• 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

• 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

• Introduce the vCenter Server architecture

• Deploy and configure vCenter Server Appliance

• Use vSphere Web Client

• Back up 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

• Describe, create, and manage standard switches

• Configure virtual switch security and loadbalancing 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

• Introduce storage protocols and storage device types

• Discuss ESXi hosts using iSCSI, NFS, and Fibre Channel storage

• Create and manage VMFS and NFS datastores

• Describe the new features of VMFS 6.5

• Introduce vSAN

• Describe guest file encryption

• 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

• Customize a new virtual machine using customization specification files

• 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

• Introduce virtual CPU and memory concepts

• Explain virtual memory reclamation techniques

• Describe virtual machine overcommitment 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

• Explain the vSphere HA architecture

• Configure and manage a vSphere HA cluster

• Use vSphere HA advanced parameters

• Define clusterwide 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 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

• 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