Book Image

VMware vSphere 6.7 Cookbook - Fourth Edition

By : Abhilash G B

Book Image

VMware vSphere 6.7 Cookbook - Fourth Edition

By: Abhilash G B

Overview of this book

VMware vSphere is the most comprehensive core suite of SDDC solutions on the market. It helps transform data centers into simplified on-premises private cloud infrastructures. This edition of the book focuses on the latest version, vSphere 6.7. The books starts with chapters covering the greenfield deployment of vSphere 6.7 components and the upgrade of existing vSphere components to 6.7. You will then learn how to configure storage and network access for a vSphere environment. Get to grips with optimizing your vSphere environment for resource distribution and utilization using features such as DRS and DPM, along with enabling high availability for vSphere components using vSphere HA, VMware FT, and VCHA. Then, you will learn how to facilitate large-scale deployment of stateless/stateful ESXi hosts using Auto Deploy. Finally, you will explore how to upgrade/patch a vSphere environment using vSphere Update Manager, secure it using SSL certificates, and then monitor its performance with tools such as vSphere Performance Charts and esxtop. By the end of this book, you'll be well versed in the core functionalities of vSphere 6.7 and be able to effectively deploy, manage, secure, and monitor your environment.

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

To get the most out of this book

Free Chapter

Deploying a New vSphere 6.7 Infrastructure

Deploying a New vSphere 6.7 Infrastructure

Installing ESXi – the interactive method

Configuring the ESXi Management Network

Scripted deployment of ESXi

Deploying the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA)

Deploying vCenters in a Linked Mode configuration

Configuring Single Sign-On (SSO) identity sources

Configuring vCenter Roles and Permissions

Joining ESXi to an Active Directory domain

Planning and Executing the Upgrade of vSphere

Planning and Executing the Upgrade of vSphere

Planning the upgrade of your vSphere infrastructure

Running VMware Migration Assistant

Upgrading Platform Services Controllers (PSCs)

Upgrading vCenter Servers

Using the vCenter Convergence Tool

Upgrading ESXi using the interactive installer

Upgrading ESXi using the command-line interface

Configuring Network Access Using vSphere Standard Switches

Configuring Network Access Using vSphere Standard Switches

Creating vSphere Standard Switches

Creating Virtual Machine Port Groups on vSphere Standard Switches

Creating additional VMkernel interfaces on vSphere Standard Switches

Creating additional VMkernel TCP/IP stacks

Managing the Physical Uplinks of a vSphere Standard Switch

Configuring Security, Traffic Shaping, Teaming and Failover

Configuring Network Access Using vSphere Distributed Switches

Configuring Network Access Using vSphere Distributed Switches

Creating a vSphere Distributed Switch (vDS)

Connecting ESXi hosts to a vDS

Creating Distributed Port Groups (dvPortGroup)

Configuring Security, Traffic Shaping, Teaming, and Failover

Configuring VLANs on vDS

Configuring Private VLANs on a vDS

Configuring a Link Aggregation Group (LAG) on a vDS

Configuring user-defined network pools—NIOC

Migrating Virtual Machine Network from vSS to vDS

Migrating VMkernel interfaces from vSS to vDS

Configuring port mirroring on vDS

Configuring NetFlow on vDS

Upgrading a vDS

Backing up and restoring a vDS

Configuring Storage Access for Your vSphere Environment

Configuring Storage Access for Your vSphere Environment

Connecting ESXi hosts to a Fabric Storage

Connecting ESXi to iSCSI Storage

iSCSI multipathing using Port Binding

Connecting ESXi hosts to NFS Storage

Viewing storage devices and datastores on ESXi hosts

Masking paths to a storage device

Unmasking paths to a storage device

Creating and Managing VMFS Datastores

Creating and Managing VMFS Datastores

Creating VMFS datastores

Upgrading VMFS datastores

Managing Storage Multipathing

Expanding or growing a VMFS datastore

Extending a VMFS datastore

Unmounting VMFS datastores and detaching storage devices

Attaching storage devices and remounting VMFS datastores

Managing VMFS snapshots

SIOC, Storage DRS, and Profile-Driven Storage

SIOC, Storage DRS, and Profile-Driven Storage

Configuring Disk Shares on VM storage

Balancing storage utilization using Storage DRS (SDRS)

Defining storage capabilities using vCenter Tags

Creating VM Storage Policies

Configuring vSphere DRS, DPM, and VMware EVC

Configuring vSphere DRS, DPM, and VMware EVC

Enabling vSphere DRS on a cluster

Changing the default DRS behavior

Configuring VM Automation

Creating DRS Groups

Creating DRS VMs to Host Affinity Rules

Creating DRS Inter-VM Affinity Rules

Configuring Predictive DRS

Configuring DPM

Using VMware Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC)

Achieving High Availability in a vSphere Environment

Achieving High Availability in a vSphere Environment

Enabling vSphere High Availability

Configuring vCenter Admission Control

Configuring Heartbeat Datastores

Overriding Restart Priority for Virtual Machines

Creating VM to VM Dependency Rules

Disabling Host Monitoring

Enabling Virtual Machine Monitoring

Enabling Virtual Machine Component Protection (VMCP)

Configuring vSphere Fault Tolerance (FT)

Configuring vCenter Native High Availability (VCHA)

Achieving Configuration Compliance Using vSphere Host Profiles

Achieving Configuration Compliance Using vSphere Host Profiles

Creating Host Profiles

Associating Host Profiles with ESXi hosts or clusters

Checking Host Profile Compliance

Scheduling Host Profile Compliance Checks

Performing Host Customizations

Remediating non-compliant Hosts

Using Host Profiles to push a configuration change

Copying settings between Host Profiles

Exporting Host Profiles

Importing Host Profiles

Duplicating Host Profiles

Building Custom ESXi Images Using Image Builder

Building Custom ESXi Images Using Image Builder

Enabling ESXi Image Builder

Importing a Software Depot

Creating an Online Software Depot

Creating a Custom Software Depot

Cloning Image Profiles

Creating Image Profiles using Software Packages

Comparing Image Profiles

Moving Image Profiles between Software Depots

Exporting Image Profiles

Auto-Deploying Stateless and Stateful ESXi Hosts

Auto-Deploying Stateless and Stateful ESXi Hosts

Enabling vSphere Auto Deploy

Configuring the Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) server for an ESXi PXE boot environment

Configuring the DHCP server for a PXE boot

Creating vSphere Auto Deploy rules

Configuring Stateless Caching

Deploying Stateful ESXi hosts

Creating and Managing Virtual Machines

Creating and Managing Virtual Machines

Creating a Virtual Machine

Creating Virtual Machine Snapshots

Deleting Virtual Machine Snapshots

Reverting to the current Virtual Machine Snapshot

Switching to an Arbitrary Virtual Machine Snapshot

Consolidating Snapshots

Exporting a Virtual Machine

Upgrading and Patching Using vSphere Update Manager

Upgrading and Patching Using vSphere Update Manager

Downloading Patch Definitions

Creating Patch Baselines

Creating Host Upgrade Baselines

Creating Baseline Groups

Configuring Update Manager's Remediation Settings

Patching/upgrading ESXi hosts using Update Manager

Upgrading VMware Tools and virtual hardware using Update Manager

Installing the Update Manager Download Service on Linux

Configuring UMDS to download patches

Configuring a Web Server on UMDS (Linux)

Securing vSphere Using SSL Certificates

Securing vSphere Using SSL Certificates

Using VMCA as a Subordinate or Intermediary CA

Certificate management using the Hybrid approach

Renewing ESXi certificates

Trusting root certificates to stop browser security warnings

Monitoring the vSphere Infrastructure

Monitoring the vSphere Infrastructure

Using esxtop to monitor performance

Exporting/importing esxtop configurations

Running esxtop in batch mode

Gathering VM I/O statistics using vscsiStats

Using vCenter Performance Charts

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Creating Host Profiles

Host Profiles are created by extracting the host configuration from a reference ESXi host. Once created, it will be listed as an object of the Host Profile type in the Host Profiles Objects tab.

Host Profiles contain configuration policies that are either fetched from the reference host or added to the Host Profile at a later stage.

A Host Profile can contain the following information:

Advanced configuration settings
General system settings
Networking configuration
Security and services
Storage configuration

Not all advanced configuration settings can be configured using a Host Profile. VMware Knowledge Base article 2001994 provides more details: https://kb.vmware.com/kb/2001994.

Keep in mind that you will need access to a vCenter Server to create Host Profiles. This is because the object data corresponding to the Host Profiles is saved in the vCenter...