3V0-24.25 Advanced VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 vSphere Kubernetes Service Questions and Answers

The problem describes demand spikes where capacity exists, but the application cannot meet demand—this typically indicates the cluster needs toscale out(more nodes/pods) automatically when load increases. In VCF 9.0, VKS supportsCluster Autoscaleras an optional package and specifically calls out improvements: “Cluster Autoscaler supports scaling from zero or to zero… You must have the autoscaler standard package installed.” This directly supports optionA(install cluster autoscaling) as the mechanism to dynamically add capacity during peak events and reduce it afterward, optimizing cost and operations while meeting bursts. A load balancer (including Foundation Load Balancer) helps distribute traffic acrossexistingendpoints, but it does not create new compute capacity when pods are pending due to insufficient nodes. Similarly, installing Contour relates to ingress (routing inbound traffic) and is not, by itself, a capacity scaling solution. Oversubscription is a risky workaround that can degrade performance and does not provide targeted, policy-driven elasticity. Therefore, enablingcluster autoscalingis the correct way to address burst demand when underlying resources are available.

VCF 9.0 distinguishes betweenbacking up the Supervisor control planeandbacking up workloadsthat run on the Supervisor, includingvSphere Pods. In the “Considerations for Backing Up and Restoring Workload Management” table, the scenario “Backup and restore vSphere Pods” explicitly lists the required tool as“Velero Plugin for vSphere”, with the guidance to “Install and configure the plug-in on the Supervisor.”

The same document is explicit thatstandalone Velero with Restic is not valid for vSphere Pods, stating: “You cannot use Velero standalone with Restic to backup and restore vSphere Pods. You must use the Velero Plugin for vSphere installed on the Supervisor.”

vCenter file-based backup is documented for restoring theSupervisor control plane state, not for backing up and restoring vSphere Pod workloads themselves. Therefore, to meet the requirement to protect third-party applications running asvSphere Pods, the architect should propose theVelero Plugin for vSphere.

In a vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) environment, resource management follows aDeclarative Model. When an administrator uses kubectl edit deployment to manually scale a running workload from 5 to 10 replicas, they are modifying thelive stateof the deployment. However, thesource of truthfor a Tanzu Kubernetes cluster in VCF 9.0 is theCluster YAML specificationmaintained by the Cluster API (CAPI) provider within the Supervisor.

If the administrator redeploys the cluster or if the Supervisor’s controller performs a reconciliation loop, it refers back to the original configuration file. If that cluster YAML file still defines the replica count as 5, the Supervisor will terminate the 5 "extra" pods to match the desired state defined in the configuration. This is a common administrative pitfall; for changes to be persistent across redeployments or updates in VCF 9.0, the underlying manifest (the "Desired State") must be updated. Manually editing the live object only provides a temporary change that will be overwritten during the next synchronization or lifecycle event because the cluster YAML file was not updated to reflect the requested increase.

The VCF 9.0 documentation explicitly states that“the VKS exposes three layers of controllers to manage the lifecycle of a VKS cluster.”Those three controller layers map directly to the answer choices:

Cloud Provider Plug-in: VKS-provisioned clusters include components needed to integrate with vSphere Namespace resources, including aCloud Provider Plug-inthat integrates with the Supervisor and supports infrastructure-integrated functions (for example, passing persistent volume requests to the Supervisor which integrates with Cloud Native Storage).

Cluster API: The documentation describesCluster APIas providing declarative APIs for “cluster creation, configuration, and management,” including resources for the VMs and cluster add-ons.

Virtual Machine Service: TheVirtual Machine Serviceprovides declarative APIs to manage VMs and associated vSphere resources, and is used to manage the lifecycle of the control plane and worker node VMs that host a VKS cluster.

CNI and CSI are important cluster components, but the document distinguishes these from thethree controller layersresponsible for lifecycle management.

A service mesh is an application communication layer that standardizesservice-to-service trafficinside Kubernetes. Instead of each development team building custom logic for retries, timeouts, encryption, and telemetry, the mesh provides these capabilities consistently across workloads. This is typically done by inserting a data plane (often sidecar proxies or node-level proxies) that intercepts inbound and outbound traffic for each microservice, plus a control plane that distributes configuration and identity material.

The key outcomes align directly to optionB: communication becomespossible(reliable connectivity patterns),structured(consistent routing rules, policies, and identity), andobservable(metrics, logs, and distributed tracing for east-west traffic). A service mesh commonly adds controls such asmTLS encryption, fine-grainedtraffic policy(allow/deny, rate limits, circuit breaking), and progressive delivery patterns (canary/blue-green) without changing application code.

By contrast, service discovery (A) is usually a built-in Kubernetes function, load balancing/autoscaling across sites (C) is not the primary definition of a service mesh, and a single centralized global routing table (D) is not how meshes are typically described or implemented.

VCF 9.0 describes backing up workloads on VKS clusters usingVelero(Velero Plugin for vSphere) and shows the backup command pattern scoping backup content bynamespace(for example, velero backup create ... --include-namespaces=my-namespace). This demonstrates thatNamespacesare a primary object type within backup scope (you choose which namespace content is captured). The same section explains that after backup execution,Kubernetes metadata is uploaded to the object store. “Kubernetes metadata” in this context includes standard namespaced resources that represent running workloads and how they are exposed, such asServices(a core Kubernetes API object used to provide stable access to pods).

In addition to namespace scoping, Velero’s selection model commonly includes filtering backed-up Kubernetes objects using selectors (for example, selecting subsets of resources), which aligns with the “objects identified by a label selector” option as an object-selection mechanism within the scope of what Velero captures from Kubernetes APIs (metadata/resources) once the namespace is targeted.

Therefore, the best match to the documented Velero workload-backup model is:Namespace,Service, andlabel-selected objectswithin the included namespace(s).

VCF 9.0 states that you can provision Kubernetes clusters using both GUI and CLI approaches, and it explicitly calls out the CLI clients: “the VCF CLI and kubectl provide command-line interfaces for provisioning Kubernetes clusters.” That directly maps tokubectl (A)andVCF CLI (E)as supported clients for provisioning and lifecycle operations. Separately, VCF 9.0 explains that vSphere administrators can “manage and monitor vSphere Pods, VMs, and VKS clusters by using the vSphere Client,” which corresponds tovSphere UI (C)in the question. In addition, the vSphere Client is used to access Supervisor-facing self-service interfaces (for example, the Local Consumption Interface through the vSphere Client), reinforcing vSphere UI as an operational entry point for managing Supervisor-backed services and workloads.

By contrast,Cluster APIis a controller framework (not an operator “client” for admins in this context), andesxtop/esxcliare ESXi host tools that do not represent the documented, supported interfaces for provisioning and managing VKS clusters at the Kubernetes service layer.

VCF 9.0 describes a standardized approach to deploying optional capabilities on VKS clusters viastandard packages. In the VCF Automation cloud services overview, VMware listsIstioamong the packages that “can be optionally installed” for VKS. For installing those packages, the VCF CLI provides a dedicatedpackage pluginthat “works on a workload cluster” and exposes explicitinstallworkflows.

The VCF CLI command reference shows the syntax for installing a package:

vcf package install INSTALLED_PACKAGE_NAME --package PACKAGE_NAME --version VERSION (with optional values files and overlays). This is the supported, VCF-aligned way to install standard packages such as Istio onto a VKS workload cluster in a controlled, declarative manner, including tracking reconciliation status and providing configuration via a values file.

Options that rely on ad-hoc downloads (curl) or building tooling (docker build) do not match the documented VCF package-management workflow for VKS standard packages. Therefore, the correct command family isvcf package install.

In VCF 9.0 Workload Management, avSphere Namespaceis the construct that “sets the resource boundaries” for workloads running on a Supervisor, includingCPU, memory, and storage. The documentation explicitly states that a vSphere Namespace “sets the resource boundaries forCPU, memory, storage, and also the number of Kubernetes objects that can run within the namespace.” In the operational procedure “Set Resource Limits to a vSphere Namespace,” VMware further lists the configurable limits as:CPU(“set a limit to the CPU consumption”),Memory(“set a limit to the memory consumption”), andStorage(“set a limit on the storage consumption… per storage policy that is used”).

By contrast,Containersare not a namespace “resource limit” category; VMware documents “Container Defaults” separately (defaults for container CPU/memory requests and limits) rather than a top-level resource limit type. Similarly,Servicesare governed under “Object Limits” (how many Kubernetes objects like Services can exist), which is distinct from resource limits. Therefore, the three resource limitations defined on a vSphere Namespace areCPU, Memory, and Storage.

In VCF 9.0, cluster autoscaling is delivered as anoptionalcapability that requires installing theCluster Autoscaleras a standard package. The VCF 9.0 materials explicitly call out Cluster Autoscaler as an optionally installed package for vSphere Kubernetes Service, alongside other optional packages (for example, Harbor, Velero, Istio, etc.). The release information further emphasizes that autoscaling features (including newer behaviors such as scaling from/to zero for supported VKr versions) require that “the autoscaler standard package” be installed.

Operationally, installing the autoscaler package provides the controller that watches pending pods and node utilization signals and then drives the required changes in desired worker capacity. After that controller is present, you typically express scaling intent through the cluster’s declarative configuration (for example, worker pool/node pool constraints and limits) so the autoscaler can act within the boundaries you define. Without the autoscaler package, changing replica counts or expecting automatic node growth/shrink will not produce autoscaling behavior because the control loop that performs those actions is missing.

In VCF 9.0 VKS clusters, network policy is a core Kubernetes networking control implemented by the cluster’s CNI (Antrea or Calico). The VCF documentation’s “VKS Cluster Networking” table describesNetwork policyas the feature that “controls what traffic is allowed to and from selected pods and network endpoints,” and identifies Antrea or Calico as the providers for this capability. That definition precisely matches optionB: it governs pod-to-pod and pod-to-external endpoint communication rules. This is different from ingress routing (which the same table describes separately as “Cluster ingress … routing for inbound pod traffic”), so option C is not correct for “network policy.” It is also different from NodePort behavior (external access via a port on each worker node through the Kubernetes network proxy), which is explicitly listed as “Service type: NodePort.” Finally, creating/operating clusters natively in Supervisor is a broader lifecycle function (Cluster API/VKS API), not the definition of network policy. Therefore,NetworkPolicyis the Kubernetes-layer mechanism to define and enforce allowed traffic flows.

VCF 9.0 explains that VKS releases are distributed throughcontent libraries, and that when you configure asubscribed content libraryyou can choose how content is downloaded and synchronized. Critically for constrained storage sites, the documentation states you can selecton-demand (“when needed”)download so thatonly the metadatais synchronized, and theactual image content is not downloadeduntil you explicitly need it—“as a result storage space is saved.”

This directly addresses the problem of a remote site with minimal datastore capacity: choosingWhen neededprevents the subscribed library from immediately caching all published VKS images locally. The vSphere content library guidance reinforces this behavior: with “download contents only when needed,” the system synchronizesmetadata only, which “saves storage space,” and you download a specific item’s content only when you synchronize that item for use.

Therefore, selectingDownload content → When neededis the correct action to avoid consuming all available datastore space.

A Global Namespace in a service-mesh-driven, multi-cluster design is fundamentally anorganizational and policy boundarythat lets platform teams treat multiple Kubernetes namespaces—across multiple clusters/regions—as one logical application domain. That is whyBis correct: it defines an application boundary spanning clusters, which is exactly what “GovApp” needs when its tiers are distributed across regions but must still behave as one application. It also explains whyAis correct: the value of a Global Namespace is that you can applyconsistent identity, security, and traffic policiesacross all member namespaces and clusters, rather than configuring them separately per cluster. This supports uniform mTLS/authorization posture, consistent service-to-service access rules, and standardized routing behaviors regardless of where a service instance runs.

The other options describe outcomes that may be enabled by additional service-mesh features, but they are not the corerequirementsthat define a Global Namespace: distributed ingress/egress is not guaranteed simply by the namespace construct, automatic workload placement is typically handled by schedulers/placement engines rather than the namespace boundary, and centralized logging is an observability capability outside the namespace requirement itself.

VCF 9.0 explicitly states: “The VKS exposes three layers of controllers to manage the lifecycle of a VKS cluster,” and then enumerates those layers. The first layer is the set of components that integrate the workload cluster with Supervisor-backed resources, including aCloud Provider Plug-inthat integrates with the Supervisor and enables infrastructure integrations such as persistent volume requests being passed to the Supervisor (which is integrated with Cloud Native Storage). The second layer isCluster API, described as providing “declarative, Kubernetes-style APIs for cluster creation, configuration, and management,” driven by resources that represent the cluster, the VMs making up the cluster, and cluster add-ons. The third layer is theVirtual Machine Service, which provides a declarative API for managing VMs and associated vSphere resources and is used to manage the lifecycle of the control plane and worker node VMs hosting a VKS cluster.

Therefore, optionAis the only answer that matches the three lifecycle controller layers defined in the VCF 9.0 documentation.

Kubernetes Service

When adding a Kubernetes cluster to anexisting vSphere Namespace, the workflow is initiated from within that namespace’s context in the vSphere Client. The administrator first opens the target namespace (as shown in the left navigation where the namespace is selected), then uses theKubernetes Servicearea to create and manage Kubernetes clusters associated with that namespace. In the namespaceSummaryview, theKubernetes Servicetile/card provides the entry point for cluster lifecycle actions, typically via an action link such asManage(and from thereCreate Cluster). This is because the Kubernetes cluster is anamespace-scoped resourcein the Supervisor environment: it inherits namespace-level policies and configuration such as permissions/RBAC, resource limits, storage policies, and networking selections that have already been defined for that namespace. Navigating to other areas likeStorageorNetworkis used to validate or adjust prerequisites (for example, storage policy availability or network settings), but the actual “create cluster” operation is launched fromKubernetes Servicewithin the namespace to ensure the cluster is created under the correct tenant boundary and governance model.