This five-day course, What's New in VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) v9.1, provides an in-depth overview of the latest features and enhancements within the platform. The curriculum is designed to teach the skills required to effectively architect and  implement VCF v9.1. It covers critical updates across infrastructure preparation, compute, storage, networking, automation, and operations. The course includes a mix of lectures and hands-on lab exercises to ensure practical understanding.

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

● Recognize key features and enhancements introduced in VCF 9.1.
● Develop skills to implement VCF environments.
● Operate the VCF platform and evaluate critical deployment strategies.
● Explain compute enhancements such as memory tiering, CPU optimization, and vCenter UI usability improvements.
● Outline new storage capabilities including vSAN ESA Auto-RAID and stretched cluster enhancements.
● Understand networking updates focused on VPC consumption from vCenter and enhancements in transit gateway functionality.
● Deploy workload domains, manage VCF Management services, and lifecycle enhancements.
● Plan environment updates using VCF upgrade pathways.
● Identify VCF Automation improvements for scalability, multi-supervisor regions, and blueprints.
● Describe VKS enhancements related to Supervisor deployment topologies and network customization.
● Leverage VCF Operations for VCF Health, fleet management, real-time metrics, and Log management.

● System Administrators, Solution Engineers, Consultants, Architects, and Support Personnel

● Working experience and knowledge of VCF, VMware vSphere, VMware NSX, and vSAN environments

1. Course Introduction

● Introduction and course logistics.
● Course objectives.

2. VCF Installer Enhancements

● Describe VCF components.
● Outline VCF deployment and imports.
● Explain custom and dual-stack networks.
● Identify management services and credentials.

3. VCF Operations Navigation and Licensing

● List key VCF Operations features.
● Perform VCF 9.1 console navigation.
● Compare VCF 9.0 and VCF 9.1 licensing.
● Evaluate connected and air-gapped options.

4. VCF Compute

● Identify key features of vCenter Enhancements.
● List the ESX Enhancements.
● Explain vSphere Resource Enhancements.
● Describe the key  vSphere Network Enhancements.
● Recognize virtual machines enhancements
● Identify vSphere Certificate Improvements.
● List the latest API Enhancements

5. VCF Storage

● Outline vSAN ESA Auto-RAID features 
● Explain vSAN stretched cluster updates 
● Identify disaggregated vSAN storage capabilities 
● Describe vSAN protection and recovery 
● Explain iSCSI and NFS enhancements

6. VCF Networking

● Explain VPC consumption from vCenter 
● Describe Distributed Transit Gateway enhancements 
● Understand Centralized Transit Gateway connectivity 
● Evaluate Centralized Transit Gateway VPNs 

7. VCF Fleet and Lifecycle Enhancements

● List workload domain deployment steps.
● Explain out-of-band validation enhancements.
● Describe VCF management service components.
● Explain service high availability mechanisms.
● Outline identity and access enhancements.
● View cluster-level configuration drifts.

8. VCF Upgrade Pathways 

● Review VCF 9.1 upgrade pathways 
● Plan vSphere to VCF upgrades 
● Upgrade existing VCF platform environments
● Explain VVF to VCF upgrades 

9. VCF Automation

● Describe VCF Automation scalability enhancements
● Describe organization management enhancements 
● Configure multi-supervisor region quota settings 
● Explain networking and blueprint enhancements 
● Manage container and VKS services 
● Outline Cloud Director migration process 

10. VMware vSphere Kubernetes Service

● Explain vSphere Supervisor enhanced architecture with multi-cluster zones
● Explain VM Service enhancements
● Outline the steps for adding multiple networks on VKS cluster
● Explain VKS cluster node customization using AppArmor and TuneD profiles
● Explain how to build RHEL-9 Vkr images using VCF CLI

11.   VCF Operations

● Explain the installer enhancements 
● Explain the UI enhancements 
● Understand day-two operations and management 
● Outline VCF health and findings enhancements
● Outline Real-Time metrics and troubleshooting workbench enhancements
● Describe Log Management architecture 
● Outline capacity, cost, and price enhancements
● Explain Automated VKS Cluster Monitoring