vSphere Videos/Demos

This videos were created using HyperCam as on screen recorder. They were then converted into flash videos. I’ve tested them with Google Chrome – and display brillantly at 1024×768 resolution.

These videos are FREE, as such the quality reflects that fact! It’s just little ole me with decent mic and some screen grab software :-p

But that said, they are almost full-screen and not these scrappy things you can (bearly) see on youtube.com. They run on average from anywhere from 10-30 minutes long. There just me explaining what I’m upto whilst I carry out the various tasks, with a bit of explaination of what the score is. So they are quick and dirty videos. Well, not that dirty – don’t get your hopes fellas! :-) . Above all these videos are just quick fire demonstations – they are NOT (repeat are NOT) intended as a replacement for authorised classroom based training – that’s something I currently do as my regular daytime job. There is difference. Classroom training wipes the floor with any CBT as far as I’m concerned. But heck, as a a classroom based instructor I would say that wouldn’t I?

The main reason I put these videos together is as free supplement to my soon-to-be-released book on vSphere4, and to give people who by the book – a live on screen demo of the configuration – although you don’t have to buy the book to watch these videos. I find it’s often its easier to quickly show something than it is to do a 100 screen grabs and loads of text – but in the same instance videos don’t allow for long and details discussions of best practises and possible configurations. So if you want detail, get the book – but if you want quick high-level views of things – the videos slot into that…

I start with nothing – no ESX, no domain controllers, SQL or vCenter. And everything is done with virtual machines, apart from the ESX host(s) which are physical boxes. If your new to VMware start with the first video and work you way through each one. If you have familiarity with VMware products then by all means skip videos where see it appropriate.

If you click at the links the videos will open in a separate window.

Chapter01: Part 01: Install ESX4 Classic
[Audience: Novice]

This video covers how to install ESX4 “Classic” to local storage. I begin by stopping access to external storage such as fibre-channel SAN by disabling the PCI cards.

Chapter01: Part 02: Create a VM and Install Windows/VMware Tools
[Audience: Novice]

This videos covers how to install a VM on local storage, and how to upload an .ISO image. This “master VM” will become the basis of my first 3 primary VMs – a domain controller, a MS SQL 2005 and vCenter.

Chapter01: Part 03: Clone a VM from the Command-Line
[Audience: Novice]

In this case I assume you don’t have vCenter yet, so I show you how to duplicate a VM just with command-line tools. Later on after installing vCenter and sorting out the networking/storage – I will be showing how to duplicate a VM with vCenter templates

Chapter02: Part 01: Install SQL 2005 Ready for vCenter and Update Manager
[Audience: Intermediate]

This video shows you how to quickly install Microsoft SQL 2005 in state good for vCenter4

Chapter02: Part 02: Install vCenter4 (Windows Authentication)
[Audience: Novice]

In this video I create the user account required for install of VMware vCenter  and VMware Update Manager (VUM) using Windows Authentication. It shows me granting the correct SQL and Windows rights in order to make vCenter with Windows Authentication work. Finally, after installing the Native SQL 2005 Drivers to the vCenter VM and creating a System DSN – I take you through an installation of vCenter

Chapter02: Part 03: Licensing, Creating vCenter Objects, and Adding ESX hosts
[Audience: Novice]

In this video I will show how to license both vCenter and ESX hosts. Then how create the two main objects in vCenter – folders and datacenters. Finally, I will walk you through adding your first ESX host.

Chapter02: Part 04: Install ESXi and Adding to vCenter
[Audience: Novice]

In this video I will demo how to install ESXi to a 2GB memory stick, and carry out some post-install tasks such as setting up the IP configuration. After doing that I will add the ESXi host into the vCenter created earlier in the video series

Chapter03: Part 01: Standard vSwitches (SvSwitches)
[Audience: Intermediate]

In this video I will show how to create the 3 main types of Standard vSwitch (internal, outbound, teamed). I will also handle vLAN configuration – and set up the VMkernel networking to work for VMotion.

Chapter03: Part 02: Standard vSwitches Settings (SvSwitches)
[Audience: Intermediate]

This video walks you through the main dialog boxes for Standard vSwitches and quickly explains some of the key settings

Chapter03: Part 03: Distributed vSwitches (DvSwitches)
[Audience: Advanced]

Well, its not really “advanced” as such – DvSwitches are just as easy (in fact easier) to create and get working. The trouble is you might not have access them because they are currently an Enterprise+ feature only. So if your using Foundation, Standard, Enterprise (and not upgraded to Enterprise+) then you won’t have acccess to them. For this reason I’m keeping the video short and sweet – more or less showing you how to get started with DvSwitches, doing the same configuration you could achieve with SvSwitches

Chapter04: Part 01: Fibre-Channel SAN and VMFS
[Audience: Intermediate]

In this video I will be creating a new LUN/Volume for holding VMs using an EMC Clarrion and NaviSphere. I will also format the VMFS volume with VMFS. I then use Storage VMotion to move VMs off my local storage and put the VMs on Shared Storage – in preparation for things like VMware DRS, HA, and FT

Chapter04: Part 02: VMFS Volume Grow & VMFS Extents
[Audience: Intermediate]

In this video I will demonstrate VMFS volume grow and extents

In this video I will be enabling VMware’s software iSCSI support and connecting to a pre-configured iSCSI system. I’ve labelled this video as advanced, as I’m assuming you know all about Standard and Distributed vSwitches – and I take it for granted you just know about these, but like with everything with VMware its alot easier than people think!

Chapter04: Part 03: NAS and NFS Storage
[Audience: Advanced]

In this video I will be connecting to a NFS datastore. I only call this “advanced” because I’ve already handled the networking side of things. In truth setting up NAS is easier than FC-SAN or iSCSI-SAN…

Chapter05: Part 01: Creating a Template amd Deploy from a Template
[Audience: Advanced]

This quick little demo covers the 3 mains ways of duplicating VMs – clone, clone to template and convert-to-template. I then show you how to copy Sysprep to the vCenter Server, and then use the templates to quickly deploy new VMs

Chapter05: Part 02: Managing the VM
[Audience: Advanced]

These selection of videos cover some small neat features of the VM. To be honest its a bit show-boating which demonstrates how easy and flexible VMware VMs are:

Chapter05: Part 03: Enabling VMotion and Resolving VMotion Errors

[Audience: Advanced]
Well, is it really advanced? Actually, enabling VMotion is incrediably easy and so is resolving errors.
Chapter06: Part 01-04: DRS Clusters
[Audience: Advanced]
These chapters cover the initial setup of the DRS clusters – and demo of the 3 operating modes. It also covers features like affinity and anti-affinity rules and maintenance mode.
Chapter07: Part01-02: Advanced DRS Features
[Audience: Advanced]
These chapters cover to additional enhancements of the core DRS product. DPM and EVC. DPM stands for Distributed Power Management, it’s intention together with DRS is put ESX host in powered-down “standby” mode if it regards the load on the overall cluster, that doesn’t need ALL the ESX hosts running. The goal is to save power in test and DR environments where you only run the ESX hosts you need. EVC stands for Enhanced VMotion Compatability. This system creates a baseline from your ESX hosts to make sure incompatabile ESX host cannot be added to the cluster – it can also downgrade the CPU spec of modern ESX host with the latest CPUs (such as Intel FlexMigrate) forcing them to be compatible with older ESX hosts.