VMware Cloud Foundation: Solution Architecture and Design [V9.1]
Level: Standard
Description
This course teaches the architectural constructs, design patterns and decision-making discipline needed to design a VMware Cloud Foundation solution at enterprise scale. You will be taken through a logical design sequence: the shape of the fleet, the management plane, the domain and cluster layout for each instance, and how a tenant consumes VCF services and resources. Physical design considerations are examined, along with network, storage, and the recovery design. You will apply design principles to a case study throughout, to reinforce key design decisions and how they can be applied in practice.
51 lesson(s) covers:
Introduction
- Explain the value of VCF as an operational cost argument, not a feature list
- Describe what VCF 9.1 consolidates, and what is still yours to design
- Differentiate the personas a private cloud serves and the decisions each one drives
- Describe the five AMPRS qualities and the trade-offs they create
- Sequence a design decision as requirement, decision, justification and implication
Fleet Designs and Blueprints
- Describe how the Fleet, Instance, Domain, Cluster and Host constructs nest
- Choose a fleet deployment model and a fleet sizing model from stated requirements
- Design a fleet from a published blueprint, substituting Design Library models
- Choose an edge design pattern for a given site count, WAN budget and autonomy requirements
- Differentiate the three recovery tiers and identify which one answers a failure
Fleet Components
- Size a VCF Operations analytics cluster from an object count and an availability model
- Choose a License Server model and defend the choice against a named requirement
- Describe what runs on the VCF Management Services runtime and what stays a separate appliance
- Differentiate the Simple and High Availability VCFMS models by their failure behavior
- Design Log Management retention, partitioning and archiving to a stated requirement
- Place the Identity Broker as a per-Instance service and pick its deployment model
Instance, Domain and Cluster Designs
- Describe the Instance, Domain and Cluster constructs and the related design decisions
- Design a Management Domain: sizing, storage, networking and the reserves it must hold
- Place every management component correctly in a first and an additional Instance
- Choose how many Workload Domains an estate needs and defend each one by what it isolates
- Choose a cluster model and a vSAN cluster type, then size the host count that follows
- Explain how a storage policy sets usable capacity and the minimum host count
Consumption
- Identify every path a consumer can take to reach the platform
- Design a VCF Automation tenancy model from Organizations down to quota
- Choose between the All Apps and VM Apps Organization models
- Explain Supervisor activation and associated design decisions
- Design the substrate a VKS cluster and its related services need
- Place VCF Operations Orchestrator, Harbor, DSM and Private AI within a solution design
Physical Datacenter Architecture
- Explain the five physical layers comprising a VCF-ready datacenter
- Size rack power and cooling for mixed VM, container and accelerated AI hosts
- Design a leaf-spine fabric that meets VCF bandwidth, latency and MTU needs
- Choose a single-site, multi-site or multi-region fabric based on stated requirements
- Identify the CPU, memory, NVMe drives and uplinks a ReadyNode must carry
- Explain how NUMA and the 9.1 Topology Aware Scheduler affect placement
Networking
- Design the VLAN and MTU plan a VCF solution requires, end to end
- Choose a distributed switch model from the physical adapters you can justify
- Differentiate centralized and distributed connectivity and size what each need
- Place a workload on the network and choose where its traffic is inspected
- Choose between the NSX load balancer, Avi Load Balancer and an incumbent ADC
Storage Design
- Choose a principal and a supplemental storage model based on stated requirements
- Explain the vSAN ESA architecture and the data services it delivers by default
- Design storage policies and size raw capacity from the resulting space factor
- Design the vSAN network, encryption and operational model
- Integrate Kubernetes persistent storage with vSAN through storage policies
- Design NFS and Fiber Channel storage where an array estate already exists
Management Domain Backup and Restore
- Design a backup solution that covers every VCF management component
- Size an SFTP target from backup size, retention and instance count
- Sequence a full instance restore in the documented dependency order
- Outline the instance recovery toolkit, its prerequisites and its cmdlets
- Design fleet disaster recovery across two instances in two regions
- Explain the recovery point and recovery time each tier can support
