In this five-day course, you focus on installing, configuring, and managing on-premises VMware Cloud Director™ 10.4. You will learn about workload provisioning, the creation of organizations, virtual data centers (VDCs), catalog services that include predefined virtual machines, and on-demand VMware NSX-T™ Data Center networks. You will learn about different networks that a system administrator and an organization administrator can configure and use with virtual machines (VMs).

This course also covers the UI enhancements of VMware Cloud Director, the new licensing model and UI enhancements with NSX Advanced Load Balancer™, and the L2 and L3 VPN enhancements in VMware Cloud Director. You will learn about defining segment profile templates to organization VDC networks and vApp networks and configuring DHCP, static routes, and no distributed routing in VMware Cloud Director. This course explains how to integrate and implement vGPU in VMware Cloud Director as well as how to use API access tokens and service accounts for programmatic access to VMware Cloud Director.

By the end of the course, you should be able to meet the following objectives:

• Deploy VMware Cloud Director
• Manage VMware Cloud Director to meet the service provider needs
• Create and manage VMware Cloud Director organizations and vApps to fulfill business needs
• Create and manage VMware Cloud Director catalogs
• Configure networking for organizations and vApps with the help of NSX-T Data Center
• Manage resources from the VMWare Cloud Director console
• Enable VM and Named Disk
• Create VM sizing and placement policies
• Create vApps and perform VM operations and actions
• Manage vGPU resources with VMware Cloud Director
• Discuss how VMware Cloud Director can be integrated with other solutions

Cloud architects, systems engineers, data center administrators, and cloud administrators with experience in managed services or managing a service provider environment

This course requires completion of the following course and equivalent knowledge:

• VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage [V8] or equivalent knowledge

The following experience is helpful:

• Working at the Linux command line
• Substantial knowledge of general networking concepts

1 Course Introduction

• Introductions and course logistics
• Course objectives

2 Software-Defined Data Center and VMware Validated Solution

• Define software-defined data center (SDDC)
• Discuss VMware offerings for cloud-based services
• Discuss the deployment options for VMware Cloud Director
• Discuss VMware Validated Solution
• Recognize the design considerations when creating a cloud environment on the SDDC using VMware Cloud Foundation™

3 VMware Cloud Director Deployment and Configuration

• Discuss the deployment options for VMware Cloud Director
• Explain the two-stage deployment of VMware Cloud Director cells
• Discuss failover mechanisms (automatic and manual) with VMware Cloud Director cells
• Define the switchover, promote, and fencing options of the VMware Cloud Director appliance
• Understand the VMware Cloud Director appliance enhancements

4 VMware Cloud Director Provider Configuration

• Describe how the compute resources are provided to VMware Cloud Director
• Describe how storage is provided to VMware Cloud Director
• Configure and manage storage for Virtual DataCenters (VDCs)
• Discuss network pools, external networks, and Tier0 gateways
• Showcase VMware Cloud Director integration with VMware vCenter Server® and NSX-T Data Center
• Describe VMware Cloud Director organizations
• Understand organization policies
• Explain how to access an organization using various portals
• Understand organization VDC
• Discuss Linked Clone and Fast Provisioning
• Understand the use cases of Allocation Models

5 VMware Cloud Director User, Roles, and Quota Management

• Discuss user bundle 
• Describe role-based access
• Explain custom roles and rights
• Describe and configure LDAP integration with Active Directory
• Discuss OIDC authentication methods
• Describe SAML identity provider
• Discuss API Access Token and Service Accounts
• Explain Quota Management and its use cases

6 VMware Cloud Director Virtual Machines and vApps 

• Understand standalone VMs
• Discuss the VM managing operations
• Explain VM properties
• Discuss deployment methods of vApps
• Discuss the vApp managing operations
• Discuss the vApp lease policies
• Understand the vApps and VM actions
• Explain vApp and VM badges

7 VMware Cloud Director Content Libraries

• Explain the purpose of catalogs and how to create a catalog organization
• Define catalog management and sharing catalogs inside and between organizations
• Explain media in VMware Cloud Director and its usage
• Discuss vApp templates
• Understand vApp template operations
• Describe the purpose and usage of Open Virtualization Format (OVF) 
• Discuss organization VDC templates
• Discuss Fast Cross vCenter Server vApp Instantiation Utilizing Shared Storage

8 VMware Cloud Director Networking

• Discuss organization VDC networks
• List the types of organization VDC networks
• Describe the edge gateway services
• Explore the services offered by the edge gateway
• Discuss the sub-allocation IP pool and its use cases
• Discuss DHCP, NAT, load balancer, and firewall services on the edge gateway
• Discuss SNAT, DNAT, NO SNAT, and NO DNAT use cases
• Explain routing and distributed firewall services 
• Discuss vApp networks
• List the various types of vApp networks

9 VMware Cloud Director Storage and Compute 

• Describe named disks and shared named disks
• Demonstrate how to attach and detach a named disk and a shared named disk
• Describe methods of sharing the named disk
• Discuss the implications of deleting VMs that have an attached named disk
• Discuss how VMware Cloud Director VMs and disks are encrypted
• Explain the storage policy capabilities
• Demonstrate how VM sizing and placement policies are published
• Discuss vCenter Server and VMware Cloud Director IOPS storage policies usage
• Discuss how to enable and use the storage IOPS limitation in VMware Cloud Director
• Describe the storage policy-supported entities
• Discuss vGPU in VMware Cloud Director

10 Additional UI Features and Integrated Solutions 

• Explain custom advisories, global search, guided tours, keyboard shortcuts, and quick search
• Demonstrate the new branding and theming experience
• Briefly discuss how VMware Cloud Director can be integrated with other solutions