VCP 2020 v7 Edition Study Guide
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 4
Section 1 – Architectures and Technologies ................................................................................................. 4
Objective 1.1 – Identify the pre-requisites and components for a vSphere Implementation ................. 4
ESXi Server ............................................................................................................................................ 4
vCenter Server ...................................................................................................................................... 6
Objective 1.2 Describe vCenter Topology ................................................................................................. 7
Objective 1.3 - Identify and differentiate storage access protocols for vSphere (NFS, iSCSI, SAN, etc.) . 8
Objective 1.3.1 – Describe datastore types for vSphere .......................................................................... 9
Objective 1.3.2 – Explain the importance of advanced storage configuration (VASA, VAAI, etc.) ......... 10
Objective 1.3.3 – Describe Storage Policies ............................................................................................ 10
Objective 1.3.4 – Describe basic storage concepts in K8s, vSAN, and vSphere Virtual Volumes (vVols)10
Objective 1.4 – Differentiate between vSphere Network I/O Control (NIOC) and vSphere Storage I/O
Control (SIOC) ......................................................................................................................................... 12
Objective 1.5 – Describe instant clone architecture and use cases........................................................ 14
Objective 1.6 – Describe Cluster Concepts ............................................................................................. 14
A vSphere cluster is a group of ESXi host machines. When grouped, vSphere aggregates all of the
resources of each host and treats it as a single pool. There are several features and capabilities you
can only do with clusters. ....................................................................................................................... 14
Objective 1.6.1 – Describe Distributed Resource Scheduler .................................................................. 15
Objective 1.6.2 – Describe vSphere Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) ........................................ 15
Objective 1.6.3 – Describe how Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) scores virtual machines .......... 15
Objective 1.6.4 – Describe vSphere High Availability ............................................................................. 15
Objective 1.7 – Identify vSphere distributed switch and vSphere standard switch capabilities ............ 16
Objective 1.7.1 – Describe VMkernel Networking.................................................................................. 19
Objective 1.7.2 – Manage networking on multiple hosts with vSphere distributed switch................... 20
Objective 1.7.3 – Describe Networking Policies ..................................................................................... 30
Objective 1.7.4 – Manage Network I/O Control on a vSphere distributed switch ................................. 33
Objective 1.8 – Describe vSphere Lifecycle Manager concepts (baselines, cluster images, etc.) .......... 34
Objective 1.9 – Describe the basics of vSAN as primary storage ............................................................ 36
Objective 1.9.1 – Identify basic vSAN requirements (networking, disk count, type) ............................. 36
Objective 1.10 – Describe vSphere Trust Authority Architecture........................................................... 37
Objective 1.11 – Explain Software Guard Extensions (SGX) ................................................................... 37
Section 2 – VMware Products and Solutions .............................................................................................. 37
Objective 2.1 – Describe the role of vSphere in the software-defined data center (SDDC)................... 37
, Objective 2.2 – Identify use cases for vCloud Foundation...................................................................... 38
Objective 2.3 – Identify migration options ............................................................................................. 39
Objective 2.4 – Identify DR use cases ..................................................................................................... 41
Objective 2.5 – Describe vSphere integration with VMware Skyline ..................................................... 43
Section 4 – Installing, Configuring, and Setup ............................................................................................ 43
Objective 4.1 – Describe single sign-on (SSO) deployment topology ..................................................... 43
Objective 4.1.1 – Configure a single sign-on (SSO) domain .................................................................... 44
Objective 4.1.2 – Join an existing single sign-on (SSO) domain .............................................................. 44
Objective 4.2 – Configure VSS advanced virtual networking options..................................................... 45
Objective 4.3 – Setup identity sources ................................................................................................... 47
Objective 4.3.1 – Configure Identity Federation .................................................................................... 56
Objective 4.3.2 – Configure Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) integration ........................ 60
Objective 4.3.3 – Configure Active Directory integration ....................................................................... 62
Objective 4.4 – Deploy and configure vCenter Server Appliance ........................................................... 62
Objective 4.5 – Create and configure VMware High Availability and advanced options (Admission
Control, Proactive High Availability, etc.) ............................................................................................... 75
Objective 4.6 – Deploy and configure vCenter Server High Availability ................................................. 81
Objective 4.7 – Set up a content library ................................................................................................. 86
Objective 4.8 – Configure vCenter Server file-based backup ................................................................. 92
Objective 4.9 – Analyze basic log output from vSphere products .......................................................... 97
Objective 4.10 – Configure vSphere Trust Authority ............................................................................ 102
Objective 4.11 – Configure vSphere certificates................................................................................... 103
Objective 4.11.1 – Describe Enterprise PKIs role for SSL certificates ................................................... 106
Objective 4.12 – Configure vSphere Lifecycle Manager/VMware Update Manager (VUM) ................ 106
Objective 4.13 – Securely Boot ESXi hosts ............................................................................................ 110
Objective 4.14 – Configure different network stacks ........................................................................... 111
Objective 4.15 – Configure Host Profiles .............................................................................................. 115
Objective 4.16 – Identify boot options ................................................................................................. 123
Objective 4.16.1 – Configure Quick Boot .............................................................................................. 126
Section 5 – Performance-tuning, Optimization, Upgrades ....................................................................... 128
Objective 5.1 – Identify resource pools use cases ................................................................................ 128
Objective 5.1.1 – Explain shares, limits, and reservations (resource management) ............................ 133
Objective 5.2 – Monitor resources of vCenter Server Appliance and vSphere environment .............. 134
Objective 5.3 – Identify and use tools for performance monitoring .................................................... 137
Objective 5.4 – Configure Network I/O Control (NIOC) ........................................................................ 140
, Objective 5.5 – Configure Storage I/O Control (SIOC) .......................................................................... 141
Objective 5.6 – Explain the performance impact of maintaining virtual machine snapshots .............. 143
Objective 5.7 – Plan for upgrading various vSphere components........................................................ 144
Section 6 – Troubleshooting and Repairing - There are no testable objectives for this section. ............. 144
Section 7 – Administrative and Operational Tasks ................................................................................... 144
Objective 7.1 – Create and manage virtual machine snapshots........................................................... 144
Objective 7.2 – Create virtual machines using different methods (Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF)
templates, content library, etc.) ........................................................................................................... 148
Objective 7.3 – Manage virtual machines............................................................................................. 149
Objective 7.4 – Manage storage (datastores, storage policies, etc.).................................................... 150
Objective 7.4.1 – Configure and modify datastores (expand/upgrade existing datastore, etc.) ......... 158
Objective 7.4.2 – Create virtual machine storage policies ................................................................... 159
Objective 7.4.3 – Configure storage cluster options ............................................................................ 159
Objective 7.5 – Create Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) affinity and anti-affinity rules for
everyday use cases................................................................................................................................ 167
Objective 7.6 – Configure and perform different types of migrations ................................................. 169
'''Objective 7.7 – Configure role-based user management .................................................................. 174
'Objective 7.8 – Configure and manage the options for securing a vSphere environment (certificates,
virtual machine encryption, virtual Trusted Platform Module, lockdown mode, virtualization-based
security, etc.)......................................................................................................................................... 179
Objective 7.9 – Configure and manage host profiles............................................................................ 186
"'Objective 7.10 – Utilize baselines to perform updates and upgrades ............................................... 193
Objective 7.11 – Utilize vSphere Lifecycle Manager ............................................................................. 200
Objective 7.11.1 – Describe Firmware upgrades for ESXi ..................................................................... 204
Objective 7.11.2 – Describe ESXi updates............................................................................................. 204
Objective 7.11.3 – Describe component and driver updates for ESXi .................................................. 205
Objective 7.11.4 – Describe hardware compatibility check ................................................................. 207
Objective 7.11.5 – Describe ESXi cluster image export functionality ................................................... 208
Objective 7.12 – Configure alarms ........................................................................................................ 210
, Introduction
Hello again. My 2019 VCP Study Guide was well received, so, to help the community further, I decided to
embark on another exam study guide with vSphere 7. This guide is exciting for me to write due to the
many new things I’ll get to learn myself, and I look forward to learning with everyone.
I am writing this guide pretty much how I talk and teach in real life with a bit of Grammarly on the back
end, to make sure I don’t go completely off the rails. You may also find the formatting a little weird. This
is because I plan on taking this guide and binding it in a single guide at the end of this blog series. I will
try to finish a full topic per blog post unless it gets too large. I don’t have a large attention span to read
huge technical blogs in one sitting and find most people learn better with smaller chunks of information
at a time. (I wrote this before I saw the first section.)
In these endeavors, I personally always start with the Exam Prep guide. That can be found on VMware’s
website here. The official code for this exam is 2VO-21.20, and the cost of the exam is $250.00. There is
a total of 70 questions with a duration of 130 minutes. The passing score, as always, is 300 on a scale of
1-500. The exam questions are presented in a single and multiple-choice format. You can now take these
exams online, in the comfort of your own home. A webcam is required, and you need to pan your
webcam at the beginning of the session, and it needs to be on the whole time.
The exam itself focuses on the following topics:
• Section 1 – Architecture and Technologies
• Section 2 – Products and Solutions
• Section 3 – Planning and Designing
• Section 4 – Installing, Configuring, and Setup
• Section 5 – Performance-tuning, Optimization, and Upgrades
• Section 6 – Troubleshooting and Repairing
• Section 7 – Administrative and Operational Tasks
Each of these topics can be found in the class materials for Install, Configure, and Manage, or Optimize
and Scale classes, or supplemental papers by VMware on the web. Let’s begin with the first topic.
Section 1 – Architectures and Technologies
Objective 1.1 – Identify the pre-requisites and components for a vSphere Implementation
A vSphere implementation or deployment has two main parts. ESXi server and vCenter Server.
ESXi Server
The first is the virtual server itself or ESXi server. The ESXi host server is the piece of the solution that
allows you to run virtual machines and other components of the solution (such as NSX kernel modules).
It provides the compute, memory, and in some cases, storage resources for a company to run. There are
requirements the server needs to meet for ESXi. They are:
• A supported hardware platform. VMware has a compatibility guide they make available
here. If running a production environment, your server should be checked against that.
• ESXi requires a minimum of two CPU cores.
• ESXi requires the NX/XD or No Execute bit enabled for the CPU. The NX/XD setting is in
the BIOS of a server.
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 4
Section 1 – Architectures and Technologies ................................................................................................. 4
Objective 1.1 – Identify the pre-requisites and components for a vSphere Implementation ................. 4
ESXi Server ............................................................................................................................................ 4
vCenter Server ...................................................................................................................................... 6
Objective 1.2 Describe vCenter Topology ................................................................................................. 7
Objective 1.3 - Identify and differentiate storage access protocols for vSphere (NFS, iSCSI, SAN, etc.) . 8
Objective 1.3.1 – Describe datastore types for vSphere .......................................................................... 9
Objective 1.3.2 – Explain the importance of advanced storage configuration (VASA, VAAI, etc.) ......... 10
Objective 1.3.3 – Describe Storage Policies ............................................................................................ 10
Objective 1.3.4 – Describe basic storage concepts in K8s, vSAN, and vSphere Virtual Volumes (vVols)10
Objective 1.4 – Differentiate between vSphere Network I/O Control (NIOC) and vSphere Storage I/O
Control (SIOC) ......................................................................................................................................... 12
Objective 1.5 – Describe instant clone architecture and use cases........................................................ 14
Objective 1.6 – Describe Cluster Concepts ............................................................................................. 14
A vSphere cluster is a group of ESXi host machines. When grouped, vSphere aggregates all of the
resources of each host and treats it as a single pool. There are several features and capabilities you
can only do with clusters. ....................................................................................................................... 14
Objective 1.6.1 – Describe Distributed Resource Scheduler .................................................................. 15
Objective 1.6.2 – Describe vSphere Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) ........................................ 15
Objective 1.6.3 – Describe how Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) scores virtual machines .......... 15
Objective 1.6.4 – Describe vSphere High Availability ............................................................................. 15
Objective 1.7 – Identify vSphere distributed switch and vSphere standard switch capabilities ............ 16
Objective 1.7.1 – Describe VMkernel Networking.................................................................................. 19
Objective 1.7.2 – Manage networking on multiple hosts with vSphere distributed switch................... 20
Objective 1.7.3 – Describe Networking Policies ..................................................................................... 30
Objective 1.7.4 – Manage Network I/O Control on a vSphere distributed switch ................................. 33
Objective 1.8 – Describe vSphere Lifecycle Manager concepts (baselines, cluster images, etc.) .......... 34
Objective 1.9 – Describe the basics of vSAN as primary storage ............................................................ 36
Objective 1.9.1 – Identify basic vSAN requirements (networking, disk count, type) ............................. 36
Objective 1.10 – Describe vSphere Trust Authority Architecture........................................................... 37
Objective 1.11 – Explain Software Guard Extensions (SGX) ................................................................... 37
Section 2 – VMware Products and Solutions .............................................................................................. 37
Objective 2.1 – Describe the role of vSphere in the software-defined data center (SDDC)................... 37
, Objective 2.2 – Identify use cases for vCloud Foundation...................................................................... 38
Objective 2.3 – Identify migration options ............................................................................................. 39
Objective 2.4 – Identify DR use cases ..................................................................................................... 41
Objective 2.5 – Describe vSphere integration with VMware Skyline ..................................................... 43
Section 4 – Installing, Configuring, and Setup ............................................................................................ 43
Objective 4.1 – Describe single sign-on (SSO) deployment topology ..................................................... 43
Objective 4.1.1 – Configure a single sign-on (SSO) domain .................................................................... 44
Objective 4.1.2 – Join an existing single sign-on (SSO) domain .............................................................. 44
Objective 4.2 – Configure VSS advanced virtual networking options..................................................... 45
Objective 4.3 – Setup identity sources ................................................................................................... 47
Objective 4.3.1 – Configure Identity Federation .................................................................................... 56
Objective 4.3.2 – Configure Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) integration ........................ 60
Objective 4.3.3 – Configure Active Directory integration ....................................................................... 62
Objective 4.4 – Deploy and configure vCenter Server Appliance ........................................................... 62
Objective 4.5 – Create and configure VMware High Availability and advanced options (Admission
Control, Proactive High Availability, etc.) ............................................................................................... 75
Objective 4.6 – Deploy and configure vCenter Server High Availability ................................................. 81
Objective 4.7 – Set up a content library ................................................................................................. 86
Objective 4.8 – Configure vCenter Server file-based backup ................................................................. 92
Objective 4.9 – Analyze basic log output from vSphere products .......................................................... 97
Objective 4.10 – Configure vSphere Trust Authority ............................................................................ 102
Objective 4.11 – Configure vSphere certificates................................................................................... 103
Objective 4.11.1 – Describe Enterprise PKIs role for SSL certificates ................................................... 106
Objective 4.12 – Configure vSphere Lifecycle Manager/VMware Update Manager (VUM) ................ 106
Objective 4.13 – Securely Boot ESXi hosts ............................................................................................ 110
Objective 4.14 – Configure different network stacks ........................................................................... 111
Objective 4.15 – Configure Host Profiles .............................................................................................. 115
Objective 4.16 – Identify boot options ................................................................................................. 123
Objective 4.16.1 – Configure Quick Boot .............................................................................................. 126
Section 5 – Performance-tuning, Optimization, Upgrades ....................................................................... 128
Objective 5.1 – Identify resource pools use cases ................................................................................ 128
Objective 5.1.1 – Explain shares, limits, and reservations (resource management) ............................ 133
Objective 5.2 – Monitor resources of vCenter Server Appliance and vSphere environment .............. 134
Objective 5.3 – Identify and use tools for performance monitoring .................................................... 137
Objective 5.4 – Configure Network I/O Control (NIOC) ........................................................................ 140
, Objective 5.5 – Configure Storage I/O Control (SIOC) .......................................................................... 141
Objective 5.6 – Explain the performance impact of maintaining virtual machine snapshots .............. 143
Objective 5.7 – Plan for upgrading various vSphere components........................................................ 144
Section 6 – Troubleshooting and Repairing - There are no testable objectives for this section. ............. 144
Section 7 – Administrative and Operational Tasks ................................................................................... 144
Objective 7.1 – Create and manage virtual machine snapshots........................................................... 144
Objective 7.2 – Create virtual machines using different methods (Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF)
templates, content library, etc.) ........................................................................................................... 148
Objective 7.3 – Manage virtual machines............................................................................................. 149
Objective 7.4 – Manage storage (datastores, storage policies, etc.).................................................... 150
Objective 7.4.1 – Configure and modify datastores (expand/upgrade existing datastore, etc.) ......... 158
Objective 7.4.2 – Create virtual machine storage policies ................................................................... 159
Objective 7.4.3 – Configure storage cluster options ............................................................................ 159
Objective 7.5 – Create Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) affinity and anti-affinity rules for
everyday use cases................................................................................................................................ 167
Objective 7.6 – Configure and perform different types of migrations ................................................. 169
'''Objective 7.7 – Configure role-based user management .................................................................. 174
'Objective 7.8 – Configure and manage the options for securing a vSphere environment (certificates,
virtual machine encryption, virtual Trusted Platform Module, lockdown mode, virtualization-based
security, etc.)......................................................................................................................................... 179
Objective 7.9 – Configure and manage host profiles............................................................................ 186
"'Objective 7.10 – Utilize baselines to perform updates and upgrades ............................................... 193
Objective 7.11 – Utilize vSphere Lifecycle Manager ............................................................................. 200
Objective 7.11.1 – Describe Firmware upgrades for ESXi ..................................................................... 204
Objective 7.11.2 – Describe ESXi updates............................................................................................. 204
Objective 7.11.3 – Describe component and driver updates for ESXi .................................................. 205
Objective 7.11.4 – Describe hardware compatibility check ................................................................. 207
Objective 7.11.5 – Describe ESXi cluster image export functionality ................................................... 208
Objective 7.12 – Configure alarms ........................................................................................................ 210
, Introduction
Hello again. My 2019 VCP Study Guide was well received, so, to help the community further, I decided to
embark on another exam study guide with vSphere 7. This guide is exciting for me to write due to the
many new things I’ll get to learn myself, and I look forward to learning with everyone.
I am writing this guide pretty much how I talk and teach in real life with a bit of Grammarly on the back
end, to make sure I don’t go completely off the rails. You may also find the formatting a little weird. This
is because I plan on taking this guide and binding it in a single guide at the end of this blog series. I will
try to finish a full topic per blog post unless it gets too large. I don’t have a large attention span to read
huge technical blogs in one sitting and find most people learn better with smaller chunks of information
at a time. (I wrote this before I saw the first section.)
In these endeavors, I personally always start with the Exam Prep guide. That can be found on VMware’s
website here. The official code for this exam is 2VO-21.20, and the cost of the exam is $250.00. There is
a total of 70 questions with a duration of 130 minutes. The passing score, as always, is 300 on a scale of
1-500. The exam questions are presented in a single and multiple-choice format. You can now take these
exams online, in the comfort of your own home. A webcam is required, and you need to pan your
webcam at the beginning of the session, and it needs to be on the whole time.
The exam itself focuses on the following topics:
• Section 1 – Architecture and Technologies
• Section 2 – Products and Solutions
• Section 3 – Planning and Designing
• Section 4 – Installing, Configuring, and Setup
• Section 5 – Performance-tuning, Optimization, and Upgrades
• Section 6 – Troubleshooting and Repairing
• Section 7 – Administrative and Operational Tasks
Each of these topics can be found in the class materials for Install, Configure, and Manage, or Optimize
and Scale classes, or supplemental papers by VMware on the web. Let’s begin with the first topic.
Section 1 – Architectures and Technologies
Objective 1.1 – Identify the pre-requisites and components for a vSphere Implementation
A vSphere implementation or deployment has two main parts. ESXi server and vCenter Server.
ESXi Server
The first is the virtual server itself or ESXi server. The ESXi host server is the piece of the solution that
allows you to run virtual machines and other components of the solution (such as NSX kernel modules).
It provides the compute, memory, and in some cases, storage resources for a company to run. There are
requirements the server needs to meet for ESXi. They are:
• A supported hardware platform. VMware has a compatibility guide they make available
here. If running a production environment, your server should be checked against that.
• ESXi requires a minimum of two CPU cores.
• ESXi requires the NX/XD or No Execute bit enabled for the CPU. The NX/XD setting is in
the BIOS of a server.
