Module 5: Configure and Manage Virtual Networks
Standard virtual switch/ Distributed virtual switch
Enable the PortFast, Trunk and EtherChannel in the physical switch port that is connected to the physical host NIC
802.3AD – NIC teaming, 802.1Q – VLAN trunking
Network policies: Security/ Traffic Shaping/ NIC teaming
Security:
– Promiscuous Mode: e.g. intrusion detection system
– MAC Address Changes: e.g. new guest
– Forged Transmits: e.g. network load balancer
Traffic Shaping (disabled by default): ESXi only shapes outbound traffic by establishing parameters for three traffic characteristics: average bandwidth, peak bandwidth and burst size
NIC Teaming:
– Load balancing (outbound only): Originating port ID, Source MAC Hash and IP Hash (higher CPU overhead but better distribution of traffic across physical NICs.
– Network failure detection: link status or link status plus beaconing
– Notify switches: do not set this when port group is running unicase-mode Microsoft NLB
– Failback
– Failover order
Module 6: Configure and Manage Virtual Storage
DAS, FC, FCoE, iSCSI and NAS
Shared storage + Block device are two key elements for all vSphere functions
Types of datestore: VMFS or NFS
VMFS 5: Clustered file system, uses 1MB block size, can be dynamically expanded, Uses subblock addressing which is good for storing small files.
Canonical name: The NAA (Network Address Authority) ID is a unique LUN identifier, and it is persistent across reboots (naa-FC, t10-iSCSI, mpx-local device)
Runtime name is not persistent through reboots
Physical Storage Consideration
software iSCSI/ dependent hardware iSCSI/ independent hardware iSCSI
A VMkernel port must be created for ESXi to access software iSCSI.
NFS: NFS admin must use no_root_squash instead of using root_squash to export
vSphere 5 introduces the software FCoE adapter
Multipathing with Fibre Channel
VMFS can have a maximum volume size of 64 TB.
Incresing the size of a VMFS datastore: Add an extent LUN or Expand the datastore within its extent
Multipathing Algorithms
PSA (Pluggable Storage Architecture) is a VMkernel layer responsible for managing multiple storage paths and providing the load-balancing. ESXi host can be attached to a storage array with a storage processor configuration of Active-Active or Active-Passive or LUA (Logical Unit Asymmetric)
VMware offers native load-balancing and failover mechanisms: Round Robin, Most Recently Used and Fixed. It is always recommended to use vendor supplied driver for ESXi if there is one!!
VSA – vSphere Storage Appliance
Jackie Chen's IT Workshop 
Hi Jackie,
you mentioned “Enable the PortFast, Trunk and EtherChannel in the physical switch port that is connected to the physical host NIC” in your training summary.
I was doing this on physical servers with NIC connected directly to Cisco switches.
But now we are implementing esx on blade Center H blades HS22. So the integrated ports are connected to internal switch. The switch has 6 uplink ports.
does this still work on the uplink ports from the integrated switch of the blade.
Disable PortFast as the connection is between the core switch and the chassis switch module. Configure Trunk for VLAN info and EtherChannel for link aggregation.