Objective 5.1 – Implement and Maintain Host Profiles

*NOTE: If this is the first time you have hit these objectives, I am only covering the new things in vSphere 5 and the VCAP5-DCA blueprint over and above what was already covered so well by Sean Cookston’s,Ed Grigson’s and Kendrick Coleman’s Blueprint Breaksdowns for the VCAP4.

 

Host profiles are extremely important in vSphere 5 environments and are a requirement for Auto Deploy. This is another objective I think you need to practice in your lab and do all the things listed below. If you don’t know about Host Profiles in vSphere 5 (which you should from your VCP5 studies) then there is a really good KB pdf by VMware that covers it all here. The guys from the vBrownbags have covered the whole of Objective 5 very recently here and Damian gives a great overview of it and some top tips.

Skills and Abilities

• Use Profile Editor to edit and/or disable policies
• Create sub-profiles
• Use Host Profiles to deploy vDS <- pg 24 of this guide http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vsphere-vnetwork-ds-migration-configuration-wp.pdf and covered in a use case here: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/VMW-Host-Profiles-Tech-Overview.pdf pg16 and a walk through of it in the evaluators guide(perfect step by step for lab practice) here: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vsphere-evaluators-guide.pdf on pg 88
• Use Host Profiles to deploy vStorage policies <- also covered as a use case here: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/VMW-Host-Profiles-Tech-Overview.pdf
• Manage Answer Files – covered on pg17 of the vSphere 5 Host Profiles pdf

Loads of lab practice necessary for this objective which burnt a fair amount of my time. A fair amount of it is the same but due to it now being linked to Auto Deploy I wanted to really get my head around it all and how the answer files tie in.

Gregg