Over the past few weeks, I had the pleasure of being a technical reviewer for TrainSignal's new VMware vCloud Director Organizations course. The author of this course is Jake Robinson (@jakerobinson), who is a well known vCloud Guru who works for the vCloud Partner, Bluelock. So what's this new course all about?
First off, this is NOT a vCloud Install, Manage, and Configure tutorial. This course does not take you through the setup and installation of vCloud Director, but instead focuses on what end-users of the cloud will interface. Have you ever accessed the vCloud Director portal and have been completely lost on where to start? Think about this. If you plan on creating a cloud setup for consumption, do you really want to spoon feed every single person that wants to procure cloud resources? Or train the organizational admins for different departments or in the case of SPs, every tenant? Absolutely Not.
This course will help end users and organizational admins understand the rights, controls, and power they each possess inside of vCloud. Every type of user will be different and each needs to know the functionality inside of vCloud Director. This course will lend itself to self-teaching end users how to create vApps from a catalog, publish vApps to a catalog, understand the types of networks available to them, be able to create their own vApp networks, administer the hardware on created VMs, perform their own system customizations, and much more. In fact, Jake even goes deep by showing how to use the vCloud API and PowerCLI cmdlets to script many common things in vCloud Director. I have a feeling we will see Jake come up with more automation courses for the future because these are really cool and gets you started on the ground floor.
One of the most valuable lessons in this series is Lesson 6. We've all read plenty of blogs trying to understand vCloud Director networking with diagrams. But this lesson finally puts the diagrams away and lets you see what happens when you use each type of network with use cases as well. It's a terrific lesson for all those who are still a little "cloudy" about the whole concept.
Head on over to TrainSignal to order your copy today
VMware vCloud Director Organizations - Course Outline
- Lesson 1 - Course Introduction
- Lesson 2 - Exploring Your vCloud Organization
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In this lesson, you will learn the key components of a vCloud Organization and their importance. Knowing these key components will help you when we get into more detail and best practices.
- Lesson 3 - Managing Your vCloud Organization
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In this lesson, you will learn to manage the auxiliary functions of the datacenter. The ability to manage these functions will help you secure, troubleshoot, and be more agile in your management.
- Lesson 4 - Managing Virtual Applications (vApps)
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In this lesson, you will learn the practical application of a unique VMware construct called vApps. vApps are a powerful tool in architecting your applications and virtual datacenters.
- Lesson 5 - Managing Virtual Machines
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In this lesson, you will learn how to manage your servers, otherwise known as virtual machines. Even seasoned VMware veterans will learn new tricks from this lesson.
- Lesson 6 - Networking in vCloud Director
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Networking is probably the most complicated piece of a vCloud Organization. In this lesson, we will break it down to easily understand concepts, and practical applications. After this lesson, you will be able to create and understand the robust network infrastructure within your vCloud Organization.
- Lesson 7 - The vCloud API
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The vCloud API is a powerful resource when it comes to the configuration, deployment, and management within your vCloud Organization. At the end of this lesson, you will be able to perform simple tasks using the vCloud API, and move on to develop your own applications utilizing the vCloud API.
- Lesson 8 - VMware Hybrid Cloud
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This lesson discusses Hybrid Cloud architecture, and is designed for those utilizing a mixture of private and public cloud models. At the end of this lesson, you will understand the different methods of integrating and managing a Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure, including vSphere to vCloud Organizations, and vCloud to vCloud Organizations.
- Lesson 9 - VMware vCloud Connector
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In this lesson, you will learn how to implement and utilize vCloud Connector, VMware’s hybrid cloud management tool. With vCloud Connector, you will be able to migrate entire vApps with a few clicks of the mouse, or even open a vCloud VM console right from within your vSphere Client.
- Lesson 10 - VMware vCenter Orchestrator
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In this lesson, you will learn how to utilize VMware’s Orchestration platform to create complex workflows to simplify your deployments within your vCloud Organization, as well as, its role within a hybrid cloud environment.
- Lesson 11 - VMware PowerCLI
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PowerCLI is VMware’s official snap-in for Microsoft Powershell, a powerful automation and scripting platform. In this lesson, you will learn how to manage your vCloud Organization with PowerCLI.
- Lesson 12 - Wrap Up
