great for practice and covering exam topics (This version for 5.5 will be released Aug 24 - I'm using the 5.1 book as I'm going for the VCP5.1): http://www.amazon.com/VCP5-DCV-Official-Certification-Covering-VCP550/dp/078975374X/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1406551332&sr=8-7&keywords=vmware

>Have you worked on 5.0/5.5 for two years on a daily basis that is more than just start/stop/create VMs?

I inherited an ESX (not i) 4.1 environment and upgraded/rebuilt it on 5.1, but we haven't upgraded to 5.5 yet. Most of the day to day is like you say start/stop/create but I do have experience configuring the hosts, networking, iSCSI storage, evc/drs cluster, vCenter, backups (we dabbled in VDR briefly but now use Veeam) and I've done some labs at the last two VMworld conferences.

I've had a quick look at the blueprint and my biggest gaps are probably VUM, vDS and vCOPs, as we don't really have a big enough deployment (or the licensing) to leverage all of those.

>Are those books updated for 5.5 yet?

The Scott Lowe book has been updated for 5.5. Not sure about the official guide.