Software Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) is revolutionizing the way businesses connect their offices and data centers, offering greater agility, flexibility, and cost savings compared to traditional WAN architectures.
SD-WAN enables organizations to optimize their network performance, improve security, and seamlessly integrate cloud applications.
Mastering SD-WAN can open doors to exciting career opportunities in network engineering and IT, allowing you to design, deploy, and manage these cutting-edge networks.
Finding the right SD-WAN course on Udemy can feel like navigating a maze.
You’re looking for a course that’s comprehensive, practical, and taught by experts, but also fits your specific needs and learning style.
You want to ensure that the course covers the latest SD-WAN technologies, includes hands-on labs, and prepares you for real-world challenges.
For the best SD-WAN course overall on Udemy, we recommend SD-WAN Zero to Hero Training.
This comprehensive course dives deep into the fundamentals of SD-WAN, covering topics like Cisco’s Viptela solution, policy configuration, cloud integration, and automation.
The course includes numerous hands-on labs that allow you to apply your knowledge in practical scenarios.
This makes it an excellent choice for network engineers looking to gain a solid understanding of SD-WAN and master the latest technologies.
This is just the beginning of our journey through the best SD-WAN courses on Udemy.
Keep reading for more tailored recommendations based on your specific needs, from beginner-friendly introductions to advanced courses focused on specific vendors, certifications, and deployment scenarios.
SD-WAN Zero to Hero Training
You’ll start by understanding the challenges of traditional WAN architectures and the need for SD-WAN solutions.
The course then dives into the fundamentals of SD-WAN, including Cisco’s Viptela solution and its components like vManage, vSmart, and vEdge devices.
One of the key focuses is on the configuration and deployment of SD-WAN using Cisco’s tools like vManage and templates.
You’ll learn how to bring up the control and data planes, configure devices using feature and CLI templates, and verify the setup.
The course also covers the Overlay Management Protocol (OMP) and its role in establishing secure tunnels (TLOCs) between SD-WAN devices.
A significant portion is dedicated to SD-WAN policies, which are the heart of traffic management in SD-WAN.
You’ll learn about policy architecture, building blocks, and how policies are executed and applied.
Through lab examples, you’ll practice creating multi-topology, service insertion, data center priority, and extranet policies, as well as data policies for path control and application-aware routing.
The course also explores SD-WAN optimization techniques like Cloud Express, vAnalytics, and integration with Zscaler for security services.
Additionally, you’ll learn about migrating from a traditional IWAN (Intelligent WAN) architecture to SD-WAN, including hands-on labs for migration planning and execution.
Security is another key aspect covered, with topics like SD-WAN security challenges, threat defense, secure infrastructure, device identity, and packet flow through firewalls, DNS, and IPS.
You’ll also learn about container architecture and installation for security components.
Finally, the course touches on SD-WAN automation using Python, covering data types, functions, loops, error handling, and integrating with the SD-WAN API to automate configuration and monitoring tasks.
Cisco SD-WAN (Viptela) with Lab Access
You’ll start by understanding the challenges that SD-WAN aims to address and the solution elements it offers.
The course then dives into the secure control plane and data plane of Cisco’s SD-WAN implementation.
It explains how OMP, the proprietary protocol, facilitates communication between SD-WAN components.
One of the course’s strengths is its focus on practical aspects like SD-WAN templates and policies.
You’ll learn how to configure and apply policies to manage traffic and enforce security rules across your SD-WAN fabric.
Practical examples and demonstrations make it easier to grasp these concepts.
Troubleshooting is another critical area covered, equipping you with the skills to identify and resolve issues in your SD-WAN deployment.
The course also introduces vAnalytics, Cisco’s analytics platform for monitoring and optimizing SD-WAN performance.
Beyond the core topics, you’ll explore the SD-WAN API, which allows programmatic control and automation of your SD-WAN infrastructure.
The course even covers zero-touch provisioning, enabling you to streamline the deployment of new SD-WAN sites.
With lab access included, you can gain hands-on experience configuring and managing a Cisco SD-WAN environment, reinforcing the theoretical concepts learned throughout the course.
CCNP Enterprise -300-415 ENSDWI : Implementing Cisco SD-WAN
This course provides comprehensive training on implementing Cisco’s SD-WAN solution in a live network environment.
You will learn how to design, deploy, configure, and manage the SD-WAN overlay network.
The course starts by introducing the SD-WAN architecture, components like vManage, vSmart, vEdge, and key concepts such as TLOCs and OMP.
You will gain hands-on experience deploying the SD-WAN controllers, both in the cloud and on-premises.
This includes steps like setting up the hypervisor, configuring VPNs and static routes, managing certificates and white-listing, and ensuring controller redundancy.
The focus then shifts to onboarding WAN edge routers using Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP) and device templates via the vManage dashboard.
You’ll learn to create feature templates, CLI templates with variables, and plan the template strategy.
Routing is a core aspect, covering TLOC extensions, VRRP, OSPF, and BGP configuration for service-side and transport-side connectivity.
The course dives deep into SD-WAN policies, including control policies for traffic engineering, data policies for QoS, and app-aware routing policies.
Direct Internet Access (DIA) design options like single/dual-router and hybrid models are explored, along with NAT DIA route configuration.
Security is emphasized through topics like secure control/data plane, service chaining, firewall policies, IPS, and DNS integration.
Monitoring and operations are also covered, utilizing tools like vAnalytics and APIs for visibility and automation.
You’ll learn the image upgrade process and get exposure to the latest code updates.
Cisco SD-WAN Viptela Course
The course begins with an overview of SD-WAN concepts, different vendors, components, and architectures.
You’ll learn about key elements like vManage, vSmart, vEdge, cEdge, and VPNs in the Viptela SD-WAN solution.
From there, you’ll dive into hands-on labs walking you through setting up the various components.
You’ll configure IP addressing, routing protocols, vManage (CLI and GUI), vBond, vSmart, WAN edges (vEdge and cEdge), and integrate them all together.
A major focus is on using vManage templates to streamline configuration across multiple devices.
You’ll create templates for system features, VPNs, interfaces, routing protocols like OSPF, banners, and full device templates that tie everything together.
The course covers critical SD-WAN features like TLOC (Transport Location) advertisements, control connections (DTLS/TLS), data plane security with IPsec, color restrict options, and traffic simulation in the vManage GUI.
You’ll learn how to implement policies for hub-and-spoke topologies, IP reachability, TLOC preferences, and traffic engineering via intermediate routers.
Other advanced topics include OMP (Overlay Management Protocol) preferences, VPN membership, service chaining, route leaking, Cisco DIA (Direct Internet Access) with and without traffic policies, and NAT DIA fallback/tracker functionality.
To facilitate the labs, you’ll learn how to set up the EVE-NG emulation environment on bare metal servers or VMware ESXi hypervisors and add necessary images like Cisco’s IOS and Viptela SD-WAN components.
Cisco SD-WAN Viptela - POLICY | CLOUD | TSHOOT
You’ll start by learning how to convert CLI configurations to feature templates, setting up VRRP and TLOC-EXT.
The course then dives into vSmart policies, covering policy architecture, building blocks, execution, and implementation with labs.
Data policies are explored in detail, including service chaining, NAT exit, and VPN membership.
App-aware routing is another key focus area, with sessions on policy configuration, implementation, verification, and basic troubleshooting using BFD to track SLA classes.
High availability and scalability are addressed through topics like vManage NMS redundancy, vSmart and vEdge controller redundancy, failure recovery, and using affinity to scale the network.
Cloud integration is covered with Cloud-Express and TCP optimization.
The course equips you with monitoring and analytics skills through vAnalytics, covering its features in-depth.
Security aspects like Zscaler integration and IPSEC VPN connections are also explored.
Troubleshooting is a vital component, with dedicated modules on debugging the control plane (vdaemon), data plane (transport events, OMP), transport VPN failures, and extranet issues.
You’ll learn to use vManage dashboard troubleshooting options and CLI tools.
Other key areas include BGP configuration and route preference, TLOC preference, route filters, VPN limits, ZTP troubleshooting, and understanding the role of various components like vSmart, controllers, and Viptela in the SD-WAN solution.
Complete Teaching of Cisco SD-WAN ( ENSDWI 300-415 )
The course covers everything you need to design, deploy, configure, and manage a Cisco SD-WAN solution.
You’ll learn how to migrate from a legacy WAN to SD-WAN, following best practices for configuring routing protocols and implementing advanced policies.
The course dives into SD-WAN deployment and migration options, showing you how to place controllers and deploy WAN Edge devices.
You’ll learn to configure Direct Internet Access (DIA) breakout and explore Cisco’s SD-WAN security features like firewalls, intrusion prevention, URL filtering, malware protection, and secure internet gateways.
With hands-on labs using Cisco vEdge Cloud routers, you’ll gain practical experience.
The course prepares you for the Implementing Cisco SD-WAN Solutions (300-415 ENSDWI) exam, part of the CCNP Enterprise certification.
You will learn to establish a transport-independent WAN for lower costs and flexibility, meet SLAs for critical applications, secure enterprise resources, extend into public clouds, and optimize SaaS application experiences.
The syllabus covers key SD-WAN concepts like overlay routing with OMP, TLOCs, service routes, and path selection.
You’ll understand network segmentation, encryption, NAT traversal, controller authentication, and more.
The course teaches both CLI and template-based configurations for setting up sites, policies, and use cases like isolating branches, regional preferences, service insertion, extranets, and direct internet access.
Fortinet NSE7 SD-WAN Training
You’ll start with an introduction to SD-WAN, its components, design principles, and architectures.
The course then dives into key concepts like equal cost multipath (ECMP) and policy routing through hands-on labs.
Moving forward, you’ll learn how to configure and manage SD-WAN through the GUI, CLI, and FortiManager.
This includes setting up SD-WAN rules, load balancing methods, and performance SLAs.
The course also covers advanced topics like VPNs, cryptography, and auto-discovery VPN (ADVPN) with redundant site-to-site VPN labs.
You’ll gain practical experience by setting up SD-WAN labs in EVE-NG, configuring firewalls, and working with loopback interfaces, policies, and static routes.
The course covers essential networking concepts like symmetric and asymmetric encryption, hashing algorithms, and the Diffie-Hellman key exchange.
Throughout the course, you’ll work with real-world scenarios, configuring SD-WAN on FortiGate firewalls and monitoring the setup through FortiManager.
You’ll learn how to migrate interfaces to SD-WAN, set source loopback IP addresses, and perform custom performance SLA testing.
Cisco Viptela SD-WAN Training
You’ll start by learning about Software Defined Networking (SDN) concepts and how Cisco’s SD-WAN solution fits into that space.
The course then dives into the practical aspects of setting up a Cisco SD-WAN lab environment using EVE-NG and VMware Workstation Pro.
You’ll learn how to install and configure various components like vManage, vBond, vSmart, and cEdge routers.
A significant portion of the course focuses on bootstrapping and certificate management for the different SD-WAN components.
You’ll configure vEdge and cEdge devices, upload device lists, and learn how to use Cisco’s templates for feature and device configurations.
The course also covers integrating supporting infrastructure like Active Directory, DNS, CA, and NTP servers with the SD-WAN environment.
You’ll learn how to configure and verify these services, which are crucial for a production deployment.
Once the lab setup is complete, you’ll explore the vManage dashboard and learn how to monitor and troubleshoot your SD-WAN network.
This practical experience will be invaluable when working with real-world SD-WAN deployments.
You’ll gain hands-on experience with setting up and configuring all the necessary components, making it an excellent choice for anyone interested in learning about this cutting-edge networking solution.
CCNP Enterprise :Cisco SD-WAN Solutions(300-415 ENSDWI)+LAB
The course dives deep into designing, deploying, configuring, and managing a Cisco Software-Defined WAN (SD-WAN) solution in a live network environment.
You’ll start by learning the SD-WAN architecture, including the Overlay Management Protocol (OMP) that handles control plane communication.
Then, you’ll explore different deployment options like on-premises or using an enterprise certificate authority.
The course covers deploying vEdge and cEdge devices, leveraging Zero-Touch Provisioning for easy rollouts.
Configuring the routing protocols like OSPF and BGP across the data center and branches is a key focus area.
You’ll also learn to implement advanced control policies for features like multi-topology, route filtering, and hub-spoke architectures.
On the data plane side, you’ll configure policies for traffic engineering, firewalls, QoS, and Application-Aware Routing (AAR) to optimize application performance.
High availability and redundancy are crucial, so you’ll learn techniques like BFD, TLOC extensions for path redundancy, and providing site redundancy.
Transitioning from legacy WANs is covered too, with lessons on hybrid scenarios and migration steps.
The hands-on labs let you practice everything from vManage dashboard operations to configuring devices via templates.
You’ll implement routing protocols, control policies, app-aware routing, and test redundancy scenarios in a virtual SD-WAN environment.
Cisco SD-WAN Operation and Deployment (ENSDW)
You will learn how to create, manage, and operate a secure extensible network using Cisco’s SD-WAN products.
The course covers configuring, operating, and monitoring overlay routing in this network, as well as policies and Quality of Service (QoS) in the SD-WAN overlay.
Cisco’s SD-WAN solution is a cloud-delivered overlay WAN architecture that facilitates digital and cloud transformation for enterprises.
It significantly reduces WAN costs and accelerates deploying new services.
With Cisco SD-WAN, you can build a robust security architecture crucial for hybrid networks and a strong policy framework.
The course starts by introducing the SD-WAN solution components, including vEdge routers and the vSmart controller.
You’ll learn how to deploy these components in a secure extensible network and manage them effectively.
The course then dives into using templates to streamline the deployment and operation of the network.
A significant portion is dedicated to overlay routing, covering key protocols like OMP, OSPF, and BGP.
You’ll learn how to configure and verify these protocols, as well as implement network segmentation using VPNs.
This allows you to meet SLAs for business-critical and real-time applications while protecting critical enterprise resources.
The course also covers the SD-WAN policy framework and QoS.
You’ll learn how to create policies to control traffic flow and optimize the user experience, including for SaaS applications.
Configuring and monitoring QoS forwarding is also covered in-depth.
Finally, you’ll learn about day “N” monitoring and troubleshooting techniques, such as checking the health status of vEdge routers and troubleshooting control connections.
You’ll be able to extend seamlessly into the public cloud while meeting application performance requirements.