Clear and Simple VMware vSphere 6.5 VCP-DCV (VCP 2019)

Understand how network traffic travels from the operating system of a VM and gets virtualized. Explain the role of the ESXi hypervisor in network virtualization.

Describe the vSphere Standard Switch and it's major components, including VMNICs, VM Port Groups and VMkernel ports.

Understand the architecture of the vSphere 6.5 Distributed Switch. Differentiate the vSphere Distributed Switch from the vSphere Standard Switch.

Describe key vSphere 6.5 Distributed Switch features, including CDP and LLDP, Filtering, Tagging, Network Health Check, NetFlow, and Port Mirroring.

Learn how to create a vSphere 6.5 Distributed Switch, choose the correct version, and assign hosts to the vSphere Distributed Switch. Manage the physical VMNICs of each ESXi host.

Configure Port Binding, Port Allocation, switch Security Policies, VLANs and Trunks, NIC Teaming and Load Balancing, and failover settings on a vSphere 6.5 Distributed Switch.

Learn how to move groups of VMs from an existing vSphere Standard Switch Port Group to a vSphere 6.5 Distributed Switch Port Group.

An in-depth look at how to configure average bandwidth, peak bandwidth, and burst size, and the impact of these settings.

Understand the basic elements of Network and Storage IO Control in vSphere 6.5, and how they used shares, limits, and reservations to control bandwidth contention.

Learn how to configure Network IO Control in vSphere 6.7 to prioritize traffic on the physical uplinks of the ESXi host. Understand when you should use shares, limits, and reservations. Learn how to apply controls on different system classes of traffic.

Understand Private VLANs and the purpose of Isolated, Community, and Promiscuous Secondary VLANs. Learn how traffic is controlled by creating Secondary VLANs in vSphere 6.5.

Set up a Primary VLAN on a vSphere 6.5 Distributed Switch, and then configure a Promiscuous, Community, and Isolated VLAN. Understand how traffic is segmented based on the configuration options chosen.

Learn how to configure multiple TCP/IP stacks for different types of system traffic in an ESXi 6.5 host.

Learn how to create different types of Port Mirroring sessions so that you can monitor traffic within a vSphere 6.5 virtual switch for security purposes.

Configure a vSphere 6.5 Distributed Switch to send traffic summaries, called Network Flows, to a centralized NetFlow collector. This data can then be used to perform historical analysis of traffic details.

Manage Identity Sources, SSO policies, and SSO users. Configure default domain.

Manage user and groups, permissions, and roles. Configure SSO Identity Sources. Define the appropriate set of privileges for common tasks in vCenter Server. Understand default system/sample roles. Integrate vCenter Server with other VMware products.

Enable VM encryption and secure boot. Control VMware Tools installation and VM Data Access.

Manage the ESXi firewall. Join a host to a domain. Enable Lockdown mode. Enable and disable SSH, DCUI, SSH, and other services.

Understand how strorage commands (SCSI) travel from the operating system of a VM and get virtualized. Explain the role of the hypervisor in storage virtualization.

Compare and contrast VMFS and NFS datastores. Identify common storage solutions (FC, FCoE, iSCSI, Direct Attach Storage) that are used to create VMFS datastores. Understand how LUNs are discovered by ESXi and formatted with VMFS.

Understand the differences between NFS 3 and NFS 4.1, and how these changes impact NFS datastores for vSphere. Learn how NFS 4.1 can secure storage traffic more effectively than NFS 3.

Learn how to create an NFS datastore using the vSphere Web Client. Configure sharing settings on an NFS server. Mount an NFS share on a group of ESXi hosts.

Understand critical iSCSI concepts including the network topology and key components of an iSCSI SAN. Learn what LUNs are, and how they are presented to ESXi hosts over the iSCSI network.

Learn how you can use a normal Ethernet connection and a VMkernel port to connect an ESXi host to an iSCSI Storage Array.

Create a Vmkernel port for iSCSI traffic and a software storage adapter. Connect to an iSCSI Storage Array, detect LUNs, and format them with VMFS so that they can be used to store VM files.

Create a new datastore on an iSCSI LUN. Format it with VMFS6. Configure datastore size and block size on the LUN. Learn how datastores are identically presented to all connected hosts. Learn how to unmount and delete datastores.

Learn how you can use a dedicated hardware iSCSI connector and a VMkernel port to connect an ESXi host to an iSCSI Storage Array.

Learn how you can use a dedicated hardware iSCSI connector to connect an ESXi host to an iSCSI Storage Array, even without configuring a VMkernel port.

Verify ESXi host storage configuration, including local and shared storage. View storage adapters, storage naming conventions, target creation, static discovery, and create an iSCSI LUN in windows.

Learn how you can create a Datastore cluster to load balance VMs across multiple datastores for the purposes of load balancing. Reduce storage contention and ensure that datastores do not run out of space unexpectedly.

Understand how vSAN can be used to leverage local storage devices to create a shared datastore. Learn key concepts such as vSAN Clusters, Disk Groups, Cache and Capacity tiers, and Hybrid vs. All-Flash architectures.

Learn key concepts about the vSAN network and how it is used to move storage traffic through the vSAN cluster. Understand how VMs are broken down into groups of objects, such as VMDKs, VM Home Namespace, and others.

Learn how to configure vSAN on a cluster of ESXi hosts from beginning to end, including creating the network, disk groups, and VMkernel ports. Learn how to set up vSAN features like encryption and deduplication, RAID 5/6 erasure coding, and more.

Understand Virtual Volumes datastores, and how they differ from a traditional VMFS datastore by creating indivual volumes for each VM on the storage array. Learn how operations like snapshots and cloning can be made more efficient by using VVOLs.

Understand how the ESXi host uses multiple physical connections to load balance and tolerate failures. Learn terms including NMP, SATP, MPP, and how they impact the overall storage performance and availability.

Learn how to configure Storage IO Control (SIOC) to prioritize storage traffic. Configure shares, limits, and reservations.

Learn about VMFS metadata errors and how you can use the VMware On-disk Metadata analyzer to detect and resolve these errors.

Learn how you can use Update Manager 6.5 to perform patches, upgrades, and install new extensions. Understand concepts including baseline types, attaching objects, scanning, and remediation. Understand how Update Manager and DRS work together.

Perform a complete configuration of Update Manager 6.5 with the vCenter Server Appliance. Configure download settings and notification checks. Modify remediation and rollback settings. Configure DRS, HA, and other cluster settings during Update Manager remediation.

Attach a baseline to a group of ESXi 6.5 hosts. Scan the hosts, find missing updates, and apply the changes through remediation. Reboot and place hosts in maintenance mode as required.

Learn to install VMware Tools on a vSphere 6.5 VM. Configure automatic updates of VMware tools for VMs. Understand features that are possible when VMware Tools is installed.

Update VMware Tools on a single vSohere 6.5 VM. Then learn how to perform a mass-upgrade of VMware Tools using Update Manager.

Update Virtual Hardware on a single vSphere 6.5 VM. Then learn how to perform a mass-upgrade of Virtual Hardware using Update Manager.

Learn about the overall ESXi upgrade process, and how to perform upgrades using the GUI, Scripted Upgrades, using ESXCLI commands, using Auto Deploy, and using Update Manager. Understand the proper sequence in which to upgrade VMware solutions.

Upgrade an ESXi host for 6.5 using the DCUI. Configure the necessary BIOS settings to boot from the installation media. Upgrade the existing installation without overwriting VMFS datastores.

Upgrade a group of ESXi hosts to 6.5 using Update Manager. Import an updated ESXi image into Update Manager. Apply an upgrade baseline, then scan and remediate the hosts.

Learn how to create a Template that can serve as an image that you can use to create many identical copies of a VM. Use Customization Specifications to perform SysPrep and scrub out unique settings from cloned VMs.

Learn how to create local and subscribed Content Libraries, and how to publish a Content Library externally. Import Templates, ISO Images, and other key files into a Content Library.

Auto Deploy can be used to install an image on a Bare-metal ESXi host as it boots using DHCP and PXE servers. Once the host is imaged and successfully booted, you will see how to use Host Profiles to apply a standardized configuration.

Learn how to use Host Profiles to create a standard ESXi configuration based on a reference host, and then apply that standard configuration to new or existing ESXi hosts and clusters.

Understand the VM configuration settings that are contained within the VMX file, and how to edit those settings using a text editor.

Create a Virtual Machine (VM) from scratch using the vSphere Web Client. Configure resource allocations, hardware settings, and install a Guest Operating System.

Use Advanced Settings under VM Options on a VM to configure the parameters of a VM. Change an advanced parameter and verify the results.

Download and install vCenter Converter in standalone mode, and use it to convert physical machines or VMware Workstation image to vSphere VMs.

Use the HTML5 vsphere Client to view and adjust the CPU and Memory resource settings, including CPU count, memory amount, shares, limits and reservations. Understand the limits of reservations, and why shares are typically preferable. Modify CPU and Memory hot-plug. Use basic and advanced charts to analyze the result of your configurations.

Create container objects such as Resource Pools and vApps to control resource settings across a large group of VMs. Learn about basic Resource Pool design, and some of the common pitfalls. Use vApps to control startup and shutdown order of VMs.

Learn how to create a Resource Pool within a DRS Cluster of ESXi 6.5 hosts, or on a standalone host. Set shares, limits, and reservations. Understand how many shares each pool gets, and the end result that actually impacts the VMs.

Learn how Expandable Reservations can be used to allow VMs to power on, even if resource reservations would normally prevent them from doing so. Understand Admission Control and it's impact on Resource Pools.

Learn how to create a vApp and add VMs that are part of a Multi-tier Application. Configure resource settings and control startup and shutdown order for groups of VMs.

Understand new features of DRS in vSphere 6.5. Learn how Predictive DRS leverages vRealize Operations Manager to prevent problems before they start. Describe Dynamic Thresholds, and how they can be used to learn normal behavior patterns for a cluster. Learn about additional enhancements, such as Network Aware DRS.

Learn how to enable Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) on a cluster of ESXi hosts in fully automated, partially automated, and manual modes. Modify migration thresholds, VM overrides, and equalized VM distribution across hosts.

Configure Affinity and Anti-affinity rules, to either keep VMs together on the same host, or separated on different hosts. Create VM-Host rules to control VM placement on a larger scale. View and apply DRS recommendations.

Use DRS to automatically migrate VMs off of ESXi hosts prior to performing planned maintenance. Push out new software with Update Manager that requires hosts to enter Maintenance Mode, and validate DRS performance and zero-impact maintenance.

Create a new DRS Cluster and configure monitoring options. Understand the underlying requirement for vMotion compatibility. View triggered alarms and issues on a cluster. View and modify performance charts.

Learn how to access the ESXi shell using SSH, and restart hostd and vpxa. Use the services.sh restart command to restart services on a host. Use the DCUi to enable the ESXi shell.

Use the HTLM5 client to access vCenter and modify the monitoring settings and change the vCenter logging level. Export system logs and gather performance data.

Learn how to generate a support bundle. Use the vm-support command at the ESXi host shell. Download logs from a host using WinSCP.

Learn the basic concepts of vSphere Data Protection and how to create a backup job and establish a retention policy. Understand application aware and file level backup capabilities.

Learn how to configure a host cluster for High Availability. Configure settings including host isolation response, Admission Control policies and their impact, and Heartbeat Datastores.

Learn how High Availability and Virtual Machine Component Protection can be used to protect VMs and host from storage connectivity failures.