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

According to the VCF 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 a secure image registry with RBAC, scanning, and signing capabilities.

The VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Operations deployment documentation describes multiple deployment models for VCF Operations, including Simple, High Availability, and Continuous Availability models.

The Simple deployment model is explicitly defined as a single-node deployment intended for environments that require minimal resource consumption. The documentation states:

“The Simple deployment model deploys a single VCF Operations node and is suitable for smaller environments or environments where high availability is not required.”

In contrast:

High Availability deploys three nodes for redundancy.

Continuous Availability is designed for zero-downtime upgrades and requires even more resources.

Stretched Cluster is not a VCF Operations deployment model but a vSAN cluster configuration.

Since the requirement is the smallest possible resource footprint, the correct model is Simple.

Resetting identity management in VCF requires removal of existing identity configurations, including external identity providers and the Identity Broker configuration. The VCF documentation states that to reset identity services, administrators must remove the SSO configuration, including broker settings, and then reconfigure SSO.

Option B ensures complete cleanup of identity integrations.

Option C re-establishes identity management with the correct configuration.

Disabling (D) or reverting (E) is not a supported reset method. Leaving provisioned users/groups (A) would not fully reset identity management.

VCF 9.0 replaces legacy bring-up tooling with the VCF Installer, which provides a deployment wizard that validates configuration before bring-up. The guide describes: “The deployment wizard validates your inputs… and displays errors and warnings if any.” and that administrators “Download and complete the planning and preparation workbook and have the information ready for validating inputs in the deployment wizard.”

While the workbook is used to collect information, the validation of those inputs is performed by the VCF Installer wizard prior to deployment. SDDC Manager is used after bring-up for lifecycle operations, and Cloud Builder is not used in VCF 9.0 deployments. Therefore, VCF Installer is the correct tool for collecting (via wizard prompts) and validating initial deployment inputs.

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VCF 9.0 licensing is managed through VCF Operations and the VCF Business Services console. The product requires periodic license updates even in connected mode. The documentation states explicitly: “You must update your licenses at least once every 6 months (180 days). If license usage data is not submitted… your licenses are treated as expired, your hosts are disconnected from the vCenter instance, and you cannot start any workload operations.” This language is repeated in the Licensing Overview and Upgrade/Registration sections, confirming the 180-day requirement applies to both connected and disconnected modes (in connected mode usage submission is automated, but you still must perform an update action). Therefore, the correct interval is 180 days.

In VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0, the construct of VM Applications Organizations was deprecated in favor of All Applications Organizations. The documentation highlights this change:

“Organizations for All Applications provide a unified model for managing both VM and Kubernetes workloads. They support third-party integrations such as Tanzu Salt and Active Directory, and enable deployments to Native Public Cloud endpoints.”

Since the customer upgraded from VCF 5.2, their first new Organization after the upgrade must use the All Applications model. VM Applications Organizations (Option A) are legacy and do not support the full feature set such as NPC or third-party integrations. Option C is incorrect because the Fleet Management API is for monitoring and operational insights, not for creating Organizations.

Therefore, the administrator must create the new Organization as an All Applications Organization in the VCF Automation Provider Management Portal.

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.

In VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0, the introduction of the Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) model within VCF Automation (formerly Aria Automation) simplifies multi-tenancy. When an administrator creates an organization and configures regional networking, the system automates the deployment of several high-level NSX objects to provide isolated networking for that organization ' s applications.

According to the VCF 9.0 Automation and Networking Guide:

A Provider Tier-0 Gateway (C): This is the top-level logical router in the VCF environment. During the regional networking setup, the system identifies or configures the Provider T0 to act as the primary exit point for North-South traffic for the organization.

A Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) connectivity profile (F): This profile defines the networking " flavor " (such as IP blocks, DNS, and security settings) that will be applied to the organization ' s VPCs. It acts as the template for how the VPC interacts with the provider ' s physical and logical infrastructure.

A Default Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) (B): Upon completing the organization setup, VCF Automation provisions a default VPC for that organization. This VPC serves as the logical container for the tenant ' s subnets, security groups, and routing.

An outbound Source Network Address Translation (SNAT) rule (A): To allow virtual machines within the newly created VPC to access external resources (the internet or corporate network) while using private IP space, the system automatically creates an outbound SNAT rule on the gateway associated with the VPC or the Provider T0.

Why other options are incorrect:

A Virtual Distributed Switch (VDS) (D): The VDS is a foundational component of the VCF VI Workload Domain created during Day 1 operations. It is not " automatically configured " during the high-level regional networking step of a VCF Automation organization; it must already exist.

An NSX Transit Gateway (E): While NSX uses Tier-0 and Tier-1 gateways for transit, " Transit Gateway " is a specific term often associated with public cloud (AWS) integrations. In the context of VCF 9.0 regional networking for a VPC, the core constructs are the T0/T1 and VPC profiles.

An outbound Destination Network Address Translation (DNAT) rule (G): DNAT is typically used for inbound traffic (mapping a public IP to a private internal IP). Outbound traffic uses SNAT to mask the internal IP as it leaves the organization.

The documentation clarifies the scenario when a password is changed outside of 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 use Remediate password to synchronize credentials and restore management from VCF Operations.

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The VCF 9.0 Operations Guide – Views and Reports explains the four types of views available for custom dashboards:

Object Relationship View: Displays dependencies and hierarchy between objects (for example, VMs, hosts, datastores) but does not provide exportable tabular data.

Scoreboard View: Provides a high-level KPI visualization of a few key objects but is not intended for large tabular exports.

List View (Correct): Displays tabular data across many objects, such as CPU, memory, and disk metrics for VMs. The guide states: “List views are useful when you want to compare metrics across multiple objects and can be exported to CSV for further analysis.”

Trend View: Focuses on historical data and growth over time, but export to CSV is not its primary purpose.

Because the security team requires both tabular comparison of VM resource usage and the ability to export the data to CSV, the List View is the only option that meets both requirements.

A VCF Automation region is built from one or more vSphere Supervisors, and the participating vCenter instances must be integrated with an NSX Manager. VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 states that before creating a region, administrators must verify that the vCenter instance has a Supervisor enabled.

The documentation also states that VCF Automation creates a region by grouping Supervisors from one or more vCenter instances, provided those vCenter instances are configured with the same NSX instance. A single NSX Manager must therefore integrate with all vCenters participating in a particular region.

Options A and E apply when multiple Supervisors/vCenters are combined into one region because VM classes and storage classes must then be identical across those participating instances. In this scenario, the design is for three separate service-class regions backed by three workload domains, so identical classes across all vCenters are not inherently required. Region quotas are created after regions exist and are assigned to Organizations; they are not prerequisites for creating the regions themselves.

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.

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.

When using Fibre Channel (FC) as the principal storage type for a workload domain in VMware Cloud Foundation, storage must already be provisioned and visible to all participating ESXi hosts.

The VCF documentation specifies that for VMFS on FC deployments:

Storage LUNs must be created on the SAN.

The LUNs must be zoned and presented to all ESXi hosts.

Hosts must be able to detect the presented LUNs before domain creation.

Incorrect options:

SSD disks (A) are required for vSAN, not Fibre Channel.

Port binding (B) is required for iSCSI, not FC.

A VMkernel interface for storage (D) is required for IP-based storage (NFS/iSCSI), not Fibre Channel.

Therefore, the key prerequisite is ensuring LUNs are presented to all ESXi hosts.

VCF 9.0 describes the VKS architecture and explicitly notes: “The Cluster API provides declarative, Kubernetes-style APIs for cluster creation, configuration, and management.” Inputs include resources describing the cluster, VMs, and add-ons. Provisioning flows also present ClusterClass/Cluster API as the supported “cluster type” when creating a Kubernetes cluster via self-service. These extracts confirm that Cluster API is the foundational component used by VMware Kubernetes Service (VKS) on vSphere Supervisor to bootstrap and manage Kubernetes workload clusters in VCF 9.0.

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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 Operations for Networks (formerly vRNI) enables Application 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 achieve Service and Application Discovery, administrators must deploy VCF Operations for Networks.

In VMware Cloud Foundation, lifecycle management boundaries are defined at the workload domain level. If independent lifecycle and scaling control is required, the cluster must be deployed as a separate workload domain.

VCF 9.0 supports workload domains that either:

Use a dedicated NSX instance, or

Share an existing NSX Manager instance.

Because the requirement only states independent lifecycle and scaling (not network isolation), the correct and efficient approach is to:

Deploy the new cluster as a new workload domain with shared NSX.

Deploying within an existing workload domain (A or B) would tie lifecycle operations together.

Deploying with a new NSX instance (C) is unnecessary unless full NSX isolation is required.

Thus, the correct action is D.

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.

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.

VCF 9.0 documents an important distinction between manually configured RAID-5 and RAID-5 when auto-policy management is enabled. The documentation explicitly states: “RAID-5 in vSAN ESA supports three ESX host clusters. If you enable auto-policy management, the cluster must have four ESX hosts to use RAID-5.”

Therefore, although the existing three-node ESA cluster can support RAID-5 under a manually configured policy, enabling auto-policy management changes the minimum cluster size requirement to four hosts.

Auto-policy management automatically generates an optimal datastore policy based on the cluster topology and the number of ESX hosts. VCF design guidance also recommends at least four nodes for vSAN ESA clusters because this allows vSAN to create a capacity-optimized default policy and provides better ability to re-protect objects following a host failure.

Six hosts are required for RAID-6, not RAID-5.

To integrate VCF Automation with an external CMDB (such as ServiceNow) for compliance and tracking of Kubernetes or VM resources, the system utilizes a specific extensibility framework. According to the VCF 9.0 documentation on " Integrating VCF Automation for ITSM with ServiceNow " :

Event Subscriptions (D): These act as the trigger mechanism within the VCF Automation Event Broker Service. When a resource (such as a Kubernetes cluster or deployment) is provisioned, an event is published. An administrator creates a subscription to listen for these specific lifecycle events (e.g., Compute.PostProvision or Kubernetes-specific topics) to initiate the registration process.

VCF Operations orchestrator (B): This is the orchestration engine (formerly known as VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator or vRO). Documentation specifies that for CMDB and ITSM compliance, VCF Automation is integrated with VCF Operations orchestrator workflows. These workflows contain the complex technical logic required to:

Separate objects and feed inputs into technical integration tasks.

Handle API tokens and authentication for the external CMDB.

Execute the REST API calls to the CMDB (e.g., to the cmdb_ci_vmware_instance table).

Update custom properties (like serviceNowSysId) back into the deployment for future decommissioning lifecycle events.

Extract from VCF 9.0 Documentation:

" Enterprise users commonly integrate their Cloud Management Platform with an IT Service Management (ITSM) and Configuration Management Database (CMDB) platform for compliance. Following this example, you can integrate VCF Automation with ServiceNow for CMDB and ITSM using VCF Operations Orchestrator Client... This integration uses Event Subscriptions to trigger VCF Operations Orchestrator workflows. "

Because this project must support a Kubernetes-based application, the applicable VCF Automation model is All Apps, where projects consume resources through vSphere Namespaces, not legacy VM Apps cloud zones. VCF 9.0 states that an Organization Administrator can create and delete projects, whereas the Project Administrator manages an existing project but does not create new projects.

The administrator therefore logs in as the Organization Administrator and creates the new project. The documentation states that when configuring a project, the administrator adds at least one namespace so users can start provisioning resources. Namespaces provide the resource envelope for workloads including VKS clusters.

To minimize ongoing membership administration, VCF explicitly recommends assigning roles using groups. The documentation explains that group-based roles allow users to “come and go from your identity provider rather than requiring the project administrator to constantly update the individual users.” Therefore, Active Directory groups should be assigned rather than individual users.

The VCF 9.0 Operations Guide – Metrics and Super Metrics explains that super metrics are used when administrators need to aggregate or compute new values from existing metrics. Super metrics can be applied across multiple objects, such as aggregating the health score of all VMs in a fleet.

The documentation states:

“A super metric is a user-defined formula that calculates a value derived from one or more existing metrics. Super metrics can be applied across objects to provide aggregate insights such as averages or totals.”

Dashboard (A): Dashboards can display metrics but cannot compute new aggregated values on their own.

Symptom (C): Used to define conditions that trigger alerts, not to compute average health values.

Alert (D): Alerts notify administrators of issues but do not calculate averages across many VMs.

Therefore, to display the average health score of all VMs across multiple clusters, the administrator must create a super metric and then visualize it in a dashboard.

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.

The VCF Automation documentation defines 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 are C (Self-Service Catalog) and E (Application Dependency Mapping).

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.

vSphere Supervisor leverages the Cluster API (CAPI) open-source project to manage the lifecycle of Kubernetes clusters.

Cluster API provides declarative APIs to create, scale, upgrade, and manage Kubernetes clusters. The VMware documentation states:

“VMware Kubernetes Service uses Cluster API components to provision and manage Tanzu Kubernetes clusters on vSphere.”

Incorrect options:

Kubeadm (A) is a Kubernetes bootstrap tool but not the lifecycle engine used by Supervisor.

Contour (B) is an ingress controller.

Grafana (C) is a visualization and monitoring tool.

Thus, the correct answer is Cluster API.

According to the VCF 9.0 Operations and vSAN Integration Guide, performance metrics in the vSAN Cluster Performance widget are only available when the vSAN Performance Service is enabled. The documentation states:

“The vSAN Performance Service must be enabled in vCenter Server for each vSAN cluster to collect and visualize performance statistics in VCF Operations. Without this service, performance dashboards and widgets will not display data.”

Option A (Support Insight) relates to telemetry with VMware, not performance widgets.

Option B (Cloud proxy as Collector) is required for general collection but not specific to vSAN widget visibility.

Option C (SMART data collection) provides disk health analytics, not cluster-level performance stats.

Option D is correct, because enabling the vSAN Performance Service ensures that VCF Operations receives and displays data in the vSAN Performance dashboards.

Therefore, the administrator must enable the vSAN Performance Service for all vSAN clusters in vCenter.

The VCF 9.0 Deployment Guide states:

“Each new VCF instance requires its own management domain consisting of vCenter Server, NSX Manager cluster, and SDDC Manager.”

vCenter (A) is required to manage ESXi hosts and clusters.

NSX Manager (D) provides software-defined networking for the instance.

SDDC Manager (E) is the lifecycle and management component central to each VCF instance.

Supervisor (B) is optional and only enabled if Kubernetes workloads are required. VCF Automation (C) is a separate solution, not part of the core instance bring-up. VCF Installer (F) is the deployment tool, not a persistent component. Thus, the correct components to deploy are vCenter, NSX Manager, and SDDC Manager.