1. Course Introduction

• Introductions and course logistics
• Course objectives
• Content of this course
• A complete picture of the VMware certification system
• Benefits of the VMware Education Learning Zone
• Additional resources

2. Introduction to vSphere and the Software-Defined Data Center

• Topology of a physical data center
• vSphere virtual infrastructure
• Files and components of virtual machines
• Benefits of using virtual machines
• Similarities and differences between physical architectures and virtual architectures
• Purpose of ESXi
• Purpose of vCenter Server
• Software-defined data center
• Private, public, and hybrid clouds

3. Creating Virtual Machines

• Virtual machines, virtual machine hardware, and virtual machine files
• Files that make up a virtual machine
• Latest virtual machine hardware and its features
• Virtual machine CPU, memory, disk, and network resource usage
• Importance of VMware Tools™
• PCI pass-through, Direct I/O, remote direct memory access, and NVMe
• Deploy and configure virtual machines and templates
• Virtual machine disk format

4. vCenter Server

• vCenter Server architecture
• Deploy and configure vCenter Server Appliance
• Use vSphere Web Client
• Back up and restore vCenter Server
• vCenter Server permissions and roles
• vSphere HA architectures and features
• New vSphere authentication proxy
• Manage vCenter Server inventory objects and licenses
• Access and navigate the new vSphere clients

5. Configuring and Managing Virtual Networks

• Create and manage standard switches
• Configure virtual switch security and load-balancing policies
• Contrast and compare vSphere distributed switches and standard switches
• Virtual switch connection types
• New TCP/IP stack architecture
• Use VLANs with standard switches

6. Configuring and Managing Virtual Storage

• Storage protocols and storage device types
• ESXi hosts using iSCSI, NFS, and Fibre Channel storage
• Create and manage VMFS and NFS datastores
• New features of VMFS 6.5
• vSAN
• Guest file encryption

7. Virtual Machine Management

• Use templates and cloning to deploy new virtual machines
• Modify and manage virtual machines
• Clone a virtual machine
• Upgrade virtual machine hardware to version 12
• Remove virtual machines from the vCenter Server inventory and datastore
• Customize a new virtual machine using customization specification files
• Perform vSphere vMotion and vSphere Storage vMotion migrations
• Create and manage virtual machine snapshots
• Create, clone, and export vApps
• Types of content libraries and how to deploy and use them

8. Resource Management and Monitoring

• Virtual CPU and memory concepts
• Virtual memory reclamation techniques
• Virtual machine over commitment and resource competition
• Configure and manage resource pools
• Methods for optimizing CPU and memory usage
• Use various tools to monitor resource usage
• Create and use alarms to report certain conditions or events
• Deploy resource pools
• Set reservations, limits, and shares
• Expandable reservations
• Schedule changes to resource settings
• Create, clone, and export vApps
• Use vCenter Server performance charts and esxtop to analyze vSphere performance

9. vSphere HA, vSphere Fault Tolerance, and Protecting Data

• vSphere HA architecture
• Configure and manage a vSphere HA cluster
• Use vSphere HA advanced parameters
• Clusterwide restart ordering capabilities
• Enforce infrastructural or intra-app dependencies during failover
• vSphere HA heartbeat networks and datastore heartbeats
• vSphere Fault Tolerance
• Enable vSphere Fault Tolerance on virtual machines
• Support vSphere Fault Tolerance interoperability with vSAN
• Enhanced consolidation of vSphere Fault Tolerance virtual machines
• vSphere Replication
• Use vSphere Data Protection to back up and restore data

10. vSphere DRS

• Functions and benefits of a vSphere DRS cluster
• Configure and manage a vSphere DRS cluster
• Work with affinity and anti-affinity rules
• New capabilities for what-if analysis and proactive vSphere DRS
• Evolution of vSphere DRS using predictive data from VMware vRealize Operations Manager
• Perform preemptive actions to prepare for CPU or memory changes
• vCenter Server embedded vSphere Update Manager, VMware vSphere ESXi Image Builder CLI and VMware vSphere Auto Deploy capabilities
• Use vSphere HA and vSphere DRS together for business continuity

11. vSphere Update Manager

• New vSphere Update Manager architecture, components, and capabilities
• Use vSphere Update Manager to manage ESXi, virtual machine, and vApp patching
• Install vSphere Update Manager and the vSphere Update Manager plug-in
• Create patch baselines
• Use host profiles to manage host configuration compliance
• Scan and remediate hosts