Virtual Machine Course

Lesson 1 • Virtualisation Use Cases

Maps virtualisation to server consolidation, dev/test, DR, and desktop delivery. Frames the practical motivation for skills developed throughout the course.

Lesson 2 • Virtual Machine Components

Identifies the core components of a VM: virtual CPU, memory, storage, and network interfaces. Prepares students to configure each component in later chapters.

Lesson 3 • Hypervisor Architecture Basics

Explains Type 1 and Type 2 hypervisors and their roles in VM management. Provides the architectural foundation for hands-on hypervisor work ahead.

Lesson 4 • What Is Virtualisation

Defines virtualisation as hardware abstraction and resource pooling. Establishes the conceptual baseline for all subsequent VM topics.

Lesson 1 • Hardware Requirements and Planning

Identifies CPU, RAM, storage, and NIC requirements for hypervisor deployment. Ensures students plan capacity before touching any installation wizard.

Lesson 2 • Updating and Patching the Hypervisor

Explains patch management workflows and update repositories for hypervisors. Establishes a maintenance discipline critical to secure VM operations.

Lesson 3 • Installing a Type 2 Hypervisor

Walks through installing a hosted hypervisor on a workstation OS. Provides a low-risk environment for practising VM creation skills.

Lesson 4 • Installing a Type 1 Hypervisor

Covers bare-metal hypervisor installation on dedicated server hardware. Builds the production-grade foundation used in enterprise VM deployments.

Lesson 1 • Creating a New Virtual Machine

Guides students through the VM creation wizard, selecting OS type, hardware, and storage. Directly applies hypervisor knowledge from Chapter 2.

Lesson 2 • Deleting and Decommissioning VMs

Covers safe VM removal, data retention decisions, and resource reclamation. Prevents orphaned files and wasted storage in managed environments.

Lesson 3 • Cloning and Deploying from Templates

Teaches VM cloning and template-based deployment for rapid provisioning. Reduces manual effort and enforces configuration consistency across environments.

Lesson 4 • Modifying VM Hardware Settings

Demonstrates adding, removing, and resizing virtual hardware on existing VMs. Enables students to adapt VMs to changing workload requirements.

Lesson 5 • VM Power and State Management

Explains power-on, shutdown, suspend, and reset operations and their effects. Connects state management to data integrity and uptime planning.

Lesson 1 • VM Network Adapter Configuration

Configures adapter types, MAC addresses, and port group assignments per VM. Connects virtual switch design to individual VM network behaviour.

Lesson 2 • Creating and Configuring Virtual Switches

Walks through creating virtual switches and assigning physical uplinks. Directly enables VM network connectivity configured in subsequent sections.

Lesson 3 • Port Groups and VLAN Tagging

Covers port group creation and VLAN ID assignment for traffic segmentation. Enables multi-tenant and isolated network designs within a single host.

Lesson 4 • Virtual Network Troubleshooting

Applies systematic diagnostic steps to resolve VM connectivity failures. Builds confidence in identifying misconfigurations at switch, VLAN, and adapter levels.

Lesson 1 • Storage vMotion and Disk Migration

Demonstrates live migration of VM disks between datastores without downtime. Enables storage maintenance and rebalancing in production environments.

Lesson 2 • Creating and Managing Datastores

Covers creating VMFS and NFS datastores and managing their capacity. Directly supports VM disk provisioning tasks performed in Chapter 3.

Lesson 3 • Virtual Disk Formats and Provisioning

Compares thick, thin, and eager-zeroed disk formats and their performance trade-offs. Enables informed disk provisioning decisions for different workload types.

Lesson 4 • Storage Concepts for Virtualisation

Introduces block, file, and object storage and their roles in VM environments. Establishes the vocabulary and concepts needed for datastore configuration.

Lesson 1 • Restoring VMs and Testing Recovery

Covers full VM restore, granular file recovery, and recovery testing procedures. Validates that backup data is usable and meets recovery time objectives.

Lesson 2 • VM Backup Strategies

Compares agent-based, agentless, and image-level backup approaches for VMs. Guides students in selecting the right strategy for each workload type.

Lesson 3 • Configuring Backup Jobs

Walks through scheduling, retention policies, and backup target configuration. Produces a working backup job protecting at least one VM workload.

Lesson 4 • Understanding VM Snapshots

Explains snapshot mechanics, delta disk chains, and memory state capture. Clarifies common misconceptions about snapshots as a backup substitute.

Lesson 1 • Disk and Network Performance Tuning

Tunes virtual disk controllers, adapter types, and network offload settings. Addresses I/O-intensive and network-heavy workload performance requirements.

Lesson 2 • Using Built-In Monitoring Tools

Demonstrates hypervisor-native performance charts, dashboards, and alerts. Enables students to detect issues without requiring third-party tooling.

Lesson 3 • CPU and Memory Optimisation

Applies vCPU right-sizing, NUMA awareness, and memory reservation techniques. Resolves the most common VM performance complaints in production environments.

Lesson 4 • Performance Monitoring Fundamentals

Introduces key CPU, memory, disk, and network metrics for VMs and hosts. Establishes the measurement baseline required for all tuning activities.

Lesson 1 • Live Migration Without Downtime

Explains vMotion-style live migration prerequisites and execution steps. Enables zero-downtime host maintenance and workload balancing.

Lesson 2 • Distributed Resource Scheduling

Configures automated load balancing across cluster hosts using DRS policies. Reduces manual intervention and improves overall cluster resource utilisation.

Lesson 3 • Fault Tolerance and Continuous Availability

Implements synchronous VM mirroring for zero-RPO, zero-RTO protection. Addresses workloads where even brief HA restart windows are unacceptable.

Lesson 4 • High Availability Concepts

Defines HA, failover clusters, and heartbeat mechanisms in virtualised environments. Provides the conceptual framework for all HA configuration tasks that follow.