VCP-VCF study plan

Draw the VCF stack from physical hosts upward, labeling SDDC Manager, vCenter, NSX Manager, vSAN, and the Aria Suite components and how each connects to the others.

Distinguish the management domain from workload domains, and list which components are mandatory in each.

Explain what SDDC Manager owns versus what vCenter and NSX Manager own, and give two tasks that must be done in each place.

Identify the VLAN/IP requirements for management, vSAN, vMotion, and NSX overlay traffic, and explain why MTU matters for the overlay.

Describe how network pools and IP address pools are consumed during domain creation.

Assemble a greenfield prerequisites checklist covering DNS, NTP, VLANs, MTU, IP pools, hostnames, and credentials.

Sequence the bring-up workflow from deploying the SDDC Manager appliance through commissioning the first hosts, stating the entry and exit condition of each step.

List the host commissioning validation checks and explain what each one verifies.

Describe how to create a network pool and predict what breaks in domain deployment if the pool is misconfigured.

Deploy a management domain end to end in a lab and record the decision made at each screen and why.

Create a VI workload domain and confirm the resulting objects appear in vCenter and NSX Manager.

Attach a workload domain to the correct network pool and verify the assigned addresses and VLANs.

Run SDDC Manager health checks after each deployment and resolve any flagged warnings before moving on.

Configure SDDC Manager user accounts and roles, and issue an API token to run at least three read operations.

Execute a certificate replacement for one management component and verify trust from every dependent component.

Configure and run a password rotation on a non-critical account, then confirm dependent services still authenticate.

Back up SDDC Manager and vCenter configuration and write down the restore sequence.

Read domain health from three sources (SDDC Manager dashboard, Aria Operations alerts, vSAN health) and reconcile any disagreement between them.

Add a host to a workload domain, expand vSAN capacity, and verify rebalancing completed.

Decommission a host using the documented removal sequence and confirm no orphaned objects remain.

Produce a scale-out recommendation from capacity and consumption data for a growing environment.

Write out the supported upgrade order of VCF components for your target version and cite where the release documentation defines it.

Run the SDDC Manager pre-upgrade checks and classify each failure type with its typical remedy.

Download and stage a patch bundle through the lifecycle bundle workflow and confirm its applicability to the environment.

Identify every interoperability dependency that must be verified before an upgrade and list the rollback points in the plan.

Diagnose a failed workload domain deployment using SDDC Manager logs and the support bundle collection workflow.

Troubleshoot a certificate trust or expiry failure and restore communication between components.

Isolate a root cause from vSAN and NSX health errors without changing unrelated settings.

Execute a recovery or rollback after a failed upgrade in a lab and confirm the environment returns to a known-good state.

Complete a timed 60-question mixed practice set covering all four domains and score the result by domain.

Re-study the two lowest-scoring objectives until you can explain each without notes.

Recite from memory the component map, the domain split, and the upgrade order without referring to your week 1 and week 6 artifacts.

Compress the numbers, limits, and sequences you keep missing into a one-page exam-day sheet.