Knowledge

• Identify firewall access rules for Update Manager

Skills and Abilities

• Install and configure Update Manager Download Service
• Configure a shared repository
• Configure smart rebooting
• Manually download updates to a repository
• Perform orchestrated vSphere upgrades
• Create and modify baseline groups
• Troubleshoot Update Manager problem areas and issues
• Generate database reports using MS Excel or MS SQL
• Upgrade vApps using Update Manager
• Utilize Update Manager PowerCLI to export baselines for testing
• Utilize the Update Manager Utility to reconfigure vUM settings
  Continue reading →

Skills and Abilities

• Use Profile Editor to edit and/or disable policies
• Create sub-profiles
• Use Host Profiles to deploy vDS
• Use Host Profiles to deploy vStorage policies
• Manage Answer Files
  Continue reading →

Knowledge

• Identify VMware FT hardware requirements
• Identify VMware FT compatibility requirements

Skills and Abilities

• Modify VM and ESXi host settings to allow for FT compatibility
• Use VMware best practices to prepare a vSphere environment for FT
• Configure FT logging
• Prepare the infrastructure for FT compliance
• Test FT failover, secondary restart, and application fault tolerance in a FT Virtual Machine

Continue reading →

Knowledge

• Identify the three admission control policies for HA
• Identify heartbeat options and dependencies
  

Skills and Abilities 

• Calculate host failure requirements
• Configure customized isolation response settings
• Configure HA redundancy
  • Management Network
  • Datastore Heartbeat
  • Network partitions
• Configure HA related alarms and monitor an HA cluster
• Create a custom slot size configuration
• Understand interactions between DRS and HA
• Analyze vSphere environment to determine appropriate HA admission control policy
• Analyze performance metrics to calculate host failure requirements
• Analyze Virtual Machine workload to determine optimum slot size
• Analyze HA cluster capacity to determine optimum cluster size
  Continue reading →

Knowledge

• Identify hot keys and fields used with resxtop/esxtop
  
• Identify fields used with vscsiStats
  

Skills and Abilities

• Configure esxtop/resxtop custom profiles
  
• Determine use cases for and apply esxtop/resxtop Interactive, Batch and Replay modes
  
• Use vscsiStats to gather storage performance data
  
• Use esxtop/resxtop to collect performance data
  
• Given esxtop/resxtop output, identify relative performance data for capacity planning purposes
  

Continue reading →

Knowledge

• Explain DRS / storage DRS affinity and anti-affinity rules
  
• Identify required hardware components to support DPM
  
• Identify EVC requirements, baselines and components
  
• Understand the DRS / storage DRS migration algorithms, the Load Imbalance Metrics, and their impact on migration recommendations
  

Skills and Abilities

• Properly configure BIOS and management settings to support DPM
  
• Test DPM to verify proper configuration
  
• Configure appropriate DPM Threshold to meet business requirements
  
• Configure EVC using appropriate baseline
  
• Change the EVC mode on an existing DRS cluster
  
• Create DRS and DPM alarms
  
• Configure applicable power management settings for ESXi hosts
  
• Properly size virtual machines and clusters for optimal DRS efficiency
  
• Properly apply virtual machine automation levels based upon application requirements
  
• Create and administer ESXi host and Datastore Clusters
  
• Administer DRS / Storage DRS
  Continue reading →

Knowledge

• Compare and contrast virtual and physical hardware resources
  
• Identify VMware memory management techniques
  
• Identify VMware CPU load balancing techniques
  
• Identify pre-requisites for Hot Add features
  

Skills and Abilities

• Tune Virtual Machine memory configurations
  
• Tune Virtual Machine networking configurations
  
• Tune Virtual Machine CPU configurations
  
• Tune Virtual Machine storage configurations
  
• Calculate available resources
  
• Properly size a Virtual Machine based on application workload
  
• Modify large memory page settings
  
• Understand appropriate use cases for CPU affinity
  
• Configure alternate virtual machine swap locations
  Continue reading →

Knowledge

• Describe the relationship between vDS and the vSS

Skills and Abilities

• Understand the use of command line tools to configure appropriate vDS settings on an ESXi host
• Determine use cases for and apply Port Binding settings
• Configure Live Port Moving
• Given a set of network requirements, identify the appropriate distributed switch technology to use
• Configure and administer vSphere Network I/O Control
• Use command line tools to troubleshoot and identify configuration items from an existing vDS

Continue reading →

Knowledge

• Identify VMware NIC Teaming policies
  
• Identify common network protocols

Skills and Abilities

• Understand the NIC Teaming failover types and related physical network settings
  
• Determine and apply Failover settings
• Configure explicit failover to conform with VMware best practices
• Configure port groups to properly isolate network traffic

Continue reading →

Knowledge

• Identify types of VLANs and PVLANs
  

Skills and Abilities

• Determine use cases for and configure VLAN Trunking
  
• Determine use cases for and configure PVLANs
• Use command line tools to troubleshoot and identify VLAN configurations

Continue reading →