This intensive, extended-hours course takes you from introductory to advanced VMware vSphere® management skills.
Building on the installation and configuration content from our best-selling course, you will also develop advanced skills needed to manage and maintain a highly available and scalable virtual infrastructure.
Through a mix of lecture and hands-on labs, you will install, configure, and optimize vSphere 6.5.
You will explore the features that build a foundation for a truly scalable infrastructure, and discuss when and where these features have the greatest effect.
This course prepares you to administer a vSphere infrastructure for an organization of any size using vSphere 6.5, which includes VMware ESXi™ 6.5 and VMware vCenter Server® 6.5.

By the end of the course, you should be able to meet the following objectives:
• Describe the software-defined data center
• Deploy an ESXi host and create virtual machines
• Describe the vCenter Server architecture
• Deploy VMware vCenter® Server Appliance™
• Back up and restore vCenter Server
• Deploy vCenter Server Appliance to be highly available
• Use vCenter Server to manage an ESXi host
• Configure and manage the vSphere infrastructure with VMware vSphere® Client™ and VMware vSphere® Web Client
• Configure virtual networks with vSphere standard switches
• Use vSphere distributed switches to improve network scalability
• Use vCenter Server to manage various types of storage
• Manage virtual machines, templates, clones, and snapshots
• Perform basic troubleshooting of ESXi hosts, virtual machines, and vCenter Server
• Create a vApp
• Describe and use the content library
• Migrate virtual machines with VMware vSphere® vMotion®
• Use VMware vSphere® Storage vMotion® to migrate virtual machine storage
• Monitor resource usage and manage resource pools
• Manage VMware vSphere® High Availability and VMware vSphere® Fault Tolerance
• Use VMware vSphere® Replication™ and VMware vSphere® Data Protection™ to replicate virtual machines and perform data recovery
• Use VMware vSphere® Distributed Resource Scheduler™ clusters to improve host scalability
• Use VMware vSphere® Update Manager™ to apply patches and perform upgrades
• Configure and manage ESXi networking and storage for a large and sophisticated enterprise
• Configure and use virtual machine storage policies
• Configure VMware vSphere® Storage I/O Control
• Configure VMware vSphere® Storage DRS™
• Encrypt virtual machines for additional security

• System administrators
• System engineers

This course requires the following prerequisites:
• System administration experience on Microsoft Windows or Linux operating systems

 Module 1: 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

Module 2: Introduction to vSphere and the Software-Defined Data Center
• Describe the topology of a physical data center
• Explain the vSphere virtual infrastructure
• Define the files and components of virtual machines
• Describe the benefits of using virtual machines
• Explain the similarities and differences between physical architectures and virtual architectures
• Define the purpose of ESXi
• Define the purpose of vCenter Server
• Explain the software-defined data center
• Describe private, public, and hybrid clouds

Module 3:  Creating Virtual Machines
• Introduce virtual machines, virtual machine hardware, and virtual machine files
• Identify the files that make up a virtual machine
• Discuss the latest virtual machine hardware and its features
• Describe virtual machine CPU, memory, disk, and network resource usage
• Explain the importance of VMware Tools™
• Discuss PCI pass-through, Direct I/O, remote direct memory access, and NVMe
• Deploy and configure virtual machines and templates
• Identify the virtual machine disk format

 Module 4: vCenter Server
• Introduce the vCenter Server architecture
• Deploy and configure vCenter Server Appliance
• Use vSphere Web Client
• Backup and restore vCenter Server
• Examine vCenter Server permissions and roles
• Explain the vSphere HA architectures and features
• Examine the new vSphere authentication proxy
• Manage vCenter Server inventory objects and licenses
• Access and navigate the new vSphere clients

Module 5: Configuring and Managing Virtual Networks
• Describe, create, and manage standard switches
• Configure virtual switch security and load-balancing policies
• Contrast and 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

Module 6: Configuring and Managing Virtual Storage
• Introduce 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
• Describe the new features of VMFS 6.5
• Introduce VMware vSAN™
• Describe guest file encryption

Module7: 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
• Use customization specification files to customize a new virtual machine
• Perform vSphere vMotion and vSphere Storage vMotion migrations
• Create and manage virtual machine snapshots
• Create, clone, and export vApps
• Introduce the types of content libraries and how to deploy and use them

 Module 8: Resource Management and Monitoring
• Introduce virtual CPU and memory concepts
• Explain virtual memory reclamation techniques
• Describe virtual machine over commitment and resource competition
• 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
• Describe and deploy resource pools
• Set reservations, limits, and shares
• Describe expandable reservations
• Schedule changes to resource settings
• Create, clone, and export vApps
• Use vCenter Server performance charts and esxtop to analyze vSphere performance

Module 9: 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
• Define cluster wide restart ordering capabilities
• Enforce infrastructural or intra-app dependencies during failover
• Describe vSphere HA heartbeat networks and datastore heartbeats
• Introduce 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
• Introduce vSphere Replication
• Use vSphere Data Protection to back up and restore data
• Describe the high availability options for vCenter Server and VMware Platform Services Controller™
• Describe and use VMware vCenter Server® High Availability

Module 10: vSphere DRS
• Describe the functions and benefits of a vSphere DRS cluster
• Configure and manage a vSphere DRS cluster
• Work with affinity and anti-affinity rules
• Describe the new capabilities for what-if analysis and proactive vSphere DRS
• Highlight the evolution of vSphere DRS using predictive data from VMware vRealize® Operations Manager™
• Perform preemptive actions to prepare for CPU or memory changes
• Describe the 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
• Explain how Proactive DRS enhances virtual machine availability

 Module 11: VSphere Update Manager
• Describe the 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

Module 12: Network Scalability
• Configure and manage vSphere distributed switches
• Explain distributed switch features such as port mirroring, LACP, QoS tagging, and NetFlow

Module 13: Storage Scalability
• Explain VMware vSphere® Storage APIs - Array Integration and VMware vSphere® API for Storage Awareness™
• Configure and assign virtual machine storage policies
• Configure vSphere Storage DRS and vSphere Storage I/O Control

 Module 14: Network Scalability
• Configure vSphere to encrypt virtual machines, core dumps, and vSphere vMotion migrations