2V0-17.25 Sample Questions Answers

In a two-node vSAN cluster, a third component called a witness host is required to provide quorum and prevent split-brain scenarios. The VMware vSAN documentation states:

“A two-node vSAN cluster requires a witness host to maintain cluster quorum. The witness can be either a dedicated physical ESXi host or a vSAN Witness Appliance deployed as a virtual appliance.”

Valid witness options:

Physical ESXi Host (A) – A dedicated host that participates only as a witness and does not store data.

vSAN Witness Appliance (B) – A preconfigured virtual appliance provided by VMware that runs ESXi and serves as the witness host.

Incorrect options:

VCF Operations appliance (C) is for monitoring and analytics.

VCF Installer (D) is used for deployment workflows.

vCenter appliance (E) manages the cluster but does not act as a witness.

Therefore, the two correct options are Physical ESX Host and vSAN Witness Appliance.

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.

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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Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation:

The VCF 9.0 Architecture and Deployment Guide explains that within a single Workload Domain, administrators can scale resources by adding additional clusters, including compute or vSAN storage clusters. Specifically, “A Workload Domain can contain multiple clusters. You can deploy a new cluster, such as a vSAN cluster, into an existing domain without introducing new management components.” .

Options A and D both introduce new workload domains or VCF instances, which require their own management stack (vCenter, NSX Manager, etc.) and are unnecessary in this scenario. Option B is incorrect because “vSAN storage-only nodes” are supported in vSAN but are not the method for adding a new cluster within VCF automation. The correct approach is deploying a second cluster inside the same workload domain—this reuses the existing management components while meeting the requirement for a new vSAN storage cluster.

The VCF 9.0 Logging and Auditing Guide explains that audit information—including user logins, configuration changes, and API requests—is collected and made searchable through VCF Operations for Logs. The extract states:

“VCF Operations for Logs provides centralized log aggregation and auditing for all VCF services, including audit trails of logins and configuration changes.”

Option A (audit logs per instance) is unnecessary because auditing is centralized. Option C (Enable Audit Events) is not a standalone step; it is a capability surfaced through Logs. Option D (Event logs in vCenter) covers only vCenter, not fleet-wide audit trails. Therefore, the correct step is to integrate VCF Operations for Logs.

In VMware vSphere with Supervisor (used within VCF), a vSphere Namespace allows administrators to define resource quotas for Kubernetes workloads.

The vSphere documentation specifies that administrators can configure limits on:

CPU resources

Memory resources

Storage capacity

These quotas control the maximum resources that workloads deployed within the namespace can consume.

Incorrect options:

The number of containers (A) is managed at the Kubernetes level, not directly as a namespace resource quota in vSphere.

The number of services (D) is a Kubernetes object count limit, not a vSphere namespace resource limit.

Thus, the three configurable resource limitations are CPU, Memory, and Storage.

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.

In VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0, the strategy for monitoring diverse application types (internal, commercial, and open-source) in a consolidated manner relies heavily on the ingestion and analysis of log data.

According to the VCF 9.0 Operations and Monitoring Guide:

VCF Operations for Logs (D): This is the core platform (formerly VMware Aria Operations for Logs) used for real-time log management. It provides a centralized location to collect logs from any source—be it a custom-coded internal app, a commercial database, or an open-source web server. This satisfy the "consolidated manner" requirement by aggregating disparate data streams into a single searchable interface.

VCF Operations for Logs Content Packs (E): To provide "simple" monitoring for commercial and open-source applications without manual configuration, VCF utilizes Content Packs. These packs contain pre-defined dashboards, extracted fields, and alerts tailored for specific applications (e.g., Apache, Microsoft SQL Server, Linux, etc.). By using Content Packs, an administrator can immediately gain deep visibility into the health and performance of diverse applications without building custom monitoring logic.

Why other options are incorrect:

VCF Operations Service/Application Discovery (A & C): These features are used to map relationships between virtual machines and services to understand dependencies. While they help identify what is running, they do not provide the deep "monitoring" (log analysis and alerting) requested for a mix of internal and open-source apps.

VCF Operations for Applications (B): This usually refers to high-frequency metrics and trace analysis (formerly Tanzu Observability/Wavefront). While powerful, it is often more complex to implement across a standard VCF fleet compared to the "simple, consolidated" log-based approach provided by VCF Operations for Logs and its associated Content Packs.

The VCF 9.0 Resource Policy Guide describes IaaS Resource Policies as mechanisms to enforce deployment rules for Supervisor-based Kubernetes clusters.

For the production project, only Kubernetes resources are allowed, so administrators must disallow VM deployments (A).

To tolerate a single control plane node failure, production clusters should use multi-control-plane node templates, ensuring availability (B).

In the development project, resources should be minimized, so a single-control-plane node policy is 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.

Deleting an Organization in VCF Automation requires using the Provider Management Portal, not Fleet Management. Before deletion, dependent resources must be removed.

According to the VCF 9.0 Automation documentation:

Administrators must log into the VCF Automation Provider Management Portal (G).

The Organization must first be disabled (C) to prevent active usage.

All associated region quotas must be deleted (D), since Organizations cannot be removed while resource allocations exist.

Finally, the administrator can delete the Organization (A).

Deleting SSL certificates (B) and the embedded Orchestrator (F) are not required for Organization removal. Fleet Management (E) is unrelated to Organization lifecycle operations.

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 vSphere 9.0 Resource Management documentation, included within VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0, specifies that Resource Pools are the mechanism to delegate compute resources within a cluster. A resource pool acts as a container of compute resources (CPU and memory) that can be subdivided and assigned to VMs or groups of VMs.

The documentation states:

“Resource pools provide resource isolation, control, and delegation. You can configure reservations, limits, and shares to ensure that mission-critical workloads (such as production VMs) receive guaranteed resources, while development or test workloads consume only available resources.”

This aligns directly with the requirements:

Power on only if resources are available → Achieved via reservations and limits.

Production VMs require guaranteed levels of resources → Enforced using reservations.

Three-tier apps with varying demand → Controlled using shares and limits across multiple resource pools.

Other options are incorrect:

vSphere Availability (A) provides failover, not resource governance.

VCF Operations (B) monitors resource usage but does not allocate or enforce it.

Dynamic Resource Scheduling (D) balances workloads but does not provide delegated, guaranteed allocations per department or application tier.

Thus, the correct feature is vSphere Resource Pools.

For dark site (air-gapped) deployments, VMware Cloud Foundation requires the use of the VCF Download Tool to retrieve the required software bundles from a connected system before transferring them into the isolated environment.

The VCF 9.0 Installation Guide specifies:

“For deployments in disconnected or air-gapped environments, use the VCF Download Tool on a connected system to download required bundles and then transfer them to the target environment.”

The VCF Installer (A) consumes bundles but does not download them.

SDDC Manager (B) can download bundles only in connected mode.

Broadcom Downloads (D) is the source portal, but not the supported workflow tool for preparing offline repositories.

Therefore, the correct method for dark site deployments is to use the VCF Download Tool.

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 VCF 9.0 Automation and Orchestration Guide explains how Orchestrator integrates with VCF Automation to provide workflow-driven services such as Active Directory management.

Orchestrator Integration (B):The tenant must be connected to the dedicated Orchestrator instance rather than the embedded one. Documentation notes: “Each tenant can integrate with its own Orchestrator endpoint for workflow execution.”

AD Plugin Configuration (E):The Orchestrator Active Directory plugin must be configured against the development AD only, ensuring that the development team does not impact the production directory.

Publish Workflow (C):The AD user creation workflow must be published to the VCF Automation catalog using the Content Hub. Actions alone are insufficient; workflows are the full automation logic exposed to end users.

Custom Resource Object (F):To enable developers to create and destroy AD accounts, a Custom Resource object must be created in VCF Automation and mapped to the Orchestrator workflows. This provides lifecycle capabilities (create/destroy) in the self-service catalog.

Options A and D are incorrect because publishing only the “action” is not sufficient (workflows are required), and the plugin must not point to production AD. Option G is incorrect because the dedicated Orchestrator has already been deployed, so the embedded Orchestrator is not used.

The VCF 9.0 Architecture Guide outlines valid principal storage options for 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 are not supported for 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.

VCF 9.0 states for the Simple Automation model: “Single node… Applies to Small… Can be scaled out to the high availability model by resizing the node to Medium or Large, which also forces the scale out to 3 nodes.” In addition, the Day-N procedure confirms the action is a Scale (scale-out) operation: “Scale VCF Automation… choose a larger target deployment type such as Medium or Large…” and provide “Additional VIPs” and a “Cluster Node IP Pool” (Medium requires a minimum of four IPs), then submit the scale out request. Therefore, moving from Small (Simple) to Medium necessarily transitions to the High Availability (3-node) model rather than remaining a single medium node. This aligns the form factor with the documented model behavior and the fleet management workflow.

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The VCF 9.0 Operations Documentation identifies Operations for Networks as the key enabler for the Network Operations feature:

“VCF Operations for Networks (formerly vRNI) provides visibility into network traffic flows, NSX fabric health, application dependency mapping, and micro-segmentation planning. It integrates directly into VCF Operations dashboards under Network Operations.”

The vDefend firewall is unrelated, as it provides workload-level security. The VCF Operations Collector is required for telemetry ingestion but does not provide full Network Operations. NSX itself provides the underlying virtual networking, but it must be monitored through VCF Operations for Networks. Therefore, the correct answer is VCF Operations for Networks.

The VCF 9.0 Service Mesh Integration Guide defines Istio as: “Istio Service Mesh provides an infrastructure layer that transparently handles service-to-service communication, securing, observing, and controlling traffic between microservices.” The key purpose is enabling structured and observable communication between applications. While Istio includes discovery and load balancing, those are features, not the overarching purpose. A centralized routing table (Option D) is not the core definition. VMware documentation highlights Istio’s role in service-to-service communication, observability, and policy enforcement within the service mesh. Therefore, the correct answer is B.

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

VCF 9.0 documents two Operations for Logs/Operations models—Simple (Standard) and High Availability (Cluster)—and highlight that Simple is the minimal footprint option intended for test/dev: “Architecture flexibility: Can be deployed in a Simple or Highly Available Cluster deployment. Recommended deployment is a HA Cluster… Simple deployment is for test/dev environments, it is not for production use cases.”

By contrast, HA/clustered models increase resources to provide redundancy at scale. Since the requirement is the smallest resource footprint, the Simple model is the correct selection. (Stretched/Continuous Availability options are not listed VCF Operations models in this context.)

According to the VCF 9.0 Operations and Monitoring Guide:

Fleet Management: “VCF Operations Fleet Management enables cross-instance monitoring, unifying health and metrics across multiple VCF instances.”

Operations for Networks: “Provides application and network visibility, dependency mapping, and traffic analytics. Required to complete full-stack monitoring.”

Core VCF Operations is already deployed as part of the management stack and does not need to be added separately. Operations for Logs is optional for log aggregation, not mandatory for full-stack observability. The Management Pack Builder (C) is an add-on tool for custom packs, not a required component. Therefore, the correct two to add for full-stack monitoring are VCF Operations Fleet Management (A) and VCF Operations for Networks (E).

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.

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.

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.

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.