ESXi Server has a built-in Firewall to protect your ESXi Server.
There are pre-defined services (source and destination TCP/UDP Port) that you can configure via vSphere Client or CLI, such as permitting or restricting SSH from specified IP Address or Network. These pre-defined services should be sufficient for most of environment.
However there may be a case that you wish to create a custom service, for example when you install a third-party plugin and it uses TCP/UDP that is not defined in the pre-defined list.
Tag Archive for VCAP
Create a custom ESXi Firewall service
Objective 1.2 – Manage Storage Capacity in a vSphere Environment
Objective 1.2 – Manage Storage Capacity in a vSphere Environment
Knowledge
Identify storage provisioning methods
vSphere support several Storage provisioning methods
VMDK based
- Thin
- Thick – Lazy Zero
- Thick – Eager Zero
RDM
- Physical mode
- Virtual Mode
I have already posted about VMDK disk provision types in here.
I have already posted about RDM in here
Identify available storage monitoring tools, metrics and alarms
vSphere comes with several monitoring tools for Storage including Performance tab in vSphere Client.
Here are the some of the metrics and corresponding (R)ESXTOP metric that you should be aware of
- Device Command Latency (DAVG/cmd)
- Kernel Command Latency (KAVG/cmd)
- Virtual Machine Latency (GAVG/cmd = DAVG/cmd + KAVG/cmd)
- Device Queue
- LUN Queue
- Number of Aborted disk Command(ABRTS/s)
- Number of disk Command issue (ACTV)
- Number of Command in Queue (QUED)
- Read/Write Rate (READs/s, WRITEs/s, MBREAD/s, MBWRTN/s)
Skills and Ability
Apply space utilization data to manage storage resources
Provision and manage storage resources according to Virtual Machine requirements
Understand interactions between virtual storage provisioning and physical storage provisioning
Apply VMware storage best practices
Configure Datastore Alarms
Analyze Datastore Alarms and errors to determine space availability
Configure Datastore Clusters
VCAP5-DCA Objective 1.1 – Implement and Manage Complex Storage Solutions – Skills and Abilities
- Determine use cases for and configure VMware DirectPath I/O
- Determine requirements for and configure NPIV
- Determine appropriate RAID level for various Virtual Machine workloads
- Apply VMware storage best practices
- Understand use cases for Raw Device Mapping
- Configure vCenter Server storage filters
- Understand and apply VMFS re-signaturing
- Understand and apply LUN masking using PSA-related commands
- Analyze I/O workloads to determine storage performance requirements
- Identify and tag SSD devices
- Administer hardware acceleration for VAAI
- Configure and administer profile-based storage
- Prepare storage for maintenance
- Upgrade VMware storage infrastructure
VCAP5-DCA Objective 1.1 – Implement and Manage Complex Storage Solutions – Knowledge
Objective 1.1 – Implement and Manage Complex Storage Solutions – Knowledge
Identify RAID Levels
Not sure how VMware will test me about RAID Levels in VCAP5-DCA Exam, but it is important to understand different types of RAID levels and their performance implication and disk failure supported. I’m sure if you are attempting for DCD exam, this will be one of the key factors of selecting right LUNs for the requirement.