VCP6.5-DCV Certification Blueprint

Following on from this mornings post.  I have found the VCP6.5-DCV Certification Blueprint, somewhat buried on the VMware exam guide page.

Below follows the VCP6.5-DCV Certification Blueprint in full, to which I will add links to reference articles and guides that cover the required content.

VCP6.5-DCV Certification Blueprint

Section 1 – Configure and Administer vSphere 6.x Security

Objective 1.1 – Configure and Administer Role-based Access Control

• Compare and contrast propagated and explicit permission assignments
•  View/Sort/Export user and group lists
•  Add/Modify/Remove permissions for users and groups on vCenter Server inventory objects
•  Determine how permissions are applied and inherited in vCenter Server
•  Create/Clone/Edit vCenter Server Roles
•  Configure VMware Identity Sources
•  Apply a role to a User/Group and to an object or group of objects
•  Change permission validation settings
•  Determine the appropriate set of privileges for common tasks in vCenter Server
•  Compare and contrast default system/sample roles
•  Determine the correct permissions needed to integrate vCenter Server with other VMware products

Objective 1.2 – Secure ESXi and vCenter Server

•  Configure Encrypted vMotion
•  Describe Secure Boot
•  Harden ESXi hosts
• Enable/Configure/Disable services in the ESXi firewall
• Change default account access
• Add an ESXi Host to a directory service
• Apply permissions to ESXi Hosts using Host Profiles
• Enable Lockdown Mode
• Control access to hosts (DCUI/Shell/SSH/MOB)
• Harden vCenter Server
• Control datastore browser access
• Create/Manage vCenter Server Security Certificates
• Control MOB access
• Change default account access
• Restrict administrative privileges
• Understand the implications of securing a vSphere environment

Objective 1.3 –Configure and Enable SSO and Identity Sources

•  Describe PSC architecture and components
•  Differentiate available authentication methods with VMware vCenter
•  Perform a multi-site PSC installation
•  Configure/Manage Identity Sources
•  Configure/Manage Platform Services Controller (PSC)
•  Configure/Manage VMware Certificate Authority (VMCA)
•  Enable/Disable Single Sign-On (SSO) Users
•  Upgrade a single/complex PSC installation
•  Configure SSO policies
•  Add an ESXi host to an AD domain
•  Configure and Manage KMS for VM Encryption

Objective 1.4 – Secure vSphere Virtual Machines

•  Enable/Disable Virtual Machine Encryption
•  Describe Secure Boot
•  Harden virtual machine access
• Control VMware Tools installation
• Control VM data access
• Configure virtual machine security policies
• Harden a virtual machine against Denial-of-Service attacks
• Control VM-VM communications
• Control VM device connections
• Configure network security policies
• Configure encrypted vMotion

 

Section 2 – Configure and Administer vSphere 6.x Networking

Objective 2.1 – Configure policies/features and verify vSphere networking

•  Create/Delete a vSphere Distributed Switch
•  Add/Remove ESXi hosts from a vSphere Distributed Switch
•  Add/Configure/Remove dvPort groups
•  Add/Remove uplink adapters to dvUplink groups
•  Configure vSphere Distributed Switch general and dvPort group settings
•  Create/Configure/Remove virtual adapters
•  Migrate virtual machines to/from a vSphere Distributed Switch
•  Configure LACP on vDS given design parameters
•  Describe vDS Security Polices/Settings
•  Configure dvPort group blocking policies
•  Configure load balancing and failover policies
•  Configure VLAN/PVLAN settings for VMs given communication requirements
•  Configure traffic shaping policies
•  Enable TCP Segmentation Offload support for a virtual machine
•  Enable Jumbo Frames support on appropriate components
•  Recognize behavior of vDS Auto-Rollback
•  Configure vDS across multiple vCenters to support [Long Distance vMotion]
•  Compare and contrast vSphere Distributed Switch (vDS) capabilities
•  Configure multiple VMkernel Default Gateways
•  Configure ERSPAN
•  Create and configure custom TCP/IP Stacks
•  Configure Netflow

Objective 2.2 – Configure Network I/O control (NIOC)

•  Explain NIOC capabilities
•  Configure NIOC shares/limits based on VM requirements
•  Explain the behavior of a given NIOC setting
•  Determine Network I/O Control requirements
•  Differentiate Network I/O Control capabilities
•  Enable/Disable Network I/O Control
•  Monitor Network I/O Control

Section 3 –Configure and Administer vSphere 6.x Storage

Objective 3.1 – Manage vSphere Integration with Physical Storage

•  Perform NFS v3 and v4.1 configurations
•  Discover new storage LUNs
•  Configure FC/iSCSI/FCoE LUNs as ESXi boot devices
•  Mount an NFS share for use with vSphere
•  Enable/Configure/Disable vCenter Server storage filters
•  Configure/Edit hardware/dependent hardware initiators
•  Enable/Disable software iSCSI initiator
•  Configure/Edit software iSCSI initiator settings
•  Configure iSCSI port binding
•  Enable/Configure/Disable iSCSI CHAP
•  Determine use cases for Fiber Channel zoning
•  Compare and contrast array thin provisioning and virtual disk thin provisioning

Objective 3.2 – Configure Software-Defined Storage

•  Create vSAN cluster
•  Create disk groups
•  Monitor vSAN
•  Describe vVOLs
•  Understand a vSAN iSCSI target
•  Explain vSAN and vVOL architectural components
•  Determine the role of storage providers in vSAN
•  Determine the role of storage providers in vVOLs
•  Explain vSAN failure domains functionality
•  Configure/Manage VMware vSAN
•  Create/Modify VMware Virtual Volumes (vVOLs)
•  Configure Storage Policies
•  Enable/Disable vSAN Fault Domains
•  Create Virtual Volumes given the workload and availability requirements
•  Collect vSAN Observer output
•  Create storage policies appropriate for given workloads and availability requirements
•  Configure vVOLs Protocol Endpoints

Objective 3.3 – Configure vSphere Storage Multipathing and Failover

•  Explain common multi-pathing components
•  Differentiate APD and PDL states
•  Compare and contrast Active Optimized vs. Active non-Optimized port group states
•  Explain features of Pluggable Storage Architecture (PSA)
•  Understand the effects of a given claim rule on multipathing and failover
•  Explain the function of claim rule elements:
  • Vendor
  • Model
  • Device ID
  • SATP
  • PSP
•  Change the Path Selection Policy using the UI
•  Determine required claim rule elements to change the default PSP
•  Determine the effect of changing PSP on multipathing and failover
•  Determine the effects of changing SATP on relevant device behavior
•  Configure/Manage Storage load balancing
•  Differentiate available Storage load balancing options
•  Differentiate available Storage multipathing policies
•  Configure Storage Policies including vSphere Storage APIs for Storage Awareness
•  Locate failover events in the UI

Objective 3.4 – Perform VMFS and NFS configurations and upgrades

•  Perform VMFS v5 and v6 configurations
•  Describe VAAI primitives for block devices and NAS
•  Differentiate VMware file system technologies
•  Migrate from VMFS5 to VMFS6
•  Differentiate Physical Mode RDMs and Virtual Mode RDMs
•  Create a Virtual/Physical Mode RDM
•  Differentiate NFS 3.x and 4.1 capabilities
•  Compare and contrast VMFS and NFS datastore properties
•  Configure Bus Sharing
•  Configure Multi-writer locking
•  Connect an NFS 4.1 datastore using Kerberos
•  Create/Rename/Delete/Unmount VMFS datastores
•  Mount/Unmount an NFS datastore
•  Extend/Expand VMFS datastores
•  Place a VMFS datastore in Maintenance Mode
•  Select the Preferred Path/Disable a Path to a VMFS datastore
•  Enable/Disable vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)
•  Determine a proper use case for multiple VMFS/NFS datastores

Objective 3.5 – Set up and Configure Storage I/O Control (SIOC)

•  Describe the benefits of SIOC
•  Enable and configure SIOC
•  Configure/Manage SIOC
•  Monitor SIOC
•  Differentiate between SIOC and Dynamic Queue Depth Throttling features
•  Determine a proper use case for SIOC
•  Compare and contrast the effects of I/O contention in environments with and without SIOC
•  Understand SIOC metrics for Datastore Clusters and Storage DRS

Section 4 – Upgrade a vSphere Deployment to 6.x

Objective 4.1 – Perform ESXi Host and Virtual Machine Upgrades

•  Configure download source(s)
•  Set up UMDS to set up download repository
•  Import ESXi images
•  Create Baselines and/or Baseline groups
•  Attach Baselines to vSphere objects
•  Scan vSphere objects
•  Stage Patches and Extensions
•  Remediate an object
•  Upgrade a vSphere Distributed Switch
•  Upgrade VMware Tools
•  Upgrade Virtual Machine hardware
•  Upgrade an ESXi Host using vCenter Update Manager
•  Stage multiple ESXi Host upgrades
•  Align appropriate Baselines with target inventory objects

Objective 4.2 – Perform vCenter Server Upgrades (Windows)

•  Compare the methods of upgrading vCenter Server
•  Backup vCenter Server database, configuration and certificate datastore
•  Perform update as prescribed
•  Upgrade vCenter Server
•  Determine the upgrade compatibility of an environment
•  Determine correct order of steps to upgrade a vSphere implementation

Objective 4.3 – Perform vCenter Server migration to VCSA

•  Migrate to vCSA
•  Understand the migration paths to the vCSA

Section 5 – Administer and Manage vSphere 6.x Resources

Objective 5.1 –Configure Multilevel Resource Pools

•  Determine the effect of the Expandable Reservation parameter on resource allocation
•  Create a Resource Pool hierarchical structure
•  Configure custom Resource Pool attributes
•  Determine how Resource Pools apply to vApps
•  Create/Remove a Resource Pool
•  Add/Remove virtual machines from a Resource Pool
•  Determine appropriate shares, reservations and limits for hierarchical Resource Pools

Objective 5.2 – Configure vSphere DRS and Storage DRS Clusters

•  Add/remove Host DRS Group
•  Add/remove virtual machine DRS Group
•  Manage DRS affinity/anti-affinity rules
•  Configure the proper DRS automation level based on a set of business requirements
•  Explain how DRS affinity rules effect virtual machine placement
•  Understand Network DRS
•  Differentiate load balancing policies
•  Describe Predictive DRS

Section 6 – Back up and Recover a vSphere Deployment

Objective 6.1 – Configure and Administer vCenter Appliance Backup/Restore

•  Configure vCSA File-based Backup and Restore
•  Define supported backup targets

Objective 6.2 – Configure and Administer vCenter Data Protection

•  Deploy VDP Application Agents
•  Differentiate VMware Data Protection capabilities
•  Explain VMware Data Protection sizing guidelines
•  Create/Delete/Consolidate virtual machine snapshots
•  Install and Configure VMware Data Protection
•  Create a backup job with VMware Data Protection
•  Backup/Restore a virtual machine with VMware Data Protection

Objective 6.3 – Configure vSphere Replication

•  Compare and contrast vSphere Replication compression methods
•  Configure recovery point objective (RPO) for a protected virtual machine
•  Manage snapshots on recovered virtual machines
•  Install/Configure/Upgrade vSphere Replication
•  Configure VMware Certificate Authority (VMCA) integration with vSphere Replication
•  Configure vSphere Replication for Single/Multiple VMs
•  Recover a VM using vSphere Replication
•  Perform a failback operation using vSphere Replication
•  Deploy a pair of vSphere Replication virtual appliances

Section 7 – Troubleshoot a vSphere Deployment

Objective 7.1 – Troubleshoot vCenter Server and ESXi Hosts

•  Understand VCSA monitoring tool
•  Monitor status of the vCenter Server services
•  Perform basic maintenance of a vCenter Server database
•  Monitor status of ESXi management agents
•  Determine ESXi host stability issues and gather diagnostics information
•  Monitor ESXi system health
•  Locate and analyze vCenter Server and ESXi logs
•  Determine appropriate commands for troubleshooting
•  Troubleshoot common issues, including:
  • vCenter Server services
  • Identity Sources
  • vCenter Server connectivity
  • Virtual machine resource contention, configuration and operation
  • Platform Services Controller (PSC)
  • Problems with installation
  • VMware Tools installation
  • Fault Tolerant network latency
  • KMS connectivity
  • vCenter Certification Authority

Objective 7.2 – Troubleshoot vSphere Storage and Networking

•  Identify and isolate network and storage resource contention and latency issues
•  Verify network and storage configuration
•  Verify that a given virtual machine is configured with the correct network resources
•  Monitor/Troubleshoot Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler (SDRS) issues
•  Recognize the impact of network and storage I/O control configurations
•  Recognize a connectivity issue caused by a VLAN/PVLAN
•  Troubleshoot common issues with:
  • Storage and network
  • Virtual switch and port group configuration
  • Physical network adapter configuration
  • VMFS metadata consistency

Objective 7.3 – Troubleshoot vSphere Upgrades and Migrations

•  Collect upgrade diagnostic information
•  Recognize common upgrade and migration issues with vCenter Server and vCenter Server Appliance
•  Create/Locate VMware log bundles
•  Determine alternative methods to upgrade ESXi hosts in event of failure
•  Configure vCenter Server logging options

Objective 7.4 – Troubleshoot Virtual Machines

•  Monitor CPU and memory usage
•  Identify and isolate CPU and memory contention issues
•  Recognize impact of using CPU/memory limits, reservations and shares
•  Describe and differentiate critical performance metrics
•  Describe and differentiate common metrics, including:
  • Memory
  • CPU
  • Network
  • Storage
•  Monitor performance through esxtop
•  Troubleshoot Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) issues
•  Compare and contrast Overview and Advanced Charts

Objective 7.5 – Troubleshoot HA and DRS Configurations and Fault Tolerance

•  Troubleshoot issues with:
  • DRS workload balancing
  • HA failover/redundancy, capacity and network configuration
  • HA/DRS cluster configuration
  • vMotion/Storage vMotion configuration and/or migration
  • Fault Tolerance configuration and failover issues
•  Explain the DRS Resource Distribution Graph and Target/Current Host Load Deviation
•  Explain vMotion Resource Maps

Section 8 – Deploy and Customize ESXi Hosts

Objective 8.1 – Configure Auto Deploy for ESXi Hosts

•  Describe the components and architecture of an Auto Deploy environment
•  Implement Host Profiles with an Auto Deploy of an ESXi host
•  Install and configure Auto Deploy
•  Deploy multiple ESXi hosts using Auto Deploy
•  Explain the Auto Deploy deployment model needed to meet a business requirement

Objective 8.2 – Create and Deploy Host Profiles

•  Edit answer file to customize ESXi host settings
•  Modify and apply a storage path selection plugin (PSP) to a device using host profiles
•  Modify and apply switch configurations across multiple hosts using a Host Profile
•  Create/Edit/Remove a Host Profile from an ESXi host
•  Import/Export a Host Profile
•  Attach and apply a Host Profile to ESXi hosts in a cluster
•  Perform compliance scanning and remediation of an ESXi hosts and clusters using Host Profiles
•  Enable or disable Host Profile components

Section 9 – Configure and Administer vSphere and vCenter Availability Solutions

Objective 9.1 – Configure vSphere HA Cluster Features

•  Modify vSphere HA cluster settings
•  Configure a network for use with HA heartbeats
•  Apply an admission control policy for HA
•  Enable/disable vSphere HA settings
•  Configure different heartbeat datastores for an HA cluster
•  Apply virtual machine monitoring for a cluster
•  Configure Virtual Machine Component Protection (VMCP) settings
•  Implement vSphere HA on a vSAN cluster
•  Explain how vSphere HA communicates with Distributed Resource Scheduler and Distributed Power
• Management

Objective 9.2 – Configure vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) HA

•  Enable and Configure vCSA HA
•  Understand and describe the architecture of vCSA HA

Section 10 – Administer and Manage vSphere Virtual Machines

Objective 10.1 – Create and Manage vSphere Virtual Machines and Templates

•  Determine how using a shared USB device impacts the environment
•  Configure virtual machines for vGPUs, DirectPath I/O and SR-IOV
•  Configure virtual machines for multicore vCPUs
•  Differentiate virtual machine configuration settings
•  Interpret virtual machine configuration files (.vmx) settings
•  Enable/disable advanced virtual machine settings

Objective 10.2 – Create and Manage a Content Library

•  Publish a content catalog
•  Subscribe to a published catalog
•  Determine which privileges are required to globally manage a content catalog
•  Compare the functionality of Automatic sync and On-Demand sync
•  Configure Content Library to work across sites
•  Configure Content Library authentication
•  Set/configure Content Library roles
•  Add/remove Content Libraries

Objective 10.3 – Intentionally Left Blank

• For some undefined reason this section is blank…

Objective 10.4 – Consolidate Physical Workloads using VMware vCenter Converter

•  Install vCenter Converter standalone instance
•  Convert physical workloads using vCenter Converter
•  Modify server resources during conversion
•  Interpret and correct errors during conversion
•  Deploy a physical host as a virtual machine using vCenter Converter
•  Collect diagnostic information during conversion operation
•  Resize partitions during the conversion process
•  Determine which virtual disk format to use

There we go, over the coming weeks, I’ll update this post to link to articles that cover the exam blueprint items

Thanks

Simon

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