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

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 aScale(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 offour IPs), then submit thescale out request. Therefore, moving from Small (Simple) to Medium necessarily transitions to theHigh 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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TheVMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 and vSphere with Tanzu documentationdescribes the Container Storage Interface (CSI) as follows:

“The vSphere CSI driver allows vSphere storage to be exposed as persistent storage to containerized applications running on Kubernetes clusters. The driver implements the Kubernetes CSI specification and enables dynamic provisioning, attach/detach, and snapshot operations for persistent volumes.”

Key points from the documentation:

CSI is not limited tovSphere object storage(A). It works with vSAN, VMFS, NFS, and other vSphere-supported datastores.

Its purpose is to providepersistent storage(B), so containerized workloads have data that outlives pod lifecycles.

CSI is not restricted to “cloud native storage only” (C); it is the standard interface for Kubernetes persistent storage.

CSI is not used forephemeral storage(D); ephemeral storage is provided by local container runtimes and does not require CSI.

Therefore, the correct description is that CSI is aplug-in that allows providers to expose storage as persistent storageto Kubernetes workloads running in vSphere Supervisor clusters.

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 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.

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.

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 VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 networking design documentation specifies that container workloads running on VMware Kubernetes Service (VKS) with NSX networking require external connectivity via a Centralized Connectivity model. This is implemented using an NSX Tier-0 (T0) Gateway which provides north-south routing to the corporate physical network.

The guide states:“In VKS deployments backed by NSX networking, workloads achieve external reachability through a centralized Tier-0 Gateway, ensuring integration with corporate networking and enterprise services.”This model ensures traffic consolidation, policy enforcement, and simplified routing for Kubernetes workloads.

Round-robin Connectivity is not a supported NSX gateway connectivity model.

Distributed Connectivity refers to east-west NSX overlay communication, not north-south connectivity.

Physical Connectivity is not precise, as workloads do not connect directly to the physical network; instead, they use logical routing.

Centralized Connectivity is the correct model, where the T0 Gateway centralizes external routing for container workloads.

TheVCF Healthfeature “provides a central location for monitoring the health of your environment,” including the ability to track “vCenter Server instances,” “ESXi hosts,” and “NSX deployments.” Health monitoring includes connectivity, configuration, and critical services status, surfacing alerts for remediation. The documentation’s scope statements make clear that VCF Health targets theinfrastructure components—vCenter, ESXi, and NSX—rather than the VCF Operations applications themselves (for example, Fleet Management or Logs). Therefore, the correct monitored components areESX hosts,vCenter Server, andNSX.

Per theVCF 9.0 Automation Provider Management Guide:

Supervisor Activation: “Kubernetes-based workloads require Supervisor to be enabled in the Management Domain before deploying organizations.”

Region Configuration: “Organizations for All Applications must be deployed into a preconfigured Region, defined in the Provider Management Portal.”NSX Federation (D) is optional for multi-site deployments. Supervisor is not activated in workload domains (B) but centrally in the management domain. VMware Kubernetes Service (E) is enabled per tenant but not required before Organization creation. Thus, correct prerequisites areA and C.

TheVCF Operations Dashboards Guidedescribes theStorage Overview dashboard:

“The Storage Overview dashboard provides visibility into capacity, performance, and health across vSAN and non-vSAN datastores. Administrators can track datastore utilization, latency, throughput, and availability from a single pane of glass.”

Diagnostic Findings (B) shows troubleshooting insights, not full storage details. Data Protection & Recovery (C) covers backup/replication information. VCF Health (D) focuses on SDDC Manager, vCenter, NSX, and host health, not datastore metrics.

Therefore, the required datastore overview is accessed through theStorage Overview dashboardin VCF Operations.

TheVCF 9.0 Service Mesh Integration Guidedefines 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 inservice-to-service communication, observability, and policy enforcementwithin the service mesh. Therefore, the correct answer isB.

TheVCF 9.0 Upgrade Documentationclearly outlines a staged upgrade sequence: “The upgrade to VCF 9.0 begins with the SDDC Manager upgrade. Only after SDDC Manager is upgraded to 9.0 are the other component bundles (vCenter, ESXi, NSX, Operations) made available for download and application.”

This design ensures SDDC Manager is compatible with the lifecycle operations required for the rest of the environment. If SDDC Manager is not upgraded first, it cannot process or display other bundles. Offline repositories (A), proxy servers (B), or ASYNC tools (C) do not affect the bundle visibility order. Therefore, the correct answer isD. SDDC Manager must be upgraded first.

TheVCF 9.0 Upgrade Guidespecifies required components when converting from a vSphere-only deployment to full VCF. The must-deploy services include:

VCF Operations fleet management– central monitoring of multiple instances.

VCF Operations– core operational monitoring platform.

VCF Operations Collector– required for data ingestion from vSphere, NSX, and vSAN.The Identity Broker is already embedded with VCF 9.0 SSO, while VCF Operations for Logs and Networks areoptional add-onsfor extended visibility. Thus, the required three are:A, D, F.

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 documentation clarifies the scenario when a password is changedoutsideof 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 useRemediate passwordto synchronize credentials and restore management from VCF Operations.

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