New course: vCenter Operations Manager: Analyze and Predict

VMware have announced the release of the first instructor-led training course for vCenter Operations Manager, titled vCenter Operations Manager: Analyze and Predict [v5.0].

The class is aimed at VMware partners and customers who want to learn how to use vCenter Operations Manager as a forensic and predictive tool.

Here's a brief outline of the topics covered:

- vCenter Operations Management Suite

- Architecture and Concepts

- Dashboards and Badges

- Heat Maps

- Smart Alerts

- Capacity Planning and Reports

- Installing and Configuring vCenter Operations Manager

VMware and VATCs are scheduling this class now for deliveries beginning in July, for more information on the class objectives and to view the latest schedule follow this link:

http://mylearn.vmware.com/mgrreg/courses.cfm?ui=www_edu&a=one&id_subject=31492

New course: vSphere: Optimize and Scale

VMware recently announced the release of the first higher-level training class for vSphere 5, titled vSphere: Optimize and Scale [v5.0].

It's a 5-day class that follows on from the popular Install Configure Manage class, and it covers a number of high-level aspects and features of vSphere 5, including:

- CLI access to vSphere, and log files

- Performance and optimization for CPU, RAM, networking, and storage

- Distributed virtual switches

- Storage multipathing, vStorage APIs, policy-driven storage and VM storage profiles

- VM and cluster performance guidelines and troubleshooting

- Image Builder

- Host Profiles

- Linked Mode

- Distributed Power Management

- PowerCLI

- Auto Deploy

The content and labs align closely to the forthcoming VCAP5-DCA certification. VMware and VATCs are scheduling this class now, for further information about dates and locations follow this link:

http://mylearn.vmware.com/mgrreg/courses.cfm?ui=www_edu&a=one&id_subject=31835

New course - VMware vCloud: Deploy and Manage the VMware Cloud [v1.5]

VMware are about to release the first full hands-on training course for vCloud Director, and the first instructor-led course for vCloud Director 1.5 - VMware vCloud: Deploy and Manage the VMware Cloud [v1.5]

It's a 4-day training course aimed at those who hold VCP4 or VCP5 or have the equivalent level of skills/knowledge. This is very much a hands-on course, there are 21 hands-on labs that take up an estimated 60% of the course time!

The course labs cover the installation and configuration of vCloud Director components, networking and network pools, provider vDCs, organisations, and vApps. There are also labs on monitoring, vShield, VPNs and routing, security roles, LDAP, and vCloud resources.

Delivery of this new course begins in April 2012, initially at least the course will only be delivered by VCIs who hold VCP and VCAP-DCA certifications and have good experience of working with vCloud Director.

New course - vSphere 5: Fast Track

VMware have just released a new course for vSphere 5, and it's a big one, the Fast Track!

The list of topics covered is the largest yet of any VMware course I've come across, there are 17 course modules and 35 lab exercises covering a huge number of vSphere 5 features. Look inside the content and you'll find all of the material we cover in Install Configure Manage, a lot of the higher-level material from What's New, as well as new material not currently available in any other vSphere 5 courses.

I'm not going to copy and paste the full list of topics here, you can find those in the course datasheet, but here's the modules we cover in this course, the modules that contain material not found in Install Configure Manage are in bold:

- Course Introduction
- Introduction to Virtualization
- Create Virtual Machines
- VMware vCenter Server
- Configuring and Managing Virtual Networks
- Configuring and Managing Virtual Storage
- Virtual Machine Management
- Access and Authentication Control
- Resource Management and Monitoring
- High Availability and Fault Tolerance
- Host Scalability
- Network Scalibility
- Storage Scalability
- Data Protection
- Patch Management
- vSphere Management Assistant
- Installing VMware Components

This course is going to give you the best preparation for the VCP5 certification exam of any official vSphere 5 training available today, and you should definitely consider it instead of Install Configure Manage if VCP5 certification is a primary goal for you or your employer. The course does count towards the training requirement for VCP5.

Be prepared though, although this is still a 5-day course it will take place over extended hours - expect the days to run from 9:00am-7:00pm. If you're completely new to vSphere 5 you might find the pace and volume of material covered a challenge, consider the regular Install Configure Manage course instead.

Global Knowledge UK are running vSphere 5: Fast Track courses, there are a number of dates available now, additional dates will be added in the coming weeks.

New vSphere 5 training courses

July 12th saw the announcement of vSphere 5, and the Education Services team at VMware have been busy for some time developing the new vSphere curriculum. In this blog post, I'm going to share with you as much as VMware will allow me to about the new official training options for vSphere, coming later in 2011. The exact names of some of these courses are subject to change, and I'm not able to divulge the target release date of all the courses.

For those of you that have vSphere 4 skills and knowledge to VCP4-level, VMware will be launching a vSphere 5: What's New course. This course will focus purely on new features in vSphere 5, enhancements to features inherited from vSphere 4, and the upgrade process. This course will benefit those wishing to update their VCP certification from VCP4 to VCP5, in fact it will become compulsory for VCP4 holders to attend this or another vSphere 5 course after February 29th 2012.

If you don't have VCP4-level skills and knowledge, there is still a foundation-level vSphere 5: Install Configure Manage (ICM) course, it will remain as a 5-day course, be closely aligned with the up-and-coming VCP5 certification, and content-wise little changes from the vSphere 4 version of the course. There is some re-ordering of content, some new content, and some content has been "moved up" to the higher-level courses. Some of the new vSphere 5 features will be included such as the vCenter Server Appliance, the ESXi firewall, the vSphere Web Client, and the rest of the content is all being updated for vSphere 5 as you would expect.

Following on from ICM will be two new courses, ICM2 and ICM3 - they are designed to offer an intermediate and advanced-level of vSphere training, and are aligned with the VCAP5-DCA certification. ICM2 will cover advanced configuration of vSphere networking and storage, and performance management. ICM3 will cover troubleshooting and command-line administration using the vSphere Management Assistant.

VMware will also be releasing updated versions of the Automation with PowerCLI, Manage and Design for Security, and Design Workshop courses.

As mentioned in other posts on this blog, there will also be new courses available on vCloud Director 1.5 (Deploy and Manage, and Architecting the VMware Cloud), and on Site Recovery Manager 5 (Install Configure and Manage).

Global Knowledge will be offering a full schedule for all new VMware courses in the UK and beyond as soon as each course becomes available, we will update our site as soon as we can: http://www.globalknowledge.co.uk/vmware

New vCloud Director 1.5 courses

In addition to the vSphere 5 launch announcement on July 12th, vCloud Director is also being updated to version 1.5, and the Education Services team at VMware are expanding the training offerings for this new version. This post gives you as much information as VMware will allow me to share at this time - the final course titles and content are subject to change, and the release dates for the courses are yet to be finalised.

For the first time we will have available a Deploy and Manage course for vCloud Director 1.5, which will help those responsible for deploying a cloud infrastructure based on vCloud Director and vSphere to put all the various pieces in place.

The design course Architecting the VMware Cloud is also being updated for the 1.5 release.

We also have a new set of vSphere 5 courses available which you'll see mentioned in other blog posts here, and a new Site Recovery Manager 5 course too!

All courses will be available in the UK and worldwide through Global Knowledge of course, we will update our site with the final course overviews and dates as soon as we can: http://www.globalknowledge.co.uk/vmware

New VMware official curriculum

Following on from the July 12th launch of vSphere 5, vCloud Director 1.5 and Site Recovery Manager 5, the Education Services team at VMware have revamped the official curriculum offerings for these products. These new courses will become available in the coming months, the final course titles and content are subject to change, and I'm not permitted to divulge the expected release dates.

So, the new instructor-led official curriculum looks like this:

All the vSphere courses shown will be new or updated for vSphere 5, and the vCloud Director and Site Recovery Manager courses are new too!

Global Knowledge will offer these courses as and when they become available, for further information take a look at http://www.globalknowledge.co.uk/vmware

First UK delivery of vSphere: Advanced Fast Track training

Global Knowledge will be running the first UK delivery of the new vSphere: Advanced Fast Track training course, starting on June 13th. This is an extended-hours course that covers 7 days of material in 5 days, and includes both the vSphere: Troubleshooting and vSphere: Manage for Performance courses.

I blogged about the course when the details of it were first released:
http://vmwaretraining.blogspot.com/2011/02/exclusive-new-course-vsphere-advanced.html

I'm delivering this course myself, and it offers good preparation for the VCAP4-DCA live-lab certification exam - covering the majority of the objectives in the exam blueprint.

Free ESXi Training

Most people who work with VMware vSphere products and technologies are aware of the ESX and ESXi bare-metal hypervisor options available - after all it was the 3.5 release of the software that first gave customers the choice of deploying either or both. Later this year sees the release of vSphere 5, and from that time forward we will be living in an ESX-less world - I wrote a post about this back in February 2010: ESX v ESXi

In the middle of 2010, VMware Education released a 2-day instructor-led training course complete with hands-on labs to aid customers who had vSphere deployments centred around ESX to help them start to make the move towards ESXi: vSphere: Transition to ESXi

VMware Education are now taking the ESX-less message further out to their customer base with the release of a free 4-hour self-paced elearning - essentially it's a cut-down version of the full instructor-led course above. The course has no hands-on labs, and as you would expect from elearning versus instructor-led training there's no instructor to ask questions of: vSphere: Transition to ESXi Essentials

New Course - VMware View: Desktop Fast Track

Another course due for release in the next couple of months is VMware View: Desktop Fast Track, based around View and ThinApp 4.5 and 4.6. The course runs over extended hours as a 5-day event, and combines together 7 days worth of material from three individual courses:

VMware View: Install Configure Manage (4 days)
Application Virtualization with VMware ThinApp (1 day)
VMware View: Design Best Practices (2 days)

The final release date and pricing has yet to be confirmed. It looks as though the course will include a voucher for the new VMware Certified Associate 4 - Desktop (VCA4-DT) certification exam.

New Course - vSphere: Advanced Fast Track

VMware have decided to create an advanced-level extended-hours course for vSphere 4 - vSphere: Advanced Fast Track. This course will combine together the vSphere: Troubleshooting course (4 days) with the vSphere: Manage for Performance course (3 days) into a single 5-day extended-hours course.

This new combined course will offer excellent preparation for the VCAP4-DCA exam, and will include a voucher for the exam as part of the course fee. The course is expected to be available within the next couple of months, the content is still being finalised at the moment, and pricing has yet to be determined.

This course is going to be perfect for anyone who's attended the vSphere: Install Configure Manage, vSphere: What's New, or the old vSphere: Fast Track course, and also for those who attend the new vSphere: Automation Fast Track - it gives students from any of those courses an excellent follow-on course as well as helping prepare for the VCAP4-DCA exam.

New Course - vSphere: Automation Fast Track

Until the end of 2010, one of the courses we offered to our customers was a vSphere: Fast Track - which combined together roughly 7 days of various vSphere 4.0 courses into a single extended-hour training course.

VMware updated the core vSphere: Install Configure Manage course for the 4.1 release and grew it out to 5 days at the same time, pulling in quite a lot of material that previously formed the old Fast Track.

I can now confirm that VMware plan to release a new Automation Fast Track course, which will run as a 5-day extended-hours course. This course will combine together all the material from the current Install Configure Manage course (5 days) with the Automation with vSphere PowerCLI course (2 days) - so 7 days worth of training in 5 days.

So what else can I tell you about this new course? Well some of the details are still emerging, but I can say that the course will include a voucher for the VCP4 exam. The release date has still not been confirmed, but I would expect it to be within the next couple of months, course pricing has also yet to be set.

Free "What's New in vSphere 4.1" e-learning

The vSphere: Install Configure Manage course was recently updated for the vSphere 4.1 release, see the course outline and my earlier blog post on that. Other vSphere courses such as the Troubleshooting and Manage for Performance courses were designed around the vSphere 4.0 release, and have yet to be updated.

VMware have created an e-learning course titled What's New in vSphere 4.1, and sell it as part of their All-Access subscription - it is also made available to VMware partners.

The part of this that's of interest to me in particular is that VMware have also now decided to make the e-learning available at no charge to those students who attend any one of the following instructor-led courses:

vSphere: What's New
vSphere: Troubleshooting
vSphere: Manage for Performance

If you have completed any of the above courses since July 28th, VMware will email you a token (a free voucher) that can be used against the e-learning course. The token has to be used within 90 days of being issued, and the course subscription then lasts for 365 days.

The course includes an overview of new 4.1 features including:

- ESXi enhancements/changes
- Support for Active Directory authentication
- vCLI enhancements
- vCenter Server enhancement/changes
- Host Profiles enhancements
- Increased cluster maximums
- New DRS affinitiy rules
- vMotion enhancements vSphere 4.1 installation and upgrade options
- An introduction to storage I/O controll and VAAI
- An introduction to Network I/O control
- Information about ESX/ESXi memory compression

Update - September 29th 2010
I can confirm that only the courses highlighted above qualify for this offer. Those attending the vSphere: Fast Track course could have attended the new vSphere: Install Configure Manage course which is already based on 4.1.

Save travel costs on UK-based ICM 4.1 courses

Global Knowledge UK have now created a schedule for live-online delivery of the new 5-day vSphere: Install Configure Manage course, these events will be run from the UK and as such will take place during typical UK working hours.

The live-online course is instructor-led, just like a regular classroom-based course, and those attending still get the same discussion and question opportunities with their peers and the instructor as they would if they attended in person. This course also still meets the training requirement of the VCP4 certification.

The key benefit of attending a course using this method of delivery is the savings that can be made in terms of travel and associated expense costs, in addition we have decided to create our own events of this kind to appeal to those based around Europe and Africa who may find the live-online offerings from VMware unsuitable due the time of the day that VMware run their events.

If you have any other questions or concerns about live-online delivery, please feel free to send me an email.

Can't decide whether to attend the new ICM course or the Fast Track?

Ever since I blogged about the new 5-day vSphere: Install Configure Manage course I've received emails from people asking about whether they should attend that course or the 5-day extended-hours vSphere: Fast Track course.

The new ICM course, available from August 23rd, has been updated for the vSphere 4.1 release - there is mention of those 4.1 features that are relevant to the course objectives, the software used in the labs is the 4.1 version, and VMware have also switched the host version used from ESX to ESXi in line with their recommendation that customers transition away from ESX and deploy ESXi. The new ICM course also contains material and labs that were not present in the now-retired 4-day ICM 4.0 course, this content has been brought in from the Fast Track, and was highlighted in my previous blog post on the new ICM 4.1. The new ICM material also brings the course content much closer to the objectives covered in the VCP4 exam blueprint, in comparison to the ICM 4.0 course.

The Fast Track course in it's current form will retire at the end of 2010, and has not been and will not be updated for the 4.1 release. Fast Track still contains some material and labs which do not form part of the new 4.1 ICM course, specifically around the vSphere CLI and how it can be used to administer host-level networking and storage.

If you're debating which of the courses to take, I would definitely suggest to consider the new ICM 4.1 course due to the points I make above.

vSphere Training - What's Next?

Have you done one of the following foundation-level vSphere courses, or have equivalent skills and knowledge?
What's New
Install Configure Manage
Fast Track

Whilst the above course teach you a huge amount about vSphere and the various infrastructure elements that it integrates with, those courses only scratch the surface of numerous topics and often leave those who attend the courses wanting more...

There are now a number of advanced-level courses available, designed to follow-on from the courses above and help people get much more in-depth skills and knowledge in certain key areas.

vSphere: Manage for Performance - read more about it here
vSphere: Troubleshooting
vSphere: Design Workshop
vSphere: Manage and Design for Security (coming soon)
vSphere: Automation (coming soon)

The advanced-level courses will also help you prepare for the new VCAP certifications too. Global Knowledge UK offer the full range of official vSphere course, delivered around the UK. Feel free to get in touch if you want to know more about any VMware training course, or certification program.

New 5-day Install Configure Manage course for vSphere 4

The vSphere: Install Configure Manage (ICM) course was released in the middle of 2009, and is by far the most popular official course on vSphere 4 - those attending the course qualify for the VCP4 certification, and the content covers all the foundation-level skills and knowledge needed to deploy and administer a vSphere 4 environment.

Towards the end of August 2010, VMware will be releasing an updated version of the ICM course, and for the first time it will be a 5-day training event. This will give us the opportunity to cover additional material in the lecture and lab sessions, giving you a more well-rounded experience during the course and helping you further in preparation for the VCP4 exam.

The new content in the 5-day ICM will be:

• vCenter Linked Mode
• Host Profiles
• Distributed Power Management
• Deeper content on High Availability
• Fault Tolerance

As well as the addition of the new material, VMware have also overhauled and restructured a lot of the content that was previously in the 4-day ICM course. Most of the new material is derived from the content of the current vSphere: Fast Track (FT) course, the 5-day extended-hours FT course will still be available, and will still cover some additional lecture and lab material not found in the new 5-day ICM.

Update on July 13th:
I can confirm that this course will be based on the new 4.1 release of vSphere.

New course in development - vSphere: Manage and Design for Security

VMware are currently developing a new specialist course title vSphere: Manage and Design for Security, the course will be available later in the summer, and will cover all the best practices for secure design, deployment and operations of a vSphere environment. The course objectives are:

• Identify vulnerabilities in the current design of a vSphere environment and recommend corrective actions
• Harden vSphere components as described in the security hardening guides for vSphere 4
• Use VMware® vShield Zones to provide firewall protection to virtual machines and monitor virtual machine network traffic
• Recommend configuration and change management policies, processes, and systems

This is planned to be a 2-day course with roughly 40% of the time spent doing hands-on labs. I'll post a fuller overview of the course closer to the release date, once VMware have finalised the course objectives and content.

Update on July 5th - corrected the course name in the title and body.

New course in development - vSphere: Automation with vSphere PowerCLI

This summer VMware will be releasing a new course vSphere: Automation with vSphere PowerCLI, the course will give administrators an introduction to the vSphere PowerCLI and show them how to use it to perform a variety of different tasks in a vSphere environment:

• Automate VMware® ESX™ configuration
• Automate the provisioning of virtual machines
• Automate changes to virtual machine configuration
• Automate cluster operations
• Automate reporting

vSphere PowerCLI is an extension to Microsoft PowerShell, and contains over 100 VMware-specific commands (or cmd-lets in the language of PowerShell) - the course is currently in development and is due to be 2 days long with roughly 60% of the time spent doing hands-on labs with PowerCLI.

I'll post a more thorough outline of the course closer to the release date, once the content and structure has been finalised.

Update on July 5th - corrected the course name in the title and body text

vSphere Curriculum - Feb 2010

Regular readers will be aware that I always announce new VMware training courses as and when I'm allowed to, I have access to the education and certification roadmaps so I always have advance notification of what's coming and roughly when, but as I'm a good boy I only post what VMware tell me I can! I can say that this is going to be a busy year for me, lots of new courses to master and deliver, and some new certifications too...

I created a graphic recently for my Think Virtually site that show's the vSphere curriculum that's either currently available, or will be in the next few weeks. It also gives people the opportunity to map out their own training path, and to show how the follow-on courses fit together:

We've got even more new courses coming in the next few months, for example a Security course for vSphere, and another on Automation - and it goes without saying that I will be announcing more details on those when I can, along with the various new certification paths. Watch this space....