2V0-13.25 Sample Questions Answers

To achieve 99.95% availability in the management domain, the architecture must protect critical management components (like vCenter) and ensure rapid recovery:

A. vCenter HA – Protects the vCenter Server by providing an active-passive-failure detection architecture, ensuring no single vCenter outage impacts operations.

D. Restart priority policy = High – Ensures vCenter recovers first and fastest during a host failure, minimizing downtime.

Why not the others?

B/E (EtherChannel Enable/Disable) – Link aggregation is networking config, not directly tied to SLA.

C (das.iostatsinterval = 0) – This disables HA datastore heartbeating, reducing resiliency rather than improving it.

The requirements specify:

Large-scale migration (800 workloads).

No downtime.

Strict change window (4 weeks).

HCX Replication Assisted vMotion (RAV) is the only method that combines large-scale migration efficiency with zero downtime:

Workloads are replicated in advance.

During the cutover, a vMotion-like switchover completes with no outage.

Other methods:

Cross vCenter vMotion works for live moves but is not efficient for hundreds of VMs within a short timeline.

HCX OS Assisted Migration is for physical-to-virtual or non-vSphere workloads (not applicable).

HCX Bulk Migration is efficient but introduces downtime during cutover.

Thus, HCX RAV best meets the no-downtime, large-scale requirement.

Constraints are design limitations that cannot be changed and must be worked around.

B (no funding for new storage, so existing must be used) is a clear constraint, as it restricts the architect from proposing new storage hardware.

A (out of maintenance) represents a risk (unsupported hardware may fail).

C and D are requirements, not constraints, because they describe desired functionality of the solution.

Thus, the correct constraint is that existing storage must be used due to funding limitations.

Advanced Memory Tiering with NVMe optimizes memory performance, essential for workloads that are latency-sensitive.

NSX Enhanced Data Path (EDP) is specifically designed for high-performance, low-latency packet processing, critical in real-time applications.Options like Global Deduplication or Deep Snapshots can negatively impact latency due to additional processing overhead.

In VMware Cloud Foundation, each VI workload domain is backed by a single vCenter Server instance. By deploying multiple clusters within the same VI workload domain, the architect can support multiple use cases (e.g., separating prod/dev), without provisioning new vCenters. This design reduces management overhead and operational complexity.

However, if stricter separation is needed (e.g., multi-tenancy or lifecycle independence), separate workload domains may be more suitable. While vSAN is the default, it's not mandatory unless vSAN Ready Nodes are used for bring-up.

According to the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 Architecture and Design Guide, the officially supported solution for backing up and restoring workloads running on VMware Kubernetes Service (VKS) clusters is Velero, specifically the Velero Plugin for vSphere. The documentation explicitly states:

“You can backup and restore workloads running on VKS clusters by using Velero. The Velero Plugin for vSphere provides a solution for backing up and restoring workloads running on vSphere Pods and VKS clusters.”

Velero integrates with vSphere through a plugin that manages persistent volume snapshots and metadata backups to an S3-compatible object store. This provides data protection for both stateless and stateful Kubernetes workloads.

While Restic is mentioned in conjunction with Velero for additional support in some environments, it cannot operate standalone in VKS environments. Site Recovery Manager and VMware Live Recovery are used for virtual machine–based disaster recovery, not containerized workloads. Therefore, Velero is the correct and VMware-supported tool for VKS workload backup and recovery.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 — “Backing Up and Restoring VKS Clusters and Workloads” (pp. 5879–5887)

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 — “Install and Configure the Velero Plugin for vSphere on a Supervisor” (pp. 5880–5885)

Since the constraint is existing stretched cluster model, the design assumes a single cluster across two sites.

To meet the minimize downtime requirement, the Single Management Zone Supervisor with HA control plane ensures control plane resiliency within that stretched cluster.

Options with “Simple Availability” do not meet the high availability requirement. Options with three zones are not applicable because the constraint specifies a stretched cluster model.

The VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 Architecture and Design Guide, in the section covering Istio Service Mesh integration, defines that objects and configurations in a service mesh are grouped and managed under Service and Cluster scopes.

“In an Istio Service Mesh deployment, objects are collected into groups to simplify policy management and routing. These groups can represent logical services or clusters to which policies apply, allowing consistent control across the environment.”

Service groups organize workloads that share a common application or microservice. They enable the consistent application of routing, observability, and security policies (e.g., mTLS, rate limiting).

Cluster groups define the boundary for multi-cluster management, enabling federated control and workload discovery across multiple Kubernetes clusters within the VMware Cloud Foundation ecosystem.

These group types allow centralized configuration, policy enforcement, and telemetry aggregation across workloads deployed in VCF-managed Kubernetes environments.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 Architecture and Design Guide — “Istio Service Mesh Architecture and Grouping Constructs.” (pp. 5798–5802).

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 — “Service and Cluster Group Management in Multi-Cluster Istio Deployments.

Physical Switch MTU set to 9000 ensures optimal performance and reduced packet fragmentation for vSAN and NSX-T overlay networks—critical in HA scenarios.

vSAN Cache Tier Sizing at 800GB provides the necessary performance buffer to support high I/O operations and ensures continued service availability under failure or maintenance events.

Other options like DHCP lease time or NIC load-based routing do not directly influence availability SLA adherence.

As defined in the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Design and Architecture Guide, the design quality of Performance relates to how well the system responds to workloads under specified conditions — including throughput, latency, scalability, and responsiveness. Performance requirements typically specify concurrent workload capacity, transaction throughput, or system responsiveness under load, distinguishing them from availability (uptime), recoverability (RTO/RPO), or manageability (administrative efficiency).

The requirement to “support 50,000 workloads concurrently” and “concurrent deployment of up to 10 workloads” clearly defines system throughput and scalability targets, both of which are categorized under performance in VMware’s design quality framework. The VCF design methodology explicitly states that “Performance design factors ensure the platform can sustain the expected workload and scale appropriately under peak load without degradation.”

Thus, the architect must classify these as Performance requirements and ensure design validation includes capacity planning, cluster scalability testing, and vSAN throughput validation to confirm that the system can meet these operational demands.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Architecture and Design Guide — “Design Qualities: Performance, Availability, Manageability, Recoverability”

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.2 Design Library — “Mapping Business Requirements to Performance Criteria.”

Conceptual model items are categorized as requirements, assumptions, risks, and constraints:

A is a clear requirement, aligned with the business objective of continuous uptime and availability.

B is a valid risk, as the availability of the external internet provider impacts the user experience.

F is an assumption, implying that budget will not be a limitation in achieving the desired level of performance.

Items like C are too technically specific for the conceptual layer. D directly contradicts the business objective, and E relates more to operational constraints rather than high-level design goals.

The correct mitigation for a skills-based risk is to bridge the gap through training and upskilling. Providing time and budget for training ensures that existing staff can competently support the solution and aligns with long-term sustainability of the environment.

Option A does not address the skills gap, just adds capacity. Option C is a risk identification tool, not a mitigation step. Option D outsources the issue, which contradicts the goal of internal capability development.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation (Based on VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Design Guide):

The VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Design Guide clearly states that a single-site deployment introduces inherent risks when availability requirements extend beyond single host or rack failures. It specifies:

“A single-site VCF deployment tolerates host, rack, and component failure, but does not provide protection against total site failure. This design profile is not well-suited for disaster recovery or high availability across sites.”

Since the architect assumed that the solution must support high availability for workloads, but the environment is hosted entirely on a single physical site, the solution would not meet this assumption in the event of a site outage. This discrepancy represents a design risk — a potential event or condition that could prevent the design from fulfilling the availability requirement.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Design Guide — VCF Fleet in a Single Site Blueprint and Risk Considerations for HA and DR.

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.2 Architecture Overview — Availability and Recoverability Design Qualities.

During VCF bring-up, SDDC Manager requires control of a clean vCenter deployment. Since the existing environment already has a vCenter managing the clusters, the vCenter VM must be migrated to a standalone host so that VCF bring-up can properly deploy its own vCenter instance.

A: NSX deployment happens later during WLD creation, not at fleet bring-up.

C: vSAN isn’t auto-configured — it requires explicit design.

D: VCF uses vLCM images, not baselines, post-deployment.

The High Availability (HA) deployment model of VCF Operations ensures that both monitoring and alerting services are resilient to node failure. Deploying Collector nodes at remote sites enables local data collection, reducing WAN dependency and ensuring data is not lost during network interruptions.

This configuration aligns perfectly with the need to minimize monitoring and alerting downtime, which is critical in distributed, multi-instance environments.

To track configuration drift in VMware Cloud Foundation, the solution uses Configuration Templates and drift checks:

A: Template for the Management Cluster ensures cluster-level baseline is tracked.

B: Scheduling drift checks every 30 days ensures changes are detected.

D: Template for NSX Manager ensures network and security components are included in drift detection.

C (Management vCenter) is not separately templated, it’s part of cluster drift.

E (remediation every 30 days) is not required — detection is enough.

F (Host Profiles) is vSphere-specific, not aligned with VCF’s drift management framework.

The constraint forces the use of the existing array. However, there’s a risk that performance/capacity may be insufficient. VMware’s best practice for risk mitigation in RACR is to plan for contingency.

A is correct because securing budget allocation for additional hardware addresses the risk if the array cannot meet requirements.

B (RAID mirroring) improves redundancy, not performance or capacity.

C contradicts the constraint (cannot ignore existing array).

D (extra Fibre Channel switches) doesn’t address storage array performance/capacity.

Thus, the best mitigation is budget planning for new hardware if the array fails to meet requirements.

Due to the explicit constraint that no internet access is permitted, the VCF Installer cannot connect to an online depot. Instead, the architect must use the offline depot model, where binaries are downloaded externally and made accessible locally within the VCF environment (e.g., using a local web server).

This setup aligns with VMware's "air-gapped" deployment guidance for VCF environments with strict security postures.

Logical design decisions specify how features are configured to meet conceptual requirements. In VMware Cloud Foundation logical design, tuning VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) parameters such as latency sensitivity for workload clusters is explicitly part of logical design because it directly impacts workload performance and cluster behavior. Options A and B are conceptual or operational, and option D is a standard best practice at the physical design layer. VMware documents emphasize that logical design choices define how features (like DRS, HA, and vSAN policies) are implemented .

In a VCF Fleet with Disaster Recovery (AZ model):

vCenter is replicated to ensure management of vSphere workloads continues after a site failure.

NSX is replicated for networking continuity (segments, TEPs, Edge services).

Other components:

SDDC Manager is fleet-level and not replicated per AZ.

VCF Automation and VCF Operations are optional add-ons and not replicated automatically by the DR model.

Thus, vCenter and NSX are replicated across AZs for resiliency.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation (Based on VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Design Guide):

The VCF 9.0.1 Design Guide and vSphere HA Design Best Practices define N+1 as a configuration where one additional host is reserved to ensure full workload recovery in case of a host failure. It specifies:

“To satisfy N+1 availability, the number of cluster hosts must exceed the required workload hosts by one to provide failover capacity.”

Therefore, for five resource-intensive VMs, a six-host cluster (D) ensures that in case of one host failure, performance and availability SLAs are maintained.

In addition, using automated placement rules (A) (e.g., anti-affinity rules) ensures that mission-critical VMs are separated across hosts, minimizing risk of concurrent failure. Resource pools (B) only control scheduling priority and do not affect availability, and keeping all VMs together (C) violates redundancy principles.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Design Guide — “N+1 Cluster Sizing and Availability Considerations.” (pp. 902–905)

VMware vSphere HA Best Practices — “VM Placement Rules and Anti-Affinity Configuration.”

In the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 Architecture and Design Guide, VCF Automation supports multi-tenancy through the creation of separate organizations, each with its own catalog, users, and identity source. The document under “Organizations in VCF Automation” explains:

“Organizations in VCF Automation are created by the provider administrator in the Provider Management Portal. Each organization has its own identity source and resource allocations. The organization administrator can then configure its own self-service catalog and governance policies.”

By configuring separate organizations for Development and Production, the architect ensures logical segregation of resources, catalogs, and permissions. Each organization can manage its own projects, namespaces, and service catalogs independently, meeting both the self-service and segregation requirements.

This design aligns with VMware’s provider–tenant model, where each tenant (organization) operates autonomously while still being managed under a common provider infrastructure.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 Design Guide — “Organizations in VCF Automation: All Apps and VM Apps Organizations.”

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 — “Self-Service Catalog in VCF Automation.”

A single VCF instance with dedicated Workload Domains per tenant strikes the balance between operational efficiency and isolation. It reduces lifecycle tasks since only one management domain must be maintained, while each tenant having a dedicated workload domain ensures isolation of compute resources. This meets all three stated requirements effectively: lifecycle simplicity, minimal overhead, and tenant-specific compute separation.

As defined in the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Architecture and Design Guide, the vSAN Compute Cluster Storage Model is designed to allow compute and storage scaling to occur independently. The guide specifies:

“A vSAN Compute Cluster is a vSphere cluster that does not contribute storage resources to the vSAN datastore. Instead, it consumes storage from a remote vSAN cluster through HCI Mesh. This architecture enables compute and network resources to scale independently of storage.”

This design provides flexibility in disaggregated architectures, allowing organizations to expand compute clusters without needing to expand vSAN capacity nodes and vice versa. Such a model is particularly useful for data-intensive workloads or environments with unpredictable growth patterns in compute versus storage.

Other options, such as vSAN ESA Storage Model or vSAN ESA Storage Cluster Model, represent Enhanced Storage Architecture configurations but do not inherently separate compute scaling. Hence, the correct answer is the vSAN Compute Cluster Storage Model, as it uniquely supports independent scalability while maintaining centralized management under the VCF architecture.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Architecture and Design Guide — “vSAN Compute Cluster Model (Disaggregated Storage Architecture)” (pp. 870–875).

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.2 Design Guide — “Compute and Storage Independent Scaling using HCI Mesh.”

VMware Cloud Foundation architecture uses the RACR framework (Requirements, Assumptions, Constraints, Risks) to classify inputs:

Business requirements describe high-level outcomes the business wants to achieve, often focusing on cost, efficiency, or customer satisfaction.

Technical requirements define how infrastructure should behave to meet performance, resiliency, or security needs.

Among the given options:

A (growth by 30%) and C (no SPOF) are technical requirements.

B (security and resiliency) is also a technical requirement.

D (reduce operational costs) directly aligns with business goals, making it the correct business requirement.

VCF networking guidance emphasizes independent uplinks and notes that while LACP is supported, it is not recommended and introduces additional operational considerations. Specifically: “Link aggregation to the host is supported but not recommended—the default switch-independent load-based teaming (LBT) provides benefits similar to those of LACP without added configuration complexity.” It further states: “Use of LACP… requires specific LACP configuration and switch setup… Not all vSphere features are supported with LACP… [and is] API only.” The design recommendation is: “Ensure each connection between the fabric switch and host operates as an independent uplink.”

Given the customer constraint that the VMware Administration team cannot re-configure the physical network, the prerequisite physical switch port-channel configuration for LACP cannot be performed. During bring-up and life-cycle operations, the Management Domain must follow VCF’s standardized, automated patterns and therefore cannot rely on fabric changes the team cannot make. As a result, LAG cannot be used in the Management Domain, and the design must adopt independent uplinks (LBT) for management, vMotion, and VM traffic while using NFS as principal storage per the NFS Storage Model.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

• VCF 9.0.1 Design – Network Link Aggregation: support, “not recommended,” API-only, and independent uplink recommendation.

• VCF 9.0.1 Design – Link Aggregation Design Recommendations (independent uplinks).

• VCF 9.0.1 Design – NFS Storage Model (principal NFS usage context).