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This course trains architects and senior engineers to design, validate and operate enterprise-grade VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) solutions. Students learn to translate business requirements into documented VCF logical and physical designs, make trade-offs using AMPRS (Availability, Manageability, Performance, Recoverability, Security), build automation and lifecycle strategies, and validate designs with monitoring, BCDR and performance practices. The course is both conceptual and hands-on — every design topic includes practical lab exercises and real-world decision scenarios.

Who should attend

Cloud architects, SDDC architects, senior systems engineers
Platform/SRE leaders designing VCF-based private clouds or service provider fleets
Candidates preparing for the VMware VCP-VCF Architect exam (2V0-13.25)
Technical leads responsible for migration, automation, and lifecycle planning

Prerequisites

Must-have:

Hands-on VMware vSphere experience (vCenter, ESXi, VM lifecycle, HA basics)
Data center fundamentals (networking, storage, compute)
Comfortable with Linux shell and basic scripting

Recommended:

Familiarity with vSAN, NSX fundamentals, SDDC Manager, Kubernetes basics, IaC (Terraform/Ansible), and monitoring concepts

Course learning outcomes (what learners will be able to do)

After completing this course learners will be able to:

Design VCF architectures — map business & technical requirements into logical and physical designs.
Apply AMPRS trade-offs to satisfy SLAs and operational constraints.
Build lifecycle and automation strategies using VCF Operations (blueprints, BOMs, fleet workflows).
Create and validate BCDR/DR plans for management and workload domains.
Specify security controls (identity, secrets, NSX micro-segmentation, encryption, audit).
Plan workload migration and onboarding with rollback and validation tests.
Design monitoring, capacity planning, and cost analytics for mixed VM/Kubernetes workloads.
Size, benchmark and tune VCF stacks for performance and scalability.

Course modules (titles, objectives, topics, hands-on labs & assessments)

Module 1 — VCF Architecture Design — Mapping Requirements to Logical & Physical Designs

Objective: Translate business goals and constraints into VCF architecture choices.
Topics: Requirements gathering, conceptual vs logical vs physical models, mapping requirements → design decisions, AMPRS framing.
Lab: Create a conceptual model and translate to a VCF logical design for a multi-AZ deployment.
Assessment: Design review & critique exercise.

Module 2 — AMPRS Tradeoffs — Designing for Availability, Manageability, Performance, Recoverability & Security

Objective: Make defensible trade-offs and document impacts.
Topics: Availability zones, stretched clusters, HA/FT, lifecycle impacts, security implications, RTO/RPO mapping.
Lab: Select design options for a given SLA matrix; produce AMPRS impact table.
Assessment: Case scenario (multi-objective optimization).

Module 3 — Lifecycle Management & Automation with VCF Operations

Objective: Automate BOMs, upgrades, and fleet lifecycle across VCF instances.
Topics: BOMs/instance management, upgrade waves, configuration drift, fleet orchestration, blueprints & IaC.
Lab: Create a blueprint, run a test deployment, and schedule a BOM upgrade wave.
Assessment: Performance-based task: deploy and upgrade while demonstrating rollback.

Module 4 — BCDR & Disaster Recovery Planning for Management and Workload Domains

Objective: Design and validate DR plans for management and workload domains.
Topics: Protection profiles (management vs workload), NSX/overlay considerations, orchestration & test plans, SRM/Live Site Recovery, instance recovery.
Lab: Orchestrate non-disruptive DR test and produce a runbook.
Assessment: Case study: craft RTO/RPO and recovery runbook for a given business case.

Module 5 — Security Design for VCF — Identity, Secrets, Micro-segmentation & Encryption

Objective: Harden VCF management and workload planes.
Topics: Identity/SSO boundaries, secrets/cert lifecycle, NSX DFW micro-segmentation, vSAN/vMotion encryption, logging/SIEM design.
Lab: Implement micro-segmentation rules for a multi-tier app and configure certificate rotation.
Assessment: Written justification of design decisions (security implications).

Module 6 — Workload Migration & Onboarding Strategies (HCX, P2V, Storage Planning)

Objective: Migrate and onboard workloads with minimal disruption.
Topics: Five-R classification, HCX L2/L3 extension, P2V workflows, storage mapping / integration w/ vSAN, rollback patterns.
Lab: Execute an HCX migration with L2 extension and validate app behavior.
Assessment: Migration plan and execution checklist submission.

Module 7 — Monitoring, Capacity Planning & Cost Analytics for Mixed Workloads

Objective: Build an operational observability and capacity strategy.
Topics: VCF Operations observability (metrics/logs/traces), Prometheus/Telegraf, service mesh telemetry, predictive capacity and showback.
Lab: Configure workload + infra telemetry, create dashboards, run capacity “what-if”.
Assessment: Provide capacity forecast and remediation plan.

Module 8 — Performance & Scalability Design — Sizing, Benchmarking & Tuning

Objective: Size and validate high-performance VCF designs (GPU, NVMe, network fabric).
Topics: Monster VMs, vSAN ESA, leaf-spine fabrics, NUMA/host tuning, benchmarking (VMmark, custom).
Lab: Run a synthetic workload, capture bottlenecks, and apply tuning.
Assessment: Performance tuning report with before/after metrics.

Module 9 — Consumption & Tenant Design, Self-Service, Governance & Multi-Region Operations

Objective: Architect tenant models, quotas, policy-as-code and federation.
Topics: Organizations/Projects/Namespaces, catalogs/content hub, policy enforcement, chargeback/showback, region/zone mapping, federation.
Lab: Build a tenant with quotas, publish catalog, enforce validating admission policies.
Assessment: Tenant design & governance checklist.

Module 10 — Capstone: End-to-End Design, Validation & Exam Preparation

Objective: Synthesize learning; present an end-to-end VCF solution.
Topics: Design package contents (diagrams, BOM, runbooks, test plans), exam tips and sample PBCQs.