2V0-11.25 VMware Cloud Foundation 5.2 Administrator Questions and Answers

You must enable the IaaS control plane (Workload Management/vSphere Supervisor) on your vSphere clusters via SDDC Manager to provide the Kubernetes control plane.

Defining storage policies ensures that your Kubernetes Namespaces can consume persistent storage that meets application requirements.

NSX must be deployed (and an Edge cluster available) to provide networking, load balancing, and security services for the Kubernetes Pods and control plane.

You must integrate the Microsoft Certificate Authority into SDDC Manager so that it can issue and trust certificates from the shared CA.

Replace the ESXi host SSL certificates in vCenter (using the vCenter Certificate Manager) with CA-signed certs, since SDDC Manager does not manage ESXi SSL replacement directly.

In SDDC Manager, replace the SSL certificates for vCenter, NSX Manager, SDDC Manager, and Aria Suite Lifecycle with certificates generated by the integrated Microsoft CA to keep the environment compliant and under SDDC Manager’s lifecycle control.

Assigning a VLAN ID to a VDS port group ensures that all traffic on that port group is tagged for and confined to the specified VLAN, providing logical segmentation and isolation of network traffic.

Accessing the SDDC Manager VM console and using top lets you pinpoint which processes or services are consuming excessive CPU.

Reviewing CPU usage on the ESXi hosts in the management domain helps determine if resource overcommitment at the host level is contributing to the SDDC Manager VM’s high CPU.

https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/324041/sddc-manager-experiencing-high-cpu-usage.html

To achieve an RPO of 0 across three sites in VMware Cloud Foundation you would implement a vSAN Stretched Cluster (for synchronous, zero-RPO storage replication) and use NSX (to provide the under-the-hood, cross-site L2/L3 networking fabric that carries the vSAN traffic and keeps the cluster coherent).

VCF Storage (vSAN)

Implements stretched clusters with synchronous replication, delivering continuous availability with ~0 RPO and low RTO across sites.

VCF Networking (NSX)

Provides the cross-site overlay networking required to carry vSAN’s replication traffic and maintain a unified cluster across geographically dispersed sites.

Enabling Encrypted vSphere vMotion encrypts the vMotion network traffic, ensuring the confidentiality and integrity of data as it travels between hosts.

https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/vmware-cis/vsphere/vsphere/8-0/vsphere-security-8-0/securing-esxi-hosts/customizing-hosts-with-the-security-profile/lockdown-mode.html

Defining a bandwidth allocation for the VM traffic type lets you reserve throughput for business-critical VMs.

NIOC must be enabled on the workload domain’s vDS to allow policy enforcement.

Creating a network resource pool for VM traffic lets you assign appropriate shares, limits, and reservations to prioritize that traffic.

Each new Edge node requires its own unique management IP address for NSX management traffic.

Edge nodes need two Tunnel Endpoint (TEP) addresses to participate in the overlay transport.

DNS A records must exist for each new Edge node so the cluster can resolve and register them properly.

VMware Aria Operations delivers dashboards for key performance indicators and includes built-in capacity planning and reporting features that can be scheduled to show resource consumption by team.

Memory Hot Add must be enabled before you can add RAM to a running VM.

CPU Hot Add must be enabled before adding vCPUs to a powered-on VM.

You can only toggle the Hot Add features (CPU or Memory) when the VM is powered off.

If the subnet mask is incorrect, the VM may not recognize the gateway as being on the local network, preventing communication even though the gateway itself is reachable by other correctly configured VMs. Checking and correcting the subnet mask ensures the VM can properly route to its default gateway.

As per the VMware Cloud Foundation 5.2 official documentation (Design and Configuration Guides), it is a best practice and requirement to configure ESXi management interfaces in the management domain withstatic IP addresses and host names. Automated or dynamic methods—such as DHCP, even with reservations—arenot supportedfor this purpose. Instead, each ESXi host’s management network (i.e., the VMkernel management interface) must bemanually assigneda unique and consistent static IP.

Here is theexact extractfrom the official VMware technical documentation:

“Allocate statically assigned IP addresses and host names across all ESXi hosts in the default management cluster. Ensures stability across the VMware Cloud Foundation instance, makes it simpler to maintain and track, and to implement a DNS configuration.”

For Workload Management in VMware Cloud Foundation, a minimum of three ESXi hosts is required to create a robust, highly available vSphere cluster.

Proper NTP and DNS configuration is essential to ensure time synchronization and proper resolution of network names, which are critical for Workload Management.

The hosts must be running vSphere 7.0 or later to be compatible with the latest features and requirements for Workload Management.

Encrypted vSphere vMotion ensures that network traffic is protected from interception and tampering during VM migration activities by encrypting the vMotion traffic. This feature secures the transfer of virtual machines across hosts in the vSphere environment.

Aria Operations (formerly vRealize Operations) is the most appropriate tool for analyzing detailed network performance metrics in a vSphere environment. It provides comprehensive monitoring, analytics, and performance management, including network performance metrics across the vSphere infrastructure.

vSAN: vSAN supports stretched clusters, allowing data to be mirrored across multiple sites to ensure continuous availability and enable high availability for virtual machines in case of a site failure.

vSphere: vSphere also supports stretched clusters, enabling the high availability of applications across multiple sites by allowing virtual machines to be run on either site in the event of a failure.

In a VMware Cloud Foundation environment, it is recommended to use static IP addresses that are managed via VMware NSX IP Pools. This method ensures consistency, scalability, and centralized management of IP addresses, which is essential for large environments. NSX IP Pools allow for efficient IP address allocation and management.

The vcf-deployment-debug.log file on the VMware Cloud Builder appliance contains detailed logs related to the deployment process, including any validation errors. This log will help identify the cause of the error during the deployment validation phase.

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NFS: NFS (Network File System) can be used as a storage option during the deployment of a VI workload domain, typically for storing virtual machine files.

vVol: vVol (Virtual Volumes) provides a storage framework to allow for policy-driven management of virtual machine storage.

VMFS on FC: VMFS (VMware File System) on Fibre Channel (FC) provides block-level storage for virtual machines and is widely used in VMware environments.

vSAN: vSAN (Virtual SAN) is VMware's hyper-converged storage solution, which combines compute and storage resources in a VMware environment, and is available as a storage option for a workload domain.

To share the contents of a Content Library across multiple vCenter instances, you need to create a Local content library on one vCenter instance and enable publishing. This allows the library to be accessible by other vCenter instances, where they can subscribe to it, ensuring the content is shared.

To enable lockdown mode, you first need to navigate to the ESXi host's settings in the vSphere Client, where you can configure security settings such as lockdown mode.

Enabling "Strict Lockdown Mode" restricts all direct access to the ESXi host, ensuring that only authorized users can manage the host through vCenter and preventing direct login via the ESXi console or SSH.

The "Tunnel" status in NSX indicates the status of the VXLAN tunnels used for communication between ESXi hosts. If the MTU setting for the host Tunnel Endpoint (TEP) is incorrectly set to 1500, this can cause issues with VXLAN encapsulation, as VXLAN packets typically require an MTU of at least 1600 bytes to function correctly. Setting the MTU too low can cause packet drops and result in the tunnel status being down.

Before configuring Application Virtual Networks (AVNs) from SDDC Manager, the administrator mustdeploy an NSX Edge Cluster. The official VMware Cloud Foundation documentation specifies that an NSX Edge Cluster is required to provide the necessary network services and routing capabilities for AVNs, which are used to support management components such as VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle. Without the NSX Edge Cluster, AVN creation and related network functionalities cannot be configured or used from SDDC Manager. Steps such as enabling AVNs in vCenter Server, ensuring a load balancer, or assigning AVNs to specific ESXi hosts are not the prerequisites required by the workflow.

vSphere HA (High Availability) is designed to automatically restart virtual machines on other hosts in the cluster in case of a host failure. If there is an issue with vSphere HA host states, the primary symptom is that HA-protected VMs do not restart after a host failure, which indicates a problem with HA configuration or functionality.

Port group settings and VLAN configurations need to be correct for VMs to communicate with each other on the same network. Ensuring they are properly configured is essential.

It's important to check that the VM is connected to the correct port group that matches the network configuration of the other VMs.

The network adapter settings in vCenter Server should be reviewed to ensure there are no misconfigurations that could prevent network communication.

Filtering the logs by the ESXi host name and error severity helps narrow down the logs to those relevant to the specific host and allows for easier identification of significant errors.

Checking for patterns or repeated error messages over a specific time frame helps identify the root cause of the issue and determine if the errors are linked to a specific event or condition.

In a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) environment, when adding a new cluster to an existing VI workload domain, the new cluster must use the same principal storage as the existing cluster. Since the existing cluster is using NFS, the available storage options for the new cluster would be NFS or vSAN, depending on the configuration.

When creating a custom role, it is essential to choose the appropriate privileges that the role will require. These privileges define what actions the users in the role can perform.

To create and manage roles, you need to navigate to the "Roles" section in the vSphere Client. This is where roles are defined and assigned within the vCenter Server.

The official documentation for enabling Workload Management (vSphere Supervisor) on a VCF workload domain requires the following prerequisites:

Verify that the vSphere Distributed Switch is configured with sufficient port groups (A):The vSphere Distributed Switch must have the appropriate port groups created and configured to support the networking requirements of the Supervisor Cluster.

Verify all hosts within the selected Sphere clusters have the proper vSphere with Tanzu licensing to support Workload Management (C):All ESXi hosts in the target cluster must have vSphere with Tanzu licensing to enable and use Workload Management features.

Verify at least one NSX Edge cluster is deployed and available (D):NSX Edge cluster is necessary to provide network services, including load balancing and routing, which are required for the Supervisor Cluster.A content library is not a prerequisite for enabling Workload Management, and while vSAN is commonly used, it is not a strict requirement for all configurations of Supervisor Clusters.

VMware Data Services Manager™ offers modern database and data services management for vSphere. It is a solution that provides a data-as-a-service toolkit for on-demand provisioning and automated management of PostgreSQL and MySQL databases in vSphere environment.https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/vmware-cis/dsm/data-services-manager/2-1/about-vmware-data-services-manager.html

To apply software updates in a VMware Cloud Foundation deployment using the VMware Async Patch CLI Tool, the process involves downloading the patch bundle, uploading it to SDDC Manager, and then using the appropriate commands or tools to apply the patch. This ensures that the patch is properly staged in the environment and applied to the necessary components.

Password rotation for VMware Cloud Foundation components is managed via the SDDC Manager UI. In the password management section of the SDDC Manager, administrators can rotate the passwords for various components like vCenter Server, NSX Manager, and other management components.

https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/vmware-cis/vcf/vcf-5-2-and-earlier/4-5/administering/deploying-nsx-edge-clusters-admin/create-an-nsx-edge-cluster-admin.html

Before using Cloud Builder, you must validate network connectivity and DNS name resolution for all management components to ensure the deployment can register and communicate correctly.

Ensuring the guest OS network configuration (IP, subnet mask, gateway) is correct rules out misconfiguration within the VM.

Confirming the virtual NIC is present and connected verifies the VM’s link to the virtual switch.

Checking that the port group name exists and is correct ensures the VM is attached to the intended network segment.

For a failed Management Domain bring-up, you should SSH into the Cloud Builder appliance and run the Supportability and Serviceability (SoS) Utility there to generate the support bundle.

If Aria Operations for Logs cannot reach the vSphere, NSX, or vSAN components over the network, no logs will be collected—so validating connectivity (firewalls, routing, DNS) is essential.

Each component’s syslog settings must point to the correct Aria Operations for Logs endpoint; if they’re misconfigured, logs won’t be forwarded.

The NSX host overlay VLAN and NSX Edge overlay VLAN must be routed to each other so Edge nodes can establish overlay tunnels with transport nodes.

DNS A records for each NSX Edge node are required for name resolution during deployment and operation.

NSX requires distinct VLAN IDs and subnets for the host overlay network (transport nodes) and the Edge overlay network to segregate traffic and avoid IP space conflicts.

https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/vmware-cis/vcf/vcf-5-2-and-earlier/5-2/map-for-administering-vcf-5-2/deploying-nsx-edge-clusters-admin/prerequisites-for-an-nsx-edge-cluster-admin.html

SDDC Manager always deploys a dedicated NSX Manager instance and a new vCenter Server for each VI workload domain during initial deployment.

You must configure and register a Key Management Server in vCenter to handle encryption keys.

An encryption policy is created in vCenter to define the encryption settings that VMs will use.

You then apply the encryption policy to the existing VMs to encrypt their disks.

https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/vmware-cis/vsphere/vsphere/8-0/vsphere-security-8-0/use-encryption-in-your-vsphere-environment/encrypt-an-existing-virtual-machine-or-virtual-disk.html

You must provide the AD domain name plus credentials (read-only is sufficient) to bind and query the Base DN for users and groups.

In the vSphere Client’s Identity Sources section, choose “Active Directory Domain” when adding a new source.

These options are found under Administration → Single Sign-On → Configuration → Identity Sources in the vSphere Client.