2V0-13.25 VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Architect Questions and Answers

According to VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 documentation, when a stretched cluster is deployed across sites with sub-5ms latency and high-speed interconnects, vSAN can be configured for zero RPO (Recovery Point Objective), ensuring 100% data consistency and availability in the event of a site failure. vSAN supports co-locating management and application workloads and provides the shared storage functionality with automatic failover capabilities.

Additionally, vSphere Virtual Volumes (vVols) provide granular control of virtual machine storage, and when backed by a storage system that supports replication and failover across sites (with support for VASA 3.0 or later), vVols can meet the same requirements for data availability and disaster recovery.

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.

Business requirements describe the high-level goals of the organization, typically related to user experience, cost reduction, compliance, or agility.

A (best end-user experience) aligns directly with business objectives.

B, C, and D are technical requirements: they specify infrastructure design behaviors (migration, security, SLA).

Therefore, the business requirement is ensuring the best end-user experience.

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.

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.

Deploying two VCF Instances allows isolation between environments. One instance can serve as development/test and the other as production.

This separation enables patch/upgrade validation without impacting production. VCF architecture supports managing multiple VCF instances in a Fleet for centralized visibility and policy enforcement.

VMware explicitly recommends separating environments for lifecycle testing in environments with strict change control policies.

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 .

The Conceptual Model documents requirements, assumptions, risks, and constraints (RACR). Here, the business use cases explicitly call for migration and containerization, which translates into a requirement for the solution to support VM and containerized workloads.

A = Constraint (UI accessibility).

C = Assumption.

D = Risk.Only B directly aligns with the business use cases and objectives.

This is a requirement because it specifies what the solution must deliver. VMware encryption requires enabling VM Encryption with vSphere VM Encryption policies or vSAN encryption.

Constraints are design limitations (e.g., budget, existing hardware).

Risks are potential negative outcomes (e.g., encryption introduces CPU overhead).

Assumptions are unverified statements taken as true (e.g., "all VMs can support encryption").

Thus, “All VMs must be encrypted” is a security requirement.

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 VCF Identity Broker (VIDB) enables integration with enterprise identity systems and supports MFA. To reduce operational overhead:

Deploy VIDB once in the first VCF instance at DC01.

Point all additional VCF instances in the same private cloud to this VIDB.

This avoids deploying and managing multiple VIDB instances, reducing lifecycle overhead while still enabling 2FA.

Options A/B introduce unnecessary duplication. Option C centralizes in DC02, but requirement specifies DC01 is primary.

The VCF 9.0.1 Design Guide provides sizing best practices for vSAN stretched clusters, emphasizing capacity planning to accommodate failover conditions. It states:

“When sizing a stretched vSAN cluster, consider that in case of a site failure, all resources from the failed site must be supported by the surviving site. Therefore, compute and storage should not exceed 50% utilization per site.”

This translates into a maximum target utilization of ~45% compute and ~40% storage per site, ensuring compliance with the company’s overall 90% capacity policy when combined across both sites.

A homogeneous cluster configuration (A) ensures consistent performance and predictable recovery during failover.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Design Guide — “vSAN Stretched Cluster Capacity Planning and Sizing.” (pp. 874–885)

VMware vSAN Design and Sizing Reference — “Cluster Utilization Planning for Failover Scenarios.”

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.

In VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0, vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) with composite images is the recommended method for managing host lifecycle. However, when using hardware of different generations, it's not advisable to use a single composite image across clusters with hardware inconsistencies due to potential compatibility mismatches with firmware and drivers.

By using separate vLCM composite images for each cluster (i.e., management and workload), the architect ensures that each cluster's image is optimized for its specific hardware generation, reducing the risk of driver/firmware issues during updates or drift remediation.

This design aligns with the principle of cluster-level lifecycle independence, especially important when working with a mix of hardware generations.

Requirements define what the solution must deliver.

B (block-based storage in WLD) is a technical requirement that specifies a mandatory design need.

Other options:

A (must use existing storage) is a constraint.

C (sufficient storage) is an assumption.

D (network team not trained) is a risk.

Hence, the valid requirement is that block-based storage must be used in the workload domain.

These are classic Recoverability metrics. The Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) directly relate to how fast and how much data can be recovered after a failure or disaster event. The architect must ensure the VCF deployment includes recovery mechanisms, such as stretched clusters or backup/replication technology, that meet these defined RTO/RPO targets.

The Conceptual Model identifies high-level requirements, constraints, assumptions, and risks. The Logical Design translates those into how solution components (clusters, networks, storage, security zones, etc.) are structured to meet dependencies and requirements.

Physical Design comes after Logical Design and defines specific hardware, IP addresses, VLANs, etc.

High Availability Design is a subset of the logical/physical design focusing only on resiliency.

Configuration Guide is implementation-level documentation, not design.

Thus, the Logical Design defines how the infrastructure’s capabilities are arranged to satisfy conceptual dependencies.

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.

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.

To ensure zero RPO and high availability for the management domain, the best-fit design is to use a vSAN Stretched Cluster. With a 2ms latency and shared witness site, this design enables synchronous replication and automatic failover, ensuring no data loss (RPO 0) and minimal downtime.

For the workload domains where 24-hour RTO is acceptable, Live Recovery (leveraging replication and automation like Site Recovery Manager or Aria Automation Orchestrator) can be used to minimize operational effort and still meet recovery timelines. This strategy also aligns with minimizing hardware overhead by using the standby test infrastructure as failover capacity.

A single workload domain in VCF maps to a single vCenter instance. When the host limit for that vCenter is reached (typically ~1000 hosts per vCenter), the correct and supported scale-out design is to deploy a second VI workload domain, which comes with its own dedicated vCenter instance, allowing continued expansion without affecting the existing domain.

When gathering business requirements, VMware’s VCF Design and Planning methodology (referenced in the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Architecture and Design Guide) specifies that architects must first analyze the business-level inputs that define availability, manageability, and compliance objectives. The documentation identifies Service-Level Agreements (SLAs) and Organizational Structure as key influencing factors on design decisions because they define the scope of reliability, operational responsibility, and risk tolerance of the solution.

SLAs determine the required uptime, RPO/RTO targets, and recovery policies, directly impacting design elements such as stretched clusters, backup configuration, and resource redundancy. Similarly, the organizational structure affects operational models and determines how administrative domains, roles, and tenancy will be separated — influencing whether to implement single-tenancy or multi-tenancy within VCF Automation and how management domains are segregated.

Other options such as product versions, VM sizes, or storage capacity are important for implementation and scaling phases, not the business requirements stage. VMware explicitly distinguishes between business requirements (goals, SLAs, governance) and technical requirements (capacity, configuration) in the VCF Design Library.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Design Guide — Business Requirements Gathering Framework (VCF-DES-PLN-BREQ-001).

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Architecture Overview — SLAs and Organizational Models Impact on Design Decisions.

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Design Library — Mapping Business Requirements to Design Factors.

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.

D: Setting UserVars.SuppressShellWarning = 0 ensures warnings are shown when shell access is used, improving auditability and compliance.

E: Using certificates signed by a trusted military Root CA aligns with security compliance standards for certificate trust and chain of custody.

Options A and C are operational best practices, but not military hardening. B is about operations automation, not compliance-level hardening.

As per the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Design Guide (Conceptual, Logical, and Physical Model Framework), a conceptual model defines what the solution will deliver at a high level — focusing on major components and interactions without specifying implementation details or configurations.

The statement “Users will connect to the application servers via the NSX Advanced Load Balancer” fits this definition because it identifies a functional relationship between solution components (users and applications) and introduces the NSX ALB as a key service enabler — without going into configuration or performance specifics.

In contrast:

Option A (MTTR 6 hours) defines a service level target, part of non-functional design.

Option B (stretched L2 networks) and C (vSphere HA parameter tuning) belong to the logical and physical design stages respectively, as they involve implementation specifics.

Therefore, D represents a conceptual model statement, describing service delivery intent and architectural interaction.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Design Guide — “Conceptual, Logical, and Physical Design Layers Explained.”

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.2 Architecture Design Standards — “Conceptual Model: High-Level Service Definition and Interaction.”

According to the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 Architecture and Design Guide, vSphere Pods (which support VMware Kubernetes Service or VKS clusters) use three types of storage: ephemeral VMDKs, persistent volume VMDKs, and container image VMDKs.

The document explicitly states:

> “A vSphere Pod requires ephemeral storage to store such Kubernetes objects as logs, emptyDir volumes, and ConfigMaps during its operations. This ephemeral, or transient, storage lasts as long as the pod continues to exist.”

Ephemeral storage is non-persistent by design and is deleted once the pod lifecycle ends. It provides temporary space for data that doesn’t need to persist beyond the pod’s lifespan, such as application logs, temporary caches, or transient compute data. This aligns with Kubernetes’ ephemeral storage model integrated into vSphere infrastructure.

Persistent workloads, by contrast, utilize storage policies and vSphere CNS-backed persistent volumes. Therefore, ephemeral storage is the correct type for non-persistent pod data.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 — “Storage Policies for a Supervisor” (p. 5632–5633)

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 — “vSphere Pod Storage Types: Ephemeral, Persistent, and Container Image VMDKs.”

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