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Knowledge

• Identify VMware NIC Teaming policies
• Identify common network protocols

Skills and Abilities

• Understand the NIC Teaming failover types and related physical network settings
• Determine and apply Failover settings
• Configure explicit failover to conform with VMware best practices
• Configure port groups to properly isolate network traffic

Tools & learning resources

• Product Documentation
  • ESX Configuration Guide
  • ESXi Configuration Guide
  • vSphere Command‐Line Interface Installation and Scripting Guide
  • vSphere Client
  • vSphere CLI
    • vicfg-*
  • Frank Denneman’s blogpost on IP Hash vs LBT

Identify, understand , and configure NIC teaming

The five available policies are;

• Route based on virtual port ID (default)
• Route based on IP Hash (MUST be used with static Etherchannel – no LACP). No beacon probing.
• Route based on source MAC address
• Route based on physical NIC load (vSphere 4.1 only)
• Explicit failover

NOTE: These only affect outbound traffic. Inbound load balancing is controlled by the physical switch.

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If you work your way through the vCSHB Reference Guide you’ll have covered every objective in the VCAP-DCA blueprint, so that’s where I’d recommend you start. If you have time, view the VMworld sessions for a bit of background and reinforcement. I went into a bit more detail on this objective as it’s something I wanted to evaluate for my company, so there’s some ‘real world’ issues covered which I doubt you’ll need for the exam.

Knowledge

• Identify the five protection levels for vCenter Server Heartbeat
• Identify the three server protection options for vCenter Server Heartbeat
• Identify supported cloning options

Skills and Abilities

• Install and configure vCenter Server Heartbeat
• Determine use cases for and execute a manual switchover
• Recover from a failover
• Monitor vCenter Server Heartbeat and communication status
• Configure heartbeat settings
• Configure shutdown options
• Configure application protection
• Add/Edit Services
• Add/Edit Tasks
• Edit/Test Rules
• Install/Edit Plug‐ins
• Add/Remove Inclusion/Exclusion Filters
• Perform Full System and Full Registry checks
• Configure/Test Alerts
• Troubleshoot common vCenter Server Heartbeat error conditions

Tools & learning resources

• Product Documentation
  • vCenter Server Heartbeat QuickStart Guide
  • vCenter Server Heartbeat Reference Guide
• vSphere Client – not sure why this is listed as vCSHB isn’t integrated into the VI client….
• Protecting vCenter with vCentre Heartbeat (TA15, VMworld ’09. Covers V5.5, not v6.3)
• VMware vCentre Heartbeat Best Practices (VM2674, VMworld ’09. Covers V5.5, not v6.3)
• Mike Laverick’s four part series at TechTarget
• Paul Richard’s blog entry on testing vCSHB
• Julian Wood on why vCSHB isn’t an ideal solution (about half way down the post).
• VMware’s community forums for vCSHB
• VMware KB articles
  • vCSHB prerequisites (VMware KB1017587)
  • VMworld 2010 lab 10 – vCSHB setup and configuration (requires valid login)

Read more…