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

In Kubernetes RBAC, ClusterRoleBinding is the mechanism for granting permissions to resources that are not namespace-scoped. The documentation integrated into VCF 9.0 explains: “ClusterRoleBinding binds a user, group, or service account to a ClusterRole, granting cluster-wide permissions to non-namespaced resources such as nodes, storage classes, or persistent volumes.”

A RoleBinding grants access to namespace-scoped resources. RoleReference is a field within a RoleBinding/ClusterRoleBinding object, not a standalone object. ClusterRoleAccess is not a valid Kubernetes construct.

Thus, to assign permissions at a cluster-wide level, the correct object is ClusterRoleBinding.

In VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0, the VCF Fleet Disaster Recovery Design Model explicitly requires deployment of VMware Live Recovery (VLR) to provide:

Cross-instance disaster recovery

Site pairing between regions

Protection of management and workload domains

Orchestrated failover and failback

From the VCF 9.0 Fleet Architecture documentation:

“To implement a Fleet-level disaster recovery model across multiple VCF instances in different regions, deploy VMware Live Recovery to provide orchestration, replication, and recovery operations between paired VCF instances.”

The Fleet DR design requires:

A primary VCF instance (Region A)

A secondary VCF instance (Region B)

VMware Live Recovery to manage DR workflows across instances

Other options are incorrect:

DSM – Provides database-as-a-service capabilities, not DR orchestration.

VCF Operations HCX – Used for workload mobility, not DR orchestration.

VCF Operations – Provides monitoring and observability, not DR functionality.

Document reference (VCF 9.0):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 → VCF Fleet Architecture → Disaster Recovery Design Model

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 → VMware Live Recovery Integration with VCF

After configuring SSO in VCF, administrators must assign appropriate roles in the management components to grant elevated privileges.

VCF 9.0 architecture includes these primary management components:

vCenter Server (A) – Manages clusters and VMs.

NSX Manager (B) – Manages networking and security services.

VCF Operations (D) – Provides monitoring and operational visibility.

Roles must be assigned within each of these systems to allow full administrative access.

vSAN (E) and ESX (F) are managed through vCenter, not independently assigned service roles.

VCF Installer (C) is used for deployment and does not require ongoing RBAC assignments for operations.

Therefore, the correct components are vCenter, NSX Manager, and VCF Operations.

VCF 9.0 introduces Log Data Transfer initiated from VCF Operations. The docs say: “You can transfer log data for up to 90 days from Aria Operations for Logs 8.x… The migrated logs are stored in VCF Operations for logs.” and “To transfer logs… navigate to the Logs Data Transfer card in Administration > Control Panel… click the INITIATE TRANSFER button… You can select the duration of logs to transfer…” (emphasis added).

They further clarify that simple forwarding does not transfer already ingested logs: “Forward logs… does not transfer already ingested logs. Transfer historical logs up to 90 days… using the Log Data Transfer feature in VCF Operations.”

Hence, the correct action is to initiate the transfer in VCF Operations (Administration > Control Panel > Logs Data Transfer).

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To enable the visibility of audit events within the VCF Operations interface, the environment must satisfy specific deployment and configuration prerequisites. Without these steps, audit event information will not be populated.

According to the documentation:

Install VCF Operations for Logs (E): If you have not configured VCF Operations, you will not see any information related to audit events. Therefore, you must install VCF Operations for Logs first.

Configure vCenter Server instances in VCF Operations for Logs (D): You must register the vCenter Server instances in VCF Operations for Logs to ensure the management components are sending the necessary log data to the ingestion engine.

Configure VCF Operations for Logs Integration in VCF Operations (F): After you install VCF Operations for Logs, you must configure the VCF Operations for Logs management pack from the Administration > Integrations page in VCF Operations. This includes configuring the VCF Operations for Logs instances which forward logs to the specific VCF Operations for Logs instance that is integrated with VCF Operations.

In VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0, pricing policies are configured within VCF Operations (Costing and Chargeback).

From the VCF 9.0 documentation under Cost and Chargeback Configuration:

“Base Settings define the default cost drivers for CPU, memory, and storage that apply across clusters unless overridden by a custom policy.”

To meet the requirement:

CPU, memory, and storage pricing must be identical across all clusters.

A new policy named Resources must be created and applied globally.

Thus:

1️⃣ Create a new policy under Base Settings for resource cost (Option A)

This satisfies:

Same CPU, memory, and storage cost across clusters.

From the documentation regarding policy hierarchy:

“When a custom cost policy is set as default, it applies to all objects that do not have a more specific policy assigned.”

2️⃣ Set “Resources” as the default policy (Option E)

This ensures:

All clusters inherit this pricing model.

Other unspecified settings fall back to default behavior.

From documentation regarding overrides:

“Specific object types such as clusters can have additional cost components defined through child policies that override parent policy settings.”

3️⃣ Create a child policy under “Resources” for SAP HANA cluster VM setup charges (Option F)

This satisfies:

VM setup charges applied only to SAP HANA cluster.

Other clusters remain unaffected.

All other settings remain default.

Why Other Options Are Incorrect

B – Setting Default Policy as default contradicts requirement to create a new named policy “Resources.”

C – VM setup charges should not be in Base Settings (would apply globally).

D – Incorrect hierarchy; policies are structured under custom policy trees, not under “Default Policy” in this context.

Document References (VCF 9.0):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 → VCF Operations → Costing and Chargeback

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 → Policy Inheritance and Overrides

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 → Base Settings and Custom Cost Policies

The VCF 9.0 Operations Policies Guide explains how to extend and scope monitoring policies:

Create a child policy under the existing Organization Policy (C): Policies can inherit settings from parent policies. By creating a child policy under Organization Policy, administrators can apply additional metrics without overriding global policies.

Create a Custom Group (F): Custom Groups allow dynamic membership based on naming conventions or criteria. In this case, business-critical VMs can be grouped automatically by naming schema.

Assign the Custom Group to the new child policy (B): This ensures that the additional metrics only apply to the business-critical VMs in the Custom Group.

Incorrect options:

Custom Datacenters (A, D) are not required; the grouping requirement can be met with Custom Groups.

Creating the policy under Base Settings (E) would apply globally rather than inheriting from the Organization Policy.

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 documentation for vSphere Supervisor and Kubernetes workload management specifies that Kubernetes-native backup and restore for Supervisor-provisioned clusters is performed using Velero.

From the VCF 9.0 documentation covering Supervisor Services and Kubernetes workload protection:

“For backup and restore of Kubernetes workloads deployed on clusters enabled with vSphere Supervisor, VMware supports the use of Velero to protect Kubernetes resources and persistent volumes.”

Velero is Kubernetes-native and integrates with the Supervisor cluster to protect:

Namespaces

Kubernetes objects

Persistent volumes

TKG clusters

The other options are incorrect for this use case:

Site Recovery Manager (now part of VMware Live Site Recovery) protects vSphere VMs at the infrastructure level, not Kubernetes objects.

Restic is a backup utility used by Velero internally but is not the primary supported platform tool.

VMware Live Recovery is used for disaster recovery at the VM/site level, not Kubernetes-native backup inside Supervisor.

Document reference (VCF 9.0):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 → Workload Management → Supervisor Services → Backup and Restore for Kubernetes Workloads (Velero support section).

Velero is an open-source Kubernetes backup and restore solution integrated into VMware Cloud Foundation for Kubernetes management. The VCF 9.0 Kubernetes Services Documentation describes it as:

“Velero provides backup, recovery, and migration of Kubernetes cluster resources and persistent volumes.”

Key functionality includes:

Backup and restore of Kubernetes objects such as deployments, services, and namespaces.

Data protection for persistent volumes via storage snapshots.

Migration capabilities across clusters.

Analysis of incorrect options:

Publishing DNS records (A) is handled by CoreDNS or external DNS integrations, not Velero.

Monitoring cluster services (B) is the role of Kubernetes health checks and observability tools like Prometheus, not Velero.

Collecting logs and data (C) is done by logging stacks such as Fluent Bit or VCF Operations for Logs.

Therefore, Velero’s primary role is backup and restore of Kubernetes clusters.

The VCF 9.0 Convergence and Migration Guide outlines prerequisites and unsupported configurations when moving from a standalone vSphere deployment into VCF-managed workload domains.

Enhanced Linked Mode (ELM) must be removed:VCF does not support multiple vCenters joined in Enhanced Linked Mode. Each workload domain has its own dedicated vCenter instance, managed by SDDC Manager. The documentation states:“Before convergence, Enhanced Linked Mode must be deactivated. VCF requires independent vCenters for each workload domain.”

Lifecycle Manager must use Images only:VCF lifecycle operations are exclusively image-based. Baselines are not supported.“All clusters managed by VCF must be converted to vSphere Lifecycle Manager image-based lifecycle management prior to convergence.”

Other options are not required:

25 Gbps uplinks (A) are recommended for high throughput but not mandatory; 10 Gbps uplinks are supported.

An additional vMotion VMkernel (C) is not required by default, as standard vMotion networking is included in convergence designs.

vSphere Standard Switches (D) are not supported; VCF requires Distributed Switches, and existing vDS configurations can be adapted.

Therefore, the two configurations that must change are: Deactivate Enhanced Linked Mode (B) and switch Lifecycle Manager to Images only (E).

When converging an existing vSphere environment into VCF, certain architectural requirements must be satisfied.

The VCF 9.0 Convergence Guide states that:

The vCenter Server must be running on a cluster it manages (self-managed cluster) to allow SDDC Manager to take ownership during convergence.

Incorrect options:

Baselines (A) are not required; in fact, VCF requires image-based lifecycle management after convergence.

VDS version 7.0 (C) is not a documented prerequisite.

NSX (D) is not required prior to convergence; NSX can be deployed during workload domain bring-up.

Therefore, the required prerequisite is:

vCenter Server VM must be hosted on a cluster it manages.

The Container Storage Interface (CSI) is a Kubernetes-standard interface that allows container orchestration platforms to provision and manage storage systems.

The VMware documentation explains:

“The CSI driver enables Kubernetes clusters to dynamically provision and manage persistent volumes backed by vSphere storage.”

CSI is necessary because:

Containers are ephemeral by nature, but applications often require persistent storage for stateful workloads.

CSI enables dynamic provisioning, attach/detach, resizing, and snapshot operations for persistent volumes.

Incorrect options:

CSI does not replace all third-party interfaces (A).

CSI does not merely detect storage (B).

Ephemeral storage (C) is handled natively by container runtimes and does not require CSI.

Therefore, CSI is necessary because it provides persistent storage functionality to containers.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation:

The VCF Automation Networking Guide (9.0) documents that when an Organization for All Applications is created, networking constructs are provisioned automatically to provide immediate connectivity. Specifically, “During region creation, the system automatically deploys a Default VPC, a Provider Tier-0 Gateway, a VPC connectivity profile, and default SNAT rules to enable outbound access.” .

DNAT rules are not provisioned by default (they must be configured for inbound services). Likewise, NSX Transit Gateway is a multi-region design element, not automatically deployed for a single org setup. A VDS is a vSphere construct and not part of the NSX automation performed at this stage. Therefore, the automatically created items are: Default VPC (A), Provider Tier-0 Gateway (B), SNAT rule (E), and VPC Connectivity Profile (G).

In VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0, when deploying vSphere Supervisor (formerly part of Tanzu) specifically with VMware NSX as the networking provider, the architecture relies on the high-performance routing capabilities of the NSX fabric.

According to the VCF 9.0 Developer Ready Infrastructure Guide:

When NSX is selected as the networking stack for the Supervisor, the system utilizes Distributed Gateways (T1) to handle the routing for the supervisor's internal and external traffic.

Distributed Gateway (C): In an NSX-integrated Supervisor deployment, the East-West traffic and the localized routing for the Kubernetes Control Plane and Pod networking are handled by the Distributed Gateway. This ensures that routing occurs at the host level (kernel space) where possible, minimizing latency and "hairpinning" to a centralized edge node.

Why others are incorrect: * Avi Load Balancer (A): While Avi (NSX Advanced Load Balancer) is the preferred load balancer for VCF 9.0, the question asks for the "networking connectivity type" for the Supervisor deployment itself. Avi provides the Load Balancing service (ingress/egress), but the underlying routing connectivity type is the Distributed Gateway.

Data Network Subnet (B): This is a general networking term and not a specific "connectivity type" construct within the NSX Supervisor deployment workflow.

Centralized Gateway (D): While a Tier-0/Tier-1 gateway can have centralized services (like NAT or Statefull Firewall), the standard connectivity model for Supervisor namespaces to maintain performance and scale across the VCF hosts is the Distributed Gateway.

The vSAN ESA documentation in VCF 9.0 explains that auto-policy management dynamically selects the most efficient data placement policy based on cluster size. For RAID-6 (erasure coding with double parity), the minimum required host count is 6. The docs state:

“RAID-6 (Erasure Coding with FTT=2) requires a minimum of six hosts in a vSAN ESA cluster. This ensures that data and parity components can be distributed across unique failure domains.”

With fewer than six hosts, RAID-6 cannot be enforced and auto-policy management will fall back to RAID-1 mirroring. RAID-6 in vSAN ESA provides higher storage efficiency but comes with stricter host count requirements. Options 2 and 4 are far below requirements, while 8 provides more redundancy but is not the minimum. Therefore, the correct minimum number of hosts for RAID-6 with ESA is 6.

The VCF 9.0 Automation Guide details the use of Property Groups to standardize blueprint inputs and constants across projects. Property Groups allow administrators to define sets of inputs (like size, os, location) and constants (like salt master id) centrally, ensuring consistency across deployments.

The correct actions are:

Create a new Property Group for input properties (C) to capture the standard inputs (size, os, location).

Create a new Property Group for constant properties (E) to include items like the salt master id.

Update all existing blueprints in the production project with the new Property Groups (F) to enforce standardization across new and existing workloads.

Options A and B are incorrect because changes are not required in the appdev project or across the entire organization—only the production project. Option D is redundant since inputs and constants should be separated into distinct groups.

The VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 and vSphere with Tanzu documentation describes the Container Storage Interface (CSI) as follows:

“The vSphere CSI driver allows vSphere storage to be exposed as persistent storage to containerized applications running on Kubernetes clusters. The driver implements the Kubernetes CSI specification and enables dynamic provisioning, attach/detach, and snapshot operations for persistent volumes.”

Key points from the documentation:

CSI is not limited to vSphere object storage (A). It works with vSAN, VMFS, NFS, and other vSphere-supported datastores.

Its purpose is to provide persistent storage (B), so containerized workloads have data that outlives pod lifecycles.

CSI is not restricted to “cloud native storage only” (C); it is the standard interface for Kubernetes persistent storage.

CSI is not used for ephemeral storage (D); ephemeral storage is provided by local container runtimes and does not require CSI.

Therefore, the correct description is that CSI is a plug-in that allows providers to expose storage as persistent storage to Kubernetes workloads running in vSphere Supervisor clusters.

Upgrading from VCF 5.2 to VCF 9.0 involves a significant architectural transition. The VCF 9.0 Upgrade Guide outlines the sequence for environments previously using Aria components.

Deploy VCF Installer (E):VCF 9.0 introduces the VCF Installer appliance to orchestrate deployment and lifecycle operations. This must be deployed first.

Deploy NSX Manager 9.0 (A):NSX must align with the new VCF 9.0 architecture before further component integration.

Manually upgrade Aria Operations to VCF Operations 9.0 (D):Aria Operations transitions to the integrated VCF Operations platform. This is not automatic in major version transitions and requires administrator-driven upgrade.

Options B and F are incorrect because automatic upgrade paths are not supported for this major version shift. Option C is not part of the initial mandatory sequence before platform alignment.

Therefore, the correct three are:

Deploy NSX Manager 9.0, Manually upgrade Aria Operations to VCF Operations 9.0, and Deploy VCF Installer appliance.

When creating a Region in VCF Automation, multiple workload domains can be aggregated to provide capacity to Organizations. For consistent provisioning across domains, resource constructs must be uniform.

The VCF 9.0 Automation documentation specifies:

VM Classes must exist with identical names across integrated vCenters to ensure consistent deployment behavior.

Storage Classes must also be consistently defined across Supervisors to allow Kubernetes and VM workloads to consume storage predictably.

Region quotas (A) are applied after region creation.

Reserved VM Classes (C) are not a prerequisite unless specifically required for policy enforcement.

An Organization for VM Applications (D) is not required prior to region creation.

Thus, the administrator must validate:

Consistent VM Classes (B)

Consistent Storage Classes (E)

Per the VCF 9.0 Automation Provider Management Guide:

Supervisor Activation: “Kubernetes-based workloads require Supervisor to be enabled in the Management Domain before deploying organizations.”

Region Configuration: “Organizations for All Applications must be deployed into a preconfigured Region, defined in the Provider Management Portal.”NSX Federation (D) is optional for multi-site deployments. Supervisor is not activated in workload domains (B) but centrally in the management domain. VMware Kubernetes Service (E) is enabled per tenant but not required before Organization creation. Thus, correct prerequisites are A and C.

According to VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 documentation for VCF Automation (Aria Automation integration):

To deploy workloads to specific NSX segments with VLAN-based selection and IPAM integration, the administrator must:

1️⃣ Configure Network IPAM Settings (Option C)

VCF Automation requires network segments to be associated with IPAM configuration:

“To enable automatic IP allocation for workloads, configure network profiles with gateway, subnet, and IP range details for the associated networks.”

This ensures automatic IP address allocation from the internal IPAM.

2️⃣ Create a Network Profile and Associate Segments (Option D)

VCF Automation uses Network Profiles to group NSX segments and associate them with projects:

“A network profile defines the networks available to a project and includes capability tags that are matched during workload deployment.”

Including all appdev segments in a dedicated network profile ensures logical isolation from other projects.

3️⃣ Use Capability Tags for VLAN Selection (Option F)

VCF Automation uses capability tags to match user input to infrastructure:

“Capability tags applied to networks can be matched in cloud templates to dynamically select networks based on user-defined inputs.”

By applying vlan: tags to each segment, a self-service user can specify a VLAN number that determines which segment is selected during deployment.

Why Other Options Are Incorrect

A – Custom groups are not required for network selection.

B – Tagging segments alone is insufficient without associating them through a network profile.

E – Adding networks to the existing development project violates logical isolation requirements.

Document reference (VCF 9.0):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 → VCF Automation → Projects and Network Profiles

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 → Network Profiles and IPAM Configuration

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 → Capability Tags and Network Selection

In VCF 9.x, air-gapped bring-up requires staging the required binaries in the VCF Installer. The documented list explicitly includes NSX and VCF Operations among the components to upload. The product guide states: “VMware Cloud Foundation required binaries include… NSX … VMware Cloud Foundation Operations … vCenter … SDDC Manager…” (exact list excerpt). This list does not call for ESX images or the legacy “Lifecycle Manager.”

Therefore, from the given options the two binaries that must be uploaded are NSX and VCF 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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The VCF 9.0 Design Guide highlights that for resiliency across sites with RPO = 0, the recommended approach is a vSAN Stretched Cluster. Documentation states: “Stretched clusters provide site-level resilience by mirroring data across two fault domains (sites). In the event of a full site outage, workloads remain available with no data loss (RPO = 0).” Relocating six hosts to another site creates the two fault domains required for vSAN Stretched Cluster. Options B and C provide backup or redundancy but not synchronous replication with zero RPO. Option D (fault domains) protects against host/rack failures, not entire data center loss. Therefore, the correct solution is to relocate hosts and configure a stretched cluster.

In VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), network segments (both overlay and VLAN-backed segments) are created and managed through VMware NSX, specifically via the NSX Manager interface.

The VCF 9.0 Networking documentation states that:

“NSX Manager provides centralized management for logical switching, routing, security, and segment creation within a workload domain.”

A network segment in VCF corresponds to an NSX logical segment, which is used to provide Layer 2 connectivity to workloads. These segments are defined within NSX and can be attached to Tier-0 or Tier-1 gateways depending on routing requirements.

Other options are incorrect:

vCenter (A) manages ESXi hosts and VMs but does not create NSX logical segments.

VCF Operations (C) is used for monitoring and analytics, not configuration.

SDDC Manager (D) handles lifecycle management and domain creation but does not directly create network segments.

Therefore, the administrator must use NSX Manager to create a new network segment in VMware Cloud Foundation.

The requirement is to ensure DNS records are created only when a domain name is provided.

Since the blueprint includes a custom property for domainName, the correct conditional logic in the event subscription must validate that this property is not null.

Adding the condition:

event.data.customProperties['domainName'] != null

ensures the workflow executes only when the domain name is provided.

Option B validates hostname instead of domain name.

Option A controls workflow blocking, not conditional execution.

Option C relates to cleanup, not creation condition validation.

VCF provides integrated automation and orchestration for Day 0–2 operations, including networking: VCF is a “full-stack IaaS” with “automation and orchestration to simplify Day 0, Day 1, and Day 2 tasks.” VCF supports modern apps: users can provision “VMs” and “Kubernetes workloads” from self-service services, proving both VM and container support. Multi-tenancy with strong isolation is native: Organizations are “secure and isolated” boundaries; All Apps organizations run “virtual machines (VMs), Kubernetes… multiple tenants with secure infrastructure isolation.”

Incorrect choices: VCF is not limited to vSAN only (supports VMFS/NFS/CNS as documented elsewhere) and does not rely on manual scalability—automation is core. Compliance is provided within the private cloud, not only by a CSP.

In VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0, the licensing architecture has undergone a fundamental shift to simplify the management of large-scale deployments. The legacy method of managing individual 25-character license keys for every component (ESXi, vCenter, NSX, etc.) has been replaced by a unified, subscription-based License File model managed through VCF Operations.

According to the VCF 9.0 Licensing and Administration Guide:

Register the VCF Operations instance with the VCF Business Services console (B): This is the mandatory first step. VCF Operations must be linked to the cloud-based VCF Business Services console (vcf.broadcom.com). This registration allows the environment to sync entitlements and report usage.

Add the license file from the VCF Business Services console to VCF Operations (A): Unlike previous versions that used keys, VCF 9.0 utilizes a "Secure License File" (or an activation code that retrieves it). For environments without direct internet access (Disconnected Mode), the administrator must manually download this file from the Business Services console and upload it to the VCF Operations interface.

Assign licenses to vCenter instances from VCF Operations (F): Once the license file is added to VCF Operations, the "pool" of capacity (measured in Cores or TiBs) becomes available. The administrator then assigns the license specifically to the vCenter Server instances. Documentation states: "License your vCenter, ESX hosts, NSX, VCF Operations, and other components by assigning the license to the vCenter instance." The vCenter then automatically handles the downstream entitlement for the hosts and integrated services.

Why other options are incorrect:

C: While NSX is licensed as part of the fleet, the administrative action in VCF 9.0 is to assign the license to the vCenter instance, which then licenses the "connected assets."

D & E: VCF 9.0 specifically "eliminates the need to manage multiple license keys" (except for certain legacy add-ons). The core fleet licensing uses a single License File rather than individual keys for every component.