1  Course Introduction
•  Introductions and course logistics
•  Course objectives

2  Introduction to vSphere and the Software-Defined Data Center
•  Explain basic virtualization concepts
•  Describe how vSphere fits into the software-defined data center and the cloud infrastructure
•  Explain how vSphere interacts with CPUs, memory, networks, and storage
•  Recognize the user interfaces for accessing the vCenter Server system and ESXi hosts
•  Describe the ESXi host architecture
•  Navigate the Direct Console User Interface (DCUI) to configure an ESXi host
•  Recognize ESXi host user account best practices
•  Install an ESXi host
•  Use VMware Host Client™ to configure ESXi host settings
•  Describe how to proactively manage your vSphere environment using VMware Skyline

3  Virtual Machines
•  Create and provision a virtual machine
•  Explain the importance of VMware Tools™
•  Install VMware Tools
•  Identify the files that make up a VM
•  Recognize the components of a VM
•  Recognize virtual devices supported by a VM
•  Describe the benefits and use cases for containers
•  Identify the parts of a container system

4  vCenter Server
•  Describe the vCenter Server architecture
•  Discuss how ESXi hosts communicate with vCenter Server
•  Deploy and configure vCenter Server Appliance
•  Use vSphere Client to manage the vCenter Server inventory
•  Add data center, organizational objects, and hosts to vCenter Server
•  Use roles and permissions to enable users to access objects in the vCenter Server inventory
•  Back up vCenter Server Appliance
•  Monitor vCenter Server tasks, events, and appliance health
•  Use VMware vCenter Server® High Availability to protect a vCenter Server Appliance

5  Configuring and Managing Virtual Networks
•  Create and manage standard switches
•  Describe the virtual switch connection types
•  Configure virtual switch security, traffic-shaping, and load-balancing policies
•  Compare vSphere distributed switches and standard switches

6  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 VMFS and NFS datastores
•  Explain how multipathing works with iSCSI, NFS, and Fibre Channel storage
•  Recognize the components of a VMware vSAN™ configuration

7  Virtual Machine Management
•  Use templates and cloning to deploy new virtual machines
•  Modify and manage virtual machines
•  Create a content library and deploy virtual machines from templates in the library
•  Use customization specification files to customize a new virtual machine
•  Perform vSphere vMotion and vSphere Storage vMotion migrations
•  Describe the Enhanced vMotion Compatibility feature
•  Create and manage virtual machine snapshots
•  Examine the features and functions of VMware vSphere® Replication™
•  Describe the benefits of VMware vSphere® Storage APIs – Data Protection

8  Resource Management and Monitoring
•  Discuss CPU and memory concepts in a virtualized environment
•  Describe what overcommitment of a resource means
•  Describe methods for optimizing CPU and memory usage
•  Use various tools to monitor resource use
•  Create and use alarms to report certain conditions or events

9  vSphere Clusters
•  Describe the functions of a vSphere DRS cluster
•  Create a vSphere DRS cluster
•  Monitor a vSphere cluster configuration
•  Describe options for making a vSphere environment highly available
•  Explain the vSphere HA architecture
•  Configure and manage a vSphere HA cluster
•  Examine the features and functions of VMware vSphere® Fault Tolerance
•  Describe the function of the vSphere® Cluster Service

10  vSphere Lifecycle Management
•  Recognize the importance of vCenter Server Update Planner
•  Describe how VMware vSphere® Lifecycle Manager™ works
•  Describe how to update ESXi hosts using baselines
•  Validate ESXi host compliance using a cluster image
•  Describe how to upgrade VMware Tools and VM hardware
•  Describe VMware vSphere® Lifecycle Manager™ and VMware vSAN™ integration

1 Course Introduction

• Introductions and course logistics

• Course objectives

2 vSphere and Virtualization Overview

• Explain basic virtualization concepts

• Describe how vSphere fits in the software-defined data center and the cloud infrastructure

• Recognize the user interfaces for accessing vSphere

• Explain how vSphere interacts with CPUs, memory, networks, storage, and GPUs

3 Installing and Configuring ESXi

• Install an ESXi host

• Recognize ESXi user account best practices

• Configure the ESXi host settings using the DCUI and VMware Host Client

4 Deploying and Configuring vCenter

• Recognize ESXi hosts communication with vCenter

• Deploy vCenter Server Appliance

• Configure vCenter settings

• Use the vSphere Client to add and manage license keys

• Create and organize vCenter inventory objects

• Recognize the rules for applying vCenter permissions

• View vCenter logs and events

5 Configuring vSphere Networking

• Configure and view standard switch configurations

• Configure and view distributed switch configurations

• Recognize the difference between standard switches and distributed switches

• Explain how to set networking policies on standard and distributed switches

6 Configuring vSphere Storage

• Recognize vSphere storage technologies

• Identify types of vSphere datastores

• Describe Fibre Channel components and addressing

• Describe iSCSI components and addressing

• Configure iSCSI storage on ESXi

• Create and manage VMFS datastores

• Configure and manage NFS datastores

7 Deploying Virtual Machines

• Create and provision VMs

• Explain the importance of VMware Tools

• Identify the files that make up a VM

• Recognize the components of a VM

• Navigate the vSphere Client and examine VM settings and options

• Modify VMs by dynamically increasing resources

• Create VM templates and deploy VMs from them

• Clone VMs

• Create customization specifications for guest operating systems

• Create local, published, and subscribed content libraries

• Deploy VMs from content libraries

• Manage multiple versions of VM templates in content libraries

8 Managing Virtual Machines

• Recognize the types of VM migrations that you can perform within a vCenter instance and across vCenter instances

• Migrate VMs using vSphere vMotion

• Describe the role of Enhanced vMotion Compatibility in migrations

• Migrate VMs using vSphere Storage vMotion

• Take a snapshot of a VM

• Manage, consolidate, and delete snapshots

• Describe CPU and memory concepts in relation to a virtualized environment

• Describe how VMs compete for resources

• Define CPU and memory shares, reservations, and limits

9 Deploying and Configuring vSphere Clusters

• Create a vSphere cluster enabled for vSphere DRS and vSphere HA

• View information about a vSphere cluster

• Explain how vSphere DRS determines VM placement on hosts in the cluster

• Recognize use cases for vSphere DRS settings

• Monitor a vSphere DRS cluster

• Describe how vSphere HA responds to various types of failures

• Identify options for configuring network redundancy in a vSphere HA cluster

• Recognize vSphere HA design considerations

• Recognize the use cases for various vSphere HA settings

• Configure a vSphere HA cluster

• Recognize when to use vSphere Fault Tolerance

10 Managing the vSphere Lifecycle

• Enable vSphere Lifecycle Manager in a vSphere cluster

• Describe features of the vCenter Update Planner

• Run vCenter upgrade prechecks and interoperability reports

• Recognize features of VMware vSphere® Lifecycle Manager™

• Distinguish between managing hosts using baselines and managing hosts using images

• Describe how to update hosts using baselines

• Describe ESXi images

• Validate ESXi host compliance against a cluster image and update ESXi hosts

• Update ESXi hosts using vSphere Lifecycle Manager

• Describe vSphere Lifecycle Manager automatic recommendations

• Use vSphere Lifecycle Manager to upgrade VMware Tools and VM hardware

Introduction

Overview of VMware PKS Features and Architecture

• Integration with Kubernetes (K8S)
• The PKS API, deployment, monitoring, and self-service features

Installing PKS Components and Tools

• Creating a centralized management VM
• Command-line tools

Configuring NSX-T Networking

• Network deployment topologies supported by PKS
• Setting up NSX-T components

Deploying with Ops Manager and BOSH

• vSphere Datastore configuration
• Defining networks to deploy PKS Management VMs

Setting up the PKS Control Plane

• Provisioning and managing K8S clusters with frontend API
• Applying the NSX-T configurations

Using K8S Cluster as an Operator

• PKS/K8S cluster deployment
• Application deployment
• Decommissioning K8S cluster

Integrating with VMWare Harbor

• Harbor configurations
• Harbor VM deployment

Maintaining and Monitoring PKS for Operators

• Logging components
• Infrastructure monitoring using vROps
• Application monitoring using Wavefront

Introduction

• VMWare Tanzu vs Openshift vs other cloud management tools
• Overview of VMWare Tanzu portfolio and features

Getting Started

• Understanding the VSphere components with Tanzu
• Setting up VSphere with Tanzu
• Configuring cluster networking

Provisioning a Cluster with Kubernetes Grid

• Configuring VMWare Harbor registry
• Integrating Harbor registry with Kubernetes Grid
• Using VMWare Harbor registry

Managing Kubernetes Clusters

• Understanding the Kubernetes cluster API
• Enabling Tanzu Kubernetes Grid service
• Deploying pods to a Tanzu Kubernetes cluster
• Integrating VMWare Tanzu Mission and Control
• Monitoring events and logs
• Backing up and restoring workloads