In my last post I covered Enhanced Troubleshooting with the New vRealize Operations 6.6 – if you want to learn how to use the latest capabilities. check it out if you missed it!
In this post, I want to talk about, what I believe is, one of the best things that VMware is doing – the VMware Hands-On-Labs (HoL). For those of you who don’t know, the VMware Hands-On-Labs are a completely free online solution for anyone in the world to gain almost immediate access to pre-built lab environments which run just about every product that VMware offers. Along with each lab comes a lab guide that walks you through, step-by-step, how to perform a series of activities to quickly and efficiently learn a wide variety of VMware solutions. To access the labs, all you need is Internet access, a web browser (which you already have if you are reading this) and an email address to fill in on the short sign-up form that’s required to gain access.
When I checked this morning and found that all the labs have been refreshed with new content. Now there are 83 labs available, by my rough count. Of those 83 labs, 16 of them cover the vRealize Suite in some shape or form. So exactly what are those labs? Below you’ll find my list of my favorite vRealize Hands-On-Labs that are available today…
#1 Cloud Planning and Optimization (HOL-1801-01-CMP)
Planning and optimizing private and public clouds is what this lab is all about. In the lab, you’ll have access to the new vROps 6.6 as well as vRealize Business for Cloud.
#2 Automated and Proactive Management (HOL-801-02-CMP)
In this lab, you’ll learn how vRealize Operations works in conjunction with vSphere to automatically balance workloads between hosts – both within and across clusters – to alleviate existing or predicted resource contention. Also learn about the vRealize Operations action functionality that allows alert-driven automated remediation of problems.
#3 Manage the SDDC (HOL-1801-03-CMP)
You should use this lab to learn how to use vRealize Operations and vRealize Log Insight to troubleshoot issues, look for performance improvements, avoid disruption, and proactively manage the Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) with integrated performance and health monitoring across compute, network, storage and applications.
#4 Advanced Topics with vRealize Operations (HOL-1801-04-CMP)
Once you’ve completed some of the beginner and intermediate labs, you can use this lab to take your vRealize Operations skills to the next level! In this lab you’ll learn how to craft your own policies, create custom dashboards and custom Views / Reports. You’ll also learn about end point operations for operating system and application monitoring, work with the vRealize Operations API for Inbound integrations, webhook shims for outboard integration, and use PowerCLI with vRealize Operations.
#5 vRealize Operations Application Monitoring – Challenge Lab (HOL-1801-05-CHG)
In the final lab that I’m recommending today, you’ll need to put on your thinking cap to save the day! Your challenge is to create a three tier application, create super metrics, modify the policy, create a dashboard and set up all resources for monitoring the application in vRealize Operations. I challenge you to complete this lab!
If you can complete all of these labs, you’re a totally awesome vRealize expert! But, if you do, don’t stop there as, like I said above, there are more than 10 vRealize labs and over 80 different labs on the VMware Hands-On-Lab platform so, keep learning!
Want to learn more about what’s new in the VMware HoL for 2017? Checkout this video:
