VMware vSphere Foundation: Build, Manage, and Operate

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

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

• Define the key features, use cases and, capabilities of vSphere Foundation.
• Navigating the VCF Operations User Interface.
• Describe the licensing options and manage licenses for vSphere Foundation.
• Describe the installation and configuration of ESX.
• Create virtual networks using vSphere standard switches and distributed switches.
• Create and configure datastores using storage technologies supported by vSphere.
• Use the vSphere Client to create virtual machines, templates, clones, and snapshots.
• Create content libraries for managing templates and deploying virtual machines.
• Manage virtual machine resource allocation.
• Migrate virtual machines with VMware vSphere vMotion and VMware vSphere Storage vMotion.
• Create and configure a vSphere cluster that is enabled with VMware vSphere High Availability and VMware vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler.
• Analyzing the Placement of VM Objects and Components in the vSAN Cluster.
• Creating Custom Views and Policies in VCF Operations.
• Describe vSphere Kubernetes, vSphere Supervisor Service.
• Deploy and configure vSphere Foundation.
• Deploy additional vSphere Foundation components such as VCF Operations Collector, VCF Operations for Logs, and VCF Operations for Orchestrator.
• Manage the life cycle of VCF Operations and vSphere components.

1. Course Introduction

• Introduction and course logistics.
• Course objectives.

2. VMware vSphere Foundation Overview and Architecture

• Define the vSphere Foundation key features.
• Explain vSphere Foundation use cases.
• Explain the architecture of vSphere Foundation.
• Explore the components of vSphere Foundation.
• Introduction to VCF Operations.
• List the steps to navigate the VCF Operations UI and vSphere UI.

3. License Management

• Describe the process for managing and assigning licenses.
• Enable VCF Operations integration for vCenter.
• Explain license usage by product.

4. vSphere Foundation Compute 

• Explain basic virtualization concepts.
• Describe how vSphere fits in the software-defined data center.
• Describe vSphere architecture and use cases.
• Recognize the user interfaces for accessing vSphere.
• Install and configure ESXi host.
• Create and organize vCenter inventory objects

5. vSphere Foundation Networking 

• Create and configure standard switch.
• Create and configure distributed switch.
• Differentiate between standard and distributed switches.
• Explain how to set networking policies.

6. vSphere Foundation Storage 

• Recognize vSphere storage technologies.
• Identify the 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.
• Manage a virtual machine from the vSphere client.
• Manage virtual machine resources.
• List the steps to deploy virtual machines.
• Clone VMs and create customization specifications for guest operating systems.
• Create local, published, and subscribed content libraries.

8. Virtual Machine Management

• Migrate VMs using vSphere vMotion and Storage vMotion.
• Perform snapshots operations.
• Specify CPU and memory shares, reservations, and limits.

9. Deploying and Configuring vSphere Clusters

• Create a vSphere cluster enabled for vSphere DRS and vSphere HA.
• Explain how vSphere DRS determines VM placement on hosts in the cluster.
• Recognize use cases for vSphere DRS settings.
• 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.

10. vSAN Management

• Identify the features of vSAN.
• Understand the key differences between vSAN OSA and vSAN ESA.
• Explain the role of the performance leg and the capacity leg in vSAN ESA.
• Examine vSAN ESA Object health states.
• Compare how RAID-0/1/5/6 space consumption.
• Identify vSAN component states.

11. vSphere Kubernetes Service Overview 

• Describe vSphere Supervisor Architecture and use cases.
• Explain vSphere Supervisor Deployment Options.
• Install vSphere Supervisor.
• Explain Supervisor Storage vSphere Zones, Networking, and Storage.
• Configuring and managing a supervisor.
• Configuring vSphere Namespaces for Hosting VKS Clusters.
• Managing vSphere Kubernetes Service Clusters.

12. VCF Operations Metrics 

• Outline the role of metrics in VCF Operations.
• Create and configure views in VCF Operations.
• Create and configure reports in VCF Operations.
• Create and configure dashboards in VCF Operations.
• Configure widget interactions.
• Describe the purpose of using alerts.
• Identify the components of an alert definition.
• Create static symptom definitions.

13. vSphere Foundation Deployment

• Prepare the infrastructure for VMware vSphere Foundation.
• Identify the information required for the Planning and Preparation Workbook.
• Explain the high-level steps to deploy vSphere Foundation.
• Describe the procedure for downloading the software using online and offline modes.
• Describe the vSphere Foundation workflow using the VCF Installer UI and JSON spec file.
• Deploy and enable VCF Operations collector, VCF Operations for Logs, and VCF Operations Orchestrator
• Deploy vCenter Server Appliance.

14. Managing the vSphere Foundation Lifecycle

• Describe features of the vCenter Update Planner.
• Run vCenter upgrade prechecks and interoperability reports.
• Recognize features of VMware vSphere Lifecycle Manager
• Validate and update ESXi hosts using vSphere Lifecycle Manager
• Use vSphere Lifecycle Manager to upgrade VMware Tools and VM hardware

• Working experience and knowledge of VMware vSphere, VMware NSX, and vSAN environments

• VMware Certified Professional - VMware vSphere Foundation Administrator (2V0-16.25)