The cornerstone of the VMware Cloud Foundation curriculum is getting its 9.1 refresh: VMware Cloud Foundation: Build, Manage, Secure [v9.1] is about to be released. I've been reviewing the course materials, and this five-day, hands-on training remains the definitive starting point for anyone who needs to design, deploy, and run a VCF private cloud — and the natural entry point into the rest of the 9.1 curriculum.
What the course is about
VMware Cloud Foundation delivers public cloud scale and agility with on-premises security, resilience, and performance. This course takes you through the complete lifecycle of a VCF 9.1 private cloud: planning and preparing the deployment, bringing up the environment with the VCF Installer, performing post-deployment tasks, and then managing the platform day to day — fleet management, workload domains, networking, storage, certificates, lifecycle management, and security.
The management experience is built around VCF Operations throughout. From navigating the redesigned console and verifying its integration with the management domain, to licensing, identity, password management, and security posture — you learn to run the fleet the way it is actually operated in 9.1.
Course outline
Twelve modules over five days:
- Course Introduction
- VCF Private Cloud: Overview and Architecture
- VCF Private Cloud Deployment
- VCF Post-Deployment Tasks
- VCF Fleet Management
- VCF Workload Domain
- VCF Networking
- VCF Storage Management
- VCF Certificate Management
- VCF Life Cycle Management
- VCF Security
- VCF Upgrade Paths
Thirty-one hands-on labs
The lab kit follows the lecture flow with 31 exercises, a mix of live labs and guided simulations. You deploy VCF with the Quick Installer, manage the environment through the VCF Operations UI, deploy the VCF Operations for Logs appliance, configure Single Sign-On and assign permissions to SSO users, and manage passwords across the fleet.
The workload domain module is particularly complete: commissioning hosts, creating a workload domain — including one without a vSphere cluster and one with the Supervisor — adding ESX hosts, assigning licenses, and importing an existing vCenter as a workload domain using VCF Operations.
A few more highlights:
- Modern VCF networking — the VPC consumption model with hands-on labs for configuring a Distributed Transit Gateway, creating distributed and centralized Virtual Private Clouds, deploying a VNA cluster with connectivity profiles, and building an Edge cluster with a Tier-0 gateway from vCenter.
- vSAN storage — reviewing the workload domain vSAN cluster, analyzing VM object and component placement, running vSAN health tests, and creating and applying storage policies.
- Platform operations — implementing certificates, configuring backups, and optional labs on the VCF APIs and SoS commands.
- Security and compliance — the integrated security features across all layers of VCF, and security management from VCF Operations.
- Upgrade paths — every supported route to 9.1, including vSphere 8.0 to VCF 9.1, vSphere with multiple Aria components, and VCF 5.x with multiple Aria components.
Who should attend
This course is aimed at administrators, engineers, and architects who are new to VMware Cloud Foundation or moving up to 9.1, with working experience of vSphere as the recommended starting point. It is also the prerequisite for the rest of the 9.1 curriculum — the What's New, Automate and Operate, and Troubleshooting courses all build on it — and it aligns with the upcoming VCP-VCF 9.1 Administrator certification.
Final thoughts
If you are building your VCF 9.1 skills from the ground up, this is the course to start with. It covers the full journey from bare hosts to a secured, workload-ready private cloud, and the 31 labs make sure you have actually done everything you have learned. The course will be released shortly through Learning@Broadcom — keep an eye on this blog for scheduling details.
