Chapter 0 - Course Introduction

• Welcome to this course
• Course goals and objectives
• VMware vSphere 8.0 certification road map

Chapter 1 – Install, Configure ESXi 8.0

• Install and configure ESXi 8.0 using best practices
• Enable and secure command line access including the console and Secure Shell
• Using Lockdown mode to restrict management access
• Working with ESXi log files
• Working with VMkernel Paging Files on local storage, flash storage and shared storage
• Use command line tools to review and update host configurations
• Using command line tools to create/manage users and permissions

Chapter 2 – Introduction to Virtual and Physical Networking

• Create / update standard Virtual Switches
• Create, configure VMkernel NICs
• Create, configure vSwitch Port Groups
• Network bandwidth management using Traffic Shaping
• Creating and updating pNIC teams
• Enabling and configuring Cisco Discovery Protocol

Chapter 3 – Advanced Virtual Networking

• Configuring vSwitch Security policies Promiscuous Mode, Forged Transmits and MAC Address Changes
• Improve network failure detection and recovery with Beacon Probing
• Configure and use Jumbo Frames to improve network performance
• Use command line tools to create, update, configure and repair Standard vSwitches
• Use esxtop to monitor network activity
• The Five physical NIC teaming policies including the pros, cons and use cases for each one
• Troubleshoot networking configuration and performance issues

Chapter 4 – Connecting to NAS Shared Storage

• Connecting to NFS v3 storage
• Network design for high service availability
• Best practices for performance and reliability
• NFS v4.1 features, benefits and use cases

Chapter 5 – Virtual Hardware and Virtual Machines

• VM virtual hardware, options and maximums
• Creating and right-sizing Virtual Machines for CPU, memory
• Assigning, modifying and removing Virtual Hardware
• Virtual Machine best practices
• Import and export VMs in Open Virtual Machine Format
• Configure and use vDisk flash based read caching to accelerate VM read performance

Chapter 6 – Upgrade and Configure vCenter Server Appliance

• Deploy vCenter Server Appliance from the command line and configuration files
• Upgrade vCenter Appliance to vCenter Appliance 8.0
• vCenter redundancy with vCenter High Availability
• Connecting Single Sign On (SSO) to Active Directory and other identity sources
• Create and test a vCenter Appliance backup job

Chapter 7 – Virtual Machine Rapid Deployment

• How to create a Template VM
• Using Guest OS Customization for Windows, Linux and BSD UNIX
• Enabling, using Hotplug Virtual CPU and memory
• Enabling, using Hotplug disks, networking, USB devices and more
• Predictive and adaptive sizing strategies for VMs
• Troubleshooting Virtual Machine issues
• Features, benefits and use cases of NVMe virtual disks
• Use esxtop to analyze VM performance

Chapter 8 – Upgrading ESXi hosts with Lifecycle Manager

• Configure VMware Lifecycle Manager
• Create a custom ESXi 8.0 ISO image
• Attaching a Host Upgrade baseline to a host and do a host upgrade pre-check
• Upgrading an ESXi host from ESXi 7.0 to ESXi 8.0
• Upgrading VM virtual hardware and VMware Tools using Lifecycle Manager
• Using command line tools to backup and restore an ESXi host’s configuration

Chapter 9 – Connecting ESXi to Shared Block Mode Storage

• General SAN features and capabilities
• VMware APIs for Array Integration (VAAI)
• Storage network design for performance and redundancy
• Connecting to block mode shared storage
• iSCSI Hardware and Software Initiators
• iSCSI Static and Send Targets LUN discovery
• Troubleshooting storage issues
• Use esxtop to review storage controller and datastores configuration and I/O activity

Chapter 10 – Direct VM to SAN Access with Raw Device Maps

• Explain Physical and Virtual Raw Device Maps (RDMs)
• Use cases and benefits of Raw Device Maps
• How Raw Device Maps work with VM cold, VMotion and Storage VMotion migrations
• Using RDMs to implement Virtual and Virtual/Physical Windows Fail Over Clusters

Chapter 11 – VMFS – VMware's Cluster File System

• Features and benefits of VMFS 6
• Creating and managing shared Volumes
• Managing VMFS capacity with LUN spanning, LUN expansion
• Benefits, pros, cons and use cases for VMware’s three multipathing policies
• Review storage queuing, I/O aborts and other storage issues
• Diagnose and troubleshoot storage performance
• Troubleshooting VMFS issues
• VMFS best practices

Chapter 12 – Storage Load Balancing with SDRS Clusters

• Creating and using Storage Distributed Resource Scheduling clusters (SDRS)
• ter properties for capacity and I/O load balancing
• Best practices for building storage clusters

Chapter 13 – VMotion Migration, Cold Migration, Storage VMotion

• Cold Migrations to new ESXi hosts, datastores
• Hot Migrations with VMotion
• VMotion requirements and dependencies
• Troubleshooting VMotion
• Storage VMotion for hot VM disk migrations

Chapter 14 – Distributed Resource Scheduling Clusters

• Automatic CPU and Memory resource balancing clusters with VMware DRS
• DRS Cluster configuration and tuning
• Per-VM cluster policy overrides
• Features, benefits and use cases for Enhanced VMotion Compatibility (EVC)
• Configuring Per-VM EVC

Chapter 15 – VMware High Availability Clusters

• Minimize unplanned VM down time VMware High Availability clusters
• VM requirements for HA Clusters
• Storage fault recovery in High Availability clusters (All Paths Down, Permanent Device Loss)
• Monitoring VM health in HA clusters
• Admission Control policy settings for predictable pCPU/pRAM resource availability
• Identifying and troubleshooting issues in VMware HA clusters

Chapter 16 – VMware Fault Tolerance

• Eliminate VM unplanned down time with VMware Fault Tolerance
• Role of the Primary and Secondary VM in a Fault Tolerance configuration
• Explain how Fast Checkpointing keeps the Secondary VM vCPU, vRAM, vDisk up to date
• Enabling VM Fault Tolerance
• Initial VM synchronization
• Testing Fault Tolerance

Chapter 17 – Distributed vSwitch Features and Scalability

• Features and benefits of Distributed vSwitches
• Role of the DVUplink port groupRole of the DVUplink port group
• Adding ESXi hosts to dvSwitches
• Creating dvSwitch port groups
• Migrating physical NICs and VMkernel ports to dvSwitches
• dvSwitch configuration backup and restore
• Configuring custom VM MAC address generation policies
• Testing dvSwitch network health

Chapter 18 – Final Thoughts

• What to virtualize and what not to virtualize
• VM guest OS security in a virtual environment
• How to protect VMs and their data from unauthorized copying
• Useful books, white papers and online resources