Course Introduction

• Introductions and course logistics
• Course objectives
• Describe the content of this course
• Gain a complete picture of the VMware certification system
• Familiarize yourself with the benefits of the VMware Education Learning Zone
• Identify additional resources

Introduction to vSphere and the Software-Defined Data Center

• Describe how vSphere fits into the software-defined data center and the cloud infrastructure
• Explain how vSphere interacts with CPUs, memory, networks, and storage
• Use vSphere Client to access and manage your vCenter Server system and ESXi host
• Compare virtual machine hardware version 14 to other versions
• Identify the virtual network adapters, and describe the enhanced VMXNET3
• Compare the types of virtual disk provisioning
• Install and configure ESXi host settings
• Identify the advantages of ESXi Quick Boot

Creating Virtual Machines

• Create, provision, and remove a virtual machine
• Explain the importance of VMware Tools™
• Describe how to import a virtual appliance OVF template

vCenter Server

• Describe the vCenter Server architecture
• Discuss how ESXi hosts communicate with vCenter Server
• Access and configure vCenter Server Appliance
• Use vSphere Client to manage the vCenter Server inventory
• Add data center, organizational objects, and hosts to vCenter Server
• Create custom inventory tags
• Describe the rules for applying permissions
• Create a custom role in vCenter Server
• Create a vCenter Server Appliance backup schedule
• Restore vCenter Server Appliance from a backup
• Monitor vCenter Server Appliance

Configuring and Managing Virtual Networks

• Describe, create, and manage standard switches
• Configure virtual switch security, traffic-shaping and load-balancing policies
• Compare vSphere distributed switches and standard switches
• Describe the virtual switch connection types
• Describe the new TCP/IP stack architecture
• Use VLANs with standard switches

Configuring and Managing Virtual Storage

• Identify storage protocols and storage device types
• Discuss ESXi hosts using iSCSI, NFS, and Fibre Channel storage
• Create and manage VMware vSphere® VMFS and NFS datastores
• Explain how multipathing works with iSCSI, NFS, and Fibre Channel storage
• Identify the advantages of VMware vSAN™

Virtual Machine Management

• Use templates and cloning to deploy new virtual machines
• Modify and manage virtual machines
• Create an instant clone of a virtual machine
• Identify the types of content libraries and how to deploy and use them
• Add a hot-pluggable device
• Dynamically increase the size of a virtual disk
• Use customization specification files to customize a new virtual machine
• Perform vSphere vMotion and vSphere Storage vMotion migrations
• Create and manage virtual machine snapshots

Resource Management and Monitoring

• Discuss CPU and memory concepts in a virtualized environment
• Describe what overcommitment of a resource means
• Identify additional technologies that improve memory usage
• Configure and manage resource pools
• Describe methods for optimizing CPU and memory usage
• Use various tools to monitor resource usage
• Create and use alarms to report certain conditions or events

vSphere HA, vSphere Fault Tolerance, and Protecting Data

• Explain the vSphere HA architecture
• Configure and manage a vSphere HA cluster
• Use vSphere HA advanced parameters
• Enforce infrastructural or intra-app dependencies during failover
• Describe vSphere HA heartbeat networks and datastore heartbeats
• Examine the features and functions of vSphere Fault Tolerance
• Enable vSphere Fault Tolerance on virtual machines
• Support vSphere Fault Tolerance interoperability with vSAN
• Examine enhanced consolidation of vSphere Fault Tolerance virtual machines
• Examine the features and functions of vSphere Replication

vSphere DRS

• Describe the functions of a vSphere DRS cluster
• Create a vSphere DRS cluster
• View information about a vSphere DRS cluster
• Configure virtual machine affinity, DRS groups, and VM-host affinity rules
• Remove a host from a vSphere DRS cluster

Network Scalability

• Configure and manage vSphere distributed switches
• Explain distributed features such as port mirroring, LACP, QoS tagging, and NetFlow
• Configuring port mirroring on a distributed switch

vSphere Update Manager and Host Maintenance

• Describe the architecture, components, and capabilities of vSphere Update Manager
• Use vSphere Update Manager to manage the patching of ESXi, virtual machines, and vApps
• Examine the features and functions of vSphere Update Manager EAM integration
• Integrate vSphere Update Manager with vSphere DRS
• Describe and use host profiles

Storage Scalability

• Explain VMware vSphere® Storage APIs – Array Integration, VMware vSphere® API for Storage Awareness™, and vSphere APIs for I/O Filtering
• Configure and assign virtual machine storage policies
• Configure vSphere Storage DRS and Storage I/O Control

Securing Virtual Machines

• Set up encryption in your vSphere environment
• Encrypt virtual machines
• Encrypt core dumps
• Enable encrypted vSphere vMotion
• Describe support for virtual machine security features, such as UEFI secure boot, vTPM, and virtualization-based security