2V0-17.25 VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Administrator Questions and Answers

TheVCF Automation Costing and Pricing Guideexplains:

“Define core costs for CPU, memory, and storage under Base Settings to apply fleet-wide.” (A)

“Mark the created policy as the default to ensure it applies globally.” (B)

For SAP HANA, “Create an exception policy under Base Settings with VM setup charges assigned to the SAP HANA cluster.” (E)Default Policy (C, F) is system-reserved. Sub-policies under “Resources” (D) are not valid. Correct configuration steps:A, B, E.

TheVCF Automation documentationdefines its primary use cases as:

Self-Service Catalog– “VCF Automation Service Broker provides a catalog for developers and operators to request services and blueprints.”

Application Dependency Mapping– achieved through integration with VCF Operations for Networks. The guide highlights: “Developers can discover application relationships and map dependencies through automated workflows in VCF Automation.”Alerting (A) is handled by VCF Operations, not Automation. VPC implementation (B) and Private AI (D) are supported solutions but not direct Automation use cases. Therefore, the correct answers areC (Self-Service Catalog)andE (Application Dependency Mapping).

The VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 networking design documentation specifies that container workloads running on VMware Kubernetes Service (VKS) with NSX networking require external connectivity via a Centralized Connectivity model. This is implemented using an NSX Tier-0 (T0) Gateway which provides north-south routing to the corporate physical network.

The guide states:“In VKS deployments backed by NSX networking, workloads achieve external reachability through a centralized Tier-0 Gateway, ensuring integration with corporate networking and enterprise services.”This model ensures traffic consolidation, policy enforcement, and simplified routing for Kubernetes workloads.

Round-robin Connectivity is not a supported NSX gateway connectivity model.

Distributed Connectivity refers to east-west NSX overlay communication, not north-south connectivity.

Physical Connectivity is not precise, as workloads do not connect directly to the physical network; instead, they use logical routing.

Centralized Connectivity is the correct model, where the T0 Gateway centralizes external routing for container workloads.

TheVCF 9.0 Kubernetes Service documentationconfirms thatAntreais the default CNI used for VMware Kubernetes Service (VKS) workload clusters.

“When deploying a new VKS workload cluster, the Antrea Container Networking Interface is automatically enabled by default to provide pod-to-pod and pod-to-service networking. Antrea is fully integrated with NSX-T for advanced policy control.”

Flannel, Calico, and Cilium are widely used CNIs in upstream Kubernetes but are not the default in VCF. Administrators can optionally integrate with third-party CNIs, but the supported default choice isAntrea.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation:

According to the VCF Automation 9.0 Guide, project creation requires administrative login at the tenant level: “To create a new project, log in as a Project Administrator of that tenant.” . After creation, projects must be mapped to Cloud Zones to determine compute placement. The document also emphasizes: “For scalable user management, assign groups from Active Directory to roles within projects rather than individual users.” This reduces management overhead as new members join.

Namespaces are not mandatory unless Kubernetes Supervisor is being integrated, which is not required in this scenario. Likewise, logging in as an Organization Administrator (F) is not needed for tenant-level project creation. Therefore, the correct steps are: Log in as Project Admin (A), Create a Project (D), Assign a Cloud Zone (B), and Use Active Directory Groups for membership (G). This ensures minimal ongoing administrative effort.

According to theVCF 9.0 Container Registry Documentation, Harbor is defined as:

“Harbor is an open source registry that secures artifacts with policies and role-based access control, ensures images are scanned and free from vulnerabilities, and signs images as trusted.”

This description aligns exactly with option A. Harbor is not Bitnami (B), though it integrates with open-source images. It includes vulnerability scanning but is not only an image scanner (C). It does not require GitHub as a source (D); Harbor can integrate with multiple registries.

Therefore, Harbor’s primary role within VCF is to act as asecure image registry with RBAC, scanning, and signing capabilities.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation:

The VCF Operations 9.0 Monitoring Guide specifies: “For any alert definition to be active in the environment, it must be associated with and enabled in an Active Policy.” . Creating symptom and alert definitions only defines conditions; they do not generate alerts until policies include them. REST notification plugins or payload templates are used for outbound integrations, not for enabling alerts. A super metric is only needed for custom composite KPIs, not for native read latency which is a standard metric already available. Therefore, the required step is to enable the alert in an Active Policy so that when the symptom triggers (latency > 1 ms), the alert activates.

TheVCF 9.0 Resource Policy Guidedescribes IaaS Resource Policies as mechanisms to enforce deployment rules for Supervisor-based Kubernetes clusters.

For theproduction project, only Kubernetes resources are allowed, so administrators mustdisallow VM deployments(A).

To tolerate asingle control plane node failure, production clusters should usemulti-control-plane node templates, ensuring availability (B).

In thedevelopment project, resources should be minimized, so asingle-control-plane node policyis enforced (D), which reduces overhead.

Incorrect options:

Organization-wide policies (C and F) would apply to both projects, which is not desired since dev and prod have different requirements.

Enforcing single-control-plane nodes in production (E) contradicts the requirement for failure tolerance.

Thus, the correct approach is:Disallow VMs in production, enforce multi-control-plane clusters in production, and enforce single-control-plane clusters in development.

The documentation clarifies the scenario when a password is changedoutsideof VCF Operations: “When an error occurs, for example after a password expires, you must manually reset the password in the component product. After you reset the password in a component, you must remediate the password in VCF Operations.” “Password Rotation” is different—it “allows you to orchestrate the rotation” of stored credentials (a planned, VCF-driven change), not reconcile an externally altered password. Therefore, after the direct password change in vCenter, the correct recovery step in VCF Operations is to useRemediate passwordto synchronize credentials and restore management from VCF Operations.

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Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation:

The Istio integration in VCF 9.0 defines two main logical groupings for organizing workloads within a service mesh: Cluster groups and Service groups. The documentation notes: “Cluster groups allow you to organize and manage objects across different Kubernetes clusters. Service groups let you aggregate and manage services that share common policies, routing rules, or observability requirements.” .

These groups enable administrators to apply consistent service mesh policies across multiple deployments and clusters. They also simplify administration by centralizing traffic management, routing, and observability of workloads. Security, API, and Node are not Istio-specific grouping constructs but instead are other concepts used elsewhere (e.g., security policies, API endpoints, node objects in Kubernetes). Therefore, the correct group types used in Istio Service Mesh are Cluster and Service groups.

To create a VLAN segment in NSX, you must create it in a VLANtransport zoneand provide aVLAN ID. The NSX documentation states you “set up VLAN transport zones to… connect VLAN segments,” and when creating a VLAN-backed segment you select the VLAN transport zone. The segment creation flow shows “Segment Type: VLAN” with required “VLAN ID” entry and transport zone selection; gateways are not required to merely create a L2 segment. Default gateway IP and Tier-1 attachment are applicable for routed (overlay/T1) use cases, not mandatory for a basic VLAN L2 network; segment profiles can be applied but are not required to create the segment. Thus, the two required actions are selecting theVLAN transport zoneand specifying theVLAN ID.

In VCF 9.x, air-gapped bring-up requires staging therequired binariesin the VCF Installer. The documented list explicitly includesNSXandVCF Operationsamong the components to upload. The product guide states: “VMware Cloud Foundation required binariesinclude…NSX…VMware Cloud Foundation Operations… vCenter … SDDC Manager…” (exact list excerpt). This list doesnotcall for ESX images or the legacy “Lifecycle Manager.”

Therefore, from the given options the two binaries that must be uploaded areNSXandVCF Operations. ESX is pre-imaged on hosts per preparation guidance and is not a required VCF Installer binary; “Lifecycle Manager” is not used in VCF 9.0 bring-up.

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TheVCF 9.0 Upgrade Documentationclearly outlines a staged upgrade sequence: “The upgrade to VCF 9.0 begins with the SDDC Manager upgrade. Only after SDDC Manager is upgraded to 9.0 are the other component bundles (vCenter, ESXi, NSX, Operations) made available for download and application.”

This design ensures SDDC Manager is compatible with the lifecycle operations required for the rest of the environment. If SDDC Manager is not upgraded first, it cannot process or display other bundles. Offline repositories (A), proxy servers (B), or ASYNC tools (C) do not affect the bundle visibility order. Therefore, the correct answer isD. SDDC Manager must be upgraded first.

TheVCF Operations for Networks (formerly vRNI)enablesApplication Discovery and Network Visibility. According to VCF 9.0: “Operations for Networks provides flow-based application discovery, dependency mapping, and security planning. This allows administrators to visualize application topology and relationships across the VCF fleet.” By contrast, VCF Operations for Logs provides log aggregation, while the Collector provides integration for metrics, not discovery. The vSphere Supervisor enables Kubernetes workloads, not application discovery. Therefore, to achieveService and Application Discovery, administrators must deployVCF Operations for Networks.

TheVCF 9.0 Architecture Guideoutlines validprincipal storage optionsfor the management domain. It states: “The management domain must be deployed using vSAN, NFS, or Fibre Channel (FC). Supported protocols include NFSv3 and VMFS on FC.” vSAN (including OSA) is the default recommended option, but NFSv3 and VMFS on FC are also supported for environments where external storage arrays are required.

NVMe/TCP and vVols arenot supportedfor the initial management domain’s principal storage. vVols may be used in workload domains after deployment, but they are not a supported foundation for the management domain. Therefore, the three correct storage solutions for the first management workload domain are:VMFS on FC, NFSv3, and vSAN OSA.