VMware training in 2026: the official course before each VCP and VCAP exam, and how to book it

VMware training in 2026: the official courses for VCF and VVF 9

For VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9 and VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) 9, Broadcom’s exam guides name the official courses recommended before each exam. As of 6 October 2026, the five VCP guides for version 9.0 point to five courses whose titles begin with “VMware Cloud Foundation”: Build, Manage, and Secure; Build, Manage, and Operate; Automation and Operations; Solution Architecture and Design; and Troubleshooting. Above them, the VCAP guides point to Advanced Design, Advanced Configuration and Advanced Troubleshooting courses in six domains, from compute and storage to vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS).

Broadcom offers these courses in Learning@Broadcom, the learning platform that opens from the Broadcom Support Portal. Broadcom’s instructions of 2024 sent customers without VCF to its authorised learning partners. The guides list the courses as recommended; what the certification itself requires, and how the exams run, is in our guide to VMware certification paths. Below, course titles drop the “VMware Cloud Foundation” prefix where the context makes it clear.

Which official course before which VMware exam

Each exam guide on docs.broadcom.com lists the courses Broadcom recommends for that exam. The table collects them for the VCP level and for the VCAP level, whose role-based guides carry the date 18 August 2026.

Broadcom exam guides on docs.broadcom.com, read on 6 October 2026: VCP-VCF Administrator updated 23 April 2026, the other VCP guides 15 August 2025, the role-based VCAP guides 18 August 2026, the operations, VKS, automation and networking VCAP guides November and December 2025.

The VCF Administrator guide, updated on 23 April 2026, names Build, Manage, and Secure, while the VVF guide, last updated on 15 August 2025, names Build, Manage, and Operate. We found no Broadcom document that compares the two outlines, so read both before you choose. The VVF guide lists VCF Operations among the components a candidate should know, but not VCF Automation, so ask which parts of Automation and Operations apply to a VVF estate. What VCF adds to VVF, component by component, is set out in our comparison of VVF and VCF.

Above VCP, the courses are organised by domain and by role. Each of the six domains has an Advanced Design, an Advanced Configuration and an Advanced Troubleshooting course. A role-based VCAP guide recommends one of these variants in all six domains, and a domain VCAP guide recommends the three variants of its own domain. The networking guide marks its courses with the version tag V9, and the VKS guide lists VKS Advanced Design, VKS Advanced Configuration and VKS Advanced Troubleshooting. Compute has no domain VCAP among the five that Broadcom’s VCF blog linked on 29 July 2026 (VKS, automation, operations, storage and networking), so among the guides we read its Advanced courses appear only in the role-based ones. A post on Broadcom’s VCF blog of 13 August 2026 lists a fourth VKS course on Learning@Broadcom, VKS Configure and Consume.

vSphere training and the Install, Configure, Manage course

None of the five VCP guides for version 9.0 recommends a course titled VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage, and neither do the VCAP guides we read. For the vSphere side of version 9, the nearest exam is VCP-VVF Administrator. Its candidate “can deploy, configure, and manage” a VVF-based solution for virtual machine and Supervisor workloads, and its guide recommends Build, Manage, and Operate with Automation and Operations. If a provider still offers a course under the Install, Configure, Manage title, ask which vSphere version it teaches and which exam it prepares for.

For a team that runs vSphere 8 today, plan the version 9 course for the months in which the upgrade runs, so the team uses what it learns straight away. In the Hands-on Labs catalogue, HOL-2704-05-VCF-S is the 9.1 replacement for the 9.0 lab on upgrading from vSphere 8, according to Broadcom’s Hands-on Labs blog. The support dates that set the timetable are in our guide to the vSphere 8 end of general support.

Booking official courses: Learning@Broadcom and authorised partners

Broadcom moved VMware Digital Learning and MyLearn to Learning@Broadcom on 6 May 2024, and its announcement said every user needs a Broadcom account to reach the new platform. Learning@Broadcom opens from the Broadcom Support Portal, whose Education Portal offers “instructor and self-paced product training offerings” as of 6 October 2026. The VKS post of 13 August 2026 on Broadcom’s VCF blog tells readers to log in there, under the Education Portal, for its VKS courses.

Which route applies depends on your contract. A VCF blog post of 29 July 2026 says that “VCF Full Platform customers and eligible Partners can launch their training journey right now via the Broadcom Support Portal”, and it counts strategic accounts among those who qualify for a VCF Learning Entitlement; the post does not list what the entitlement includes, and it does not mention VVF customers. For customers without VCF, the latest instruction we found dates from 29 August 2024: “Non-VCF Customers and Partners, please contact one of our VCF Authorized Learning Partners if you are interested in taking VCF training.” Broadcom’s 2024 guide to accessing VCF digital content, on docs.broadcom.com, names two subscriptions, VMware Cloud Foundation ELS and VMware Cloud Foundation Digital Learning Subscription, through which qualifying customers and partners access digital courses and register for instructor-led open enrolment courses in the same platform.

Instructor-led, on demand and the length of a course

Official training comes in both formats, and Broadcom’s VCF blog of July 2026 describes the range as “expert-led sessions to targeted on-demand courses”. Broadcom’s datasheet for the VMware Enterprise Learning Subscription (copyright 2024) lists “All VCF On Demand courses and associated Labs” and two VCF exam vouchers per subscriber, so in that subscription the on-demand courses come with their labs. We found no 2026 Broadcom document that names this subscription; the datasheet sends buyers to their VCF account representative, so ask the representative whether it is still sold before you plan with it.

Course lengths appear in the instructor-led catalogues that Broadcom publishes on docs.broadcom.com for some of its product lines. The catalogue for Application Networking and Security, dated June 2026, lists VMware vDefend for VCF 9.0 and VMware Avi Load Balancer: Plan, Configure, Troubleshoot R1 as five-day instructor-led courses; the firewall products the vDefend course teaches are covered in our guide to the NSX distributed firewall and vDefend. We found no such Broadcom catalogue for the VCF courses in the table above, so ask each provider for the length in days and for the share of it spent in the lab.

Hands-on Labs for VCF 9.1 and a lab for the 9.0 exams

VMware Hands-on Labs run in the browser, with no nested deployment to build, and Broadcom’s Hands-on Labs blog announced on 21 September 2026 that the catalogue “has been updated to feature VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.1”. The VCF 9.0 labs of the HOL-26xx series are being deprecated and replaced by the HOL-27xx series, so lab codes in older study plans no longer match. The table lists nine of the replacements by topic.

VMware Hands-on Labs blog, “The Next Generation of Hands-on Labs”, 21 September 2026; topics shortened from the titles of the 9.0 labs.

The VCP guides are written for 9.0, so the 9.1 labs show a newer release than the exam. For practice on 9.0 itself, Holodeck, the toolkit on VMware’s GitHub pages, deploys nested VCF 9.0 or 9.1, and VVF from 9.0, on an ESX host or a vSphere cluster. Its documentation states that Holodeck 9.x “is not a VMware supported product”, and our certification guide sets out the resources it needs.

What to ask a VMware training provider

Start by asking which release the course and its labs run and which exam guide its outline follows, because the VCP guides are written for 9.0, and Broadcom announced on 21 September 2026 that the Hands-on Labs now feature 9.1. A course under the title in the exam guide is the one Broadcom recommends for that exam; a provider’s own programme can still suit a team, but it is a different product, and the offer should say which of the two you are buying.

On the lab, the useful questions are whether each participant gets an environment of their own, whether it runs nested or on physical hosts, whether participants may break and rebuild it, and how long access lasts after the course. About the instructor, ask which VCF 9 projects they have delivered and whether they hold VCF VCI status; the FAQ of Broadcom’s VCF VCI programme, of June 2024, requires a VCI to earn a VCP and, in developed countries, to teach at least 30 days per calendar year. Agree the length in days, the format (classroom, live online or on your site) and the course language, and ask what the course adds for the exam, such as mock exams or a review against the guide’s objectives.

Our authorised VMware courses run official vSphere, vSAN and NSX programmes on current product versions, and each participant works in a live lab environment. Send us the course titles you are comparing and the release your team runs.

Official course, tailored programme or training after a project

An official course follows Broadcom’s outline and suits a team that meets a platform for the first time or prepares for the exam its guide names. A team with years on vSphere often needs targeted preparation for one exam rather than a full course, which is why our certification training starts with a short assessment of the team’s level. A tailored programme starts from the tasks your team handles, such as virtualisation, backup, security or cloud; for a vSphere cluster that is to carry GPUs, it can take in the vGPU and MIG profiles and licences set out in our guide to MIG and vGPU.

Training within a project is the third route. After an implementation, we train the team to work with the new infrastructure, so the knowledge is handed over together with the system and its documentation; where a VMware upgrade or a move to VCF is planned, the course can follow that work in the same project.

In the first call we clarify your team’s level, goals and timelines, and you leave with a draft training programme. Describe your platform and the roles in your team in the form below.

What we do

Eurokommerz holds the contract, and our engineering partner Vixen.UNO delivers the training from its training centre, with one Eurokommerz project lead as your point of contact. Our certification training covers authorised VMware courses on official vSphere, vSAN and NSX programmes from an authorised trainer, tailored programmes built from your team’s tasks, and certification preparation with exam-focused review, mock exams and a study plan for VCP, VCAP and other vendor exams. Labs run in the Vixen.UNO training centre’s own data centre, where each participant deploys, breaks and restores a live environment, and they are available remotely whether the training runs online, on your site or blended. Every participant receives a course completion certificate, the exam itself is taken in the vendor’s system, and after an implementation under VMware optimisation we train the team on the new infrastructure. The first call is free of charge, and the price is fixed before the training starts.

FAQ