VMware 2V0-17.25 VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Administrator Exam Practice Test

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.

TheVCF Operations for Networks (formerly vRNI)enablesApplication Discovery and Network Visibility. According to VCF 9.0: “Operations for Networks provides flow-based application discovery, dependency mapping, and security planning. This allows administrators to visualize application topology and relationships across the VCF fleet.” By contrast, VCF Operations for Logs provides log aggregation, while the Collector provides integration for metrics, not discovery. The vSphere Supervisor enables Kubernetes workloads, not application discovery. Therefore, to achieveService and Application Discovery, administrators must deployVCF Operations for Networks.

VCF 9.0 replaces legacy bring-up tooling with theVCF Installer, which provides adeployment wizardthat 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 theworkbookis used to collect information, thevalidationof those inputs is performed by theVCF Installerwizard 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 Installeris the correct tool for collecting (via wizard prompts) andvalidatinginitial deployment inputs.

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Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation:

The VCF Operations 9.0 Monitoring Guide specifies: “For any alert definition to be active in the environment, it must be associated with and enabled in an Active Policy.” . Creating symptom and alert definitions only defines conditions; they do not generate alerts until policies include them. REST notification plugins or payload templates are used for outbound integrations, not for enabling alerts. A super metric is only needed for custom composite KPIs, not for native read latency which is a standard metric already available. Therefore, the required step is to enable the alert in an Active Policy so that when the symptom triggers (latency > 1 ms), the alert activates.

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.

In Kubernetes RBAC,ClusterRoleBindingis the mechanism for granting permissions to resources that are not namespace-scoped. The documentation integrated into VCF 9.0 explains: “ClusterRoleBinding binds a user, group, or service account to a ClusterRole, granting cluster-wide permissions to non-namespaced resources such as nodes, storage classes, or persistent volumes.”

A RoleBinding grants access to namespace-scoped resources. RoleReference is a field within a RoleBinding/ClusterRoleBinding object, not a standalone object. ClusterRoleAccess is not a valid Kubernetes construct.

Thus, to assign permissions at a cluster-wide level, the correct object isClusterRoleBinding.

VCF 9.0 documents two Operations for Logs/Operations models—Simple (Standard)andHigh Availability (Cluster)—and highlight thatSimpleis 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 thesmallest resource footprint, theSimplemodel is the correct selection. (Stretched/Continuous Availability options are not listed VCF Operations models in this context.)

TheVCF 9.0 Convergence and Migration Guideoutlines prerequisites and unsupported configurations when moving from a standalone vSphere deployment into VCF-managed workload domains.

Enhanced Linked Mode (ELM) must be removed:VCF does not support multiple vCenters joined in Enhanced Linked Mode. Each workload domain has its own dedicated vCenter instance, managed by SDDC Manager. The documentation states:“Before convergence, Enhanced Linked Mode must be deactivated. VCF requires independent vCenters for each workload domain.”

Lifecycle Manager must use Images only:VCF lifecycle operations are exclusively image-based. Baselines are not supported.“All clusters managed by VCF must be converted to vSphere Lifecycle Manager image-based lifecycle management prior to convergence.”

Other options are not required:

25 Gbps uplinks (A) are recommended for high throughput but not mandatory; 10 Gbps uplinks are supported.

An additional vMotion VMkernel (C) is not required by default, as standard vMotion networking is included in convergence designs.

vSphere Standard Switches (D) are not supported; VCF requires Distributed Switches, and existing vDS configurations can be adapted.

Therefore, the two configurations that must change are:Deactivate Enhanced Linked Mode (B)andswitch Lifecycle Manager to Images only (E).

TheVCF Automation Costing and Pricing Guideexplains:

“Define core costs for CPU, memory, and storage under Base Settings to apply fleet-wide.” (A)

“Mark the created policy as the default to ensure it applies globally.” (B)

For SAP HANA, “Create an exception policy under Base Settings with VM setup charges assigned to the SAP HANA cluster.” (E)Default Policy (C, F) is system-reserved. Sub-policies under “Resources” (D) are not valid. Correct configuration steps:A, B, E.

TheVCF 9.0 Security and Certificates Guidestates: “VCF supports only certificates in PEM format when replacing system component certificates with those signed by an external Certificate Authority.”

PEM is the standard Base64 format with .crt and .key files. PFX (PKCS#12) is used for Windows stores but not supported in VCF automation. P7B is for certificate chains, while DER is binary encoding. Thus, the required format for certificates in VCF isPEM.

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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In VCF 9.x, air-gapped bring-up requires staging therequired binariesin the VCF Installer. The documented list explicitly includesNSXandVCF Operationsamong the components to upload. The product guide states: “VMware Cloud Foundation required binariesinclude…NSX…VMware Cloud Foundation Operations… vCenter … SDDC Manager…” (exact list excerpt). This list doesnotcall for ESX images or the legacy “Lifecycle Manager.”

Therefore, from the given options the two binaries that must be uploaded areNSXandVCF Operations. ESX is pre-imaged on hosts per preparation guidance and is not a required VCF Installer binary; “Lifecycle Manager” is not used in VCF 9.0 bring-up.

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VCF 9.0 describes the VKS architecture and explicitly notes: “The Cluster API provides declarative, Kubernetes-style APIs for cluster creation, configuration, and management.” Inputs include resources describing the cluster, VMs, and add-ons. Provisioning flows also presentClusterClass/Cluster APIas the supported “cluster type” when creating a Kubernetes cluster via self-service. These extracts confirm thatCluster APIis the foundational component used by VMware Kubernetes Service (VKS) on vSphere Supervisor to bootstrap and manage Kubernetes workload clusters in VCF 9.0.

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TheVCF 9.0 Design Guidehighlights that for resiliency across sites withRPO = 0, the recommended approach is avSAN Stretched Cluster. Documentation states: “Stretched clusters provide site-level resilience by mirroring data across two fault domains (sites). In the event of a full site outage, workloads remain available with no data loss (RPO = 0).” Relocating six hosts to another site creates the two fault domains required for vSAN Stretched Cluster. Options B and C provide backup or redundancy but not synchronous replication with zero RPO. Option D (fault domains) protects against host/rack failures, not entire data center loss. Therefore, the correct solution is torelocate hosts and configure a stretched cluster.

The VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 NSX Projects and VPC Guide outlines the prerequisites for configuring external connectivity using a Transit Gateway (TGW). When VLAN-backed external connectivity is used, the documentation specifies:

“For VLAN-backed external connectivity, ensure that all hosts in the workload cluster where VPC workloads run have physical access to the VLAN(s) used by the Transit Gateway. This ensures end-to-end packet reachability between VPC segments and the physical router.”

Analysis of options:

A (TWO BGP Peers): BGP can be configured later to enable dynamic routing but is not a prerequisite for establishing VLAN-backed connectivity.

B (TNP attached): A Transport Node Profile is required for NSX host preparation, but it is part of the general NSX setup, not the specific prerequisite for TGW VLAN external connectivity.

C (Access to VLANs): This is the critical prerequisite—hosts running workloads must have access to the external VLANs. Without this, connectivity to the physical routers will fail.

D (Access to Edge TEP network): TEP networks are used for overlay traffic (Geneve encapsulation), not for VLAN-backed TGW external connectivity.

Therefore, the correct prerequisite is ensuring all VPC workload hosts have access to the VLAN(s) used by the Distributed TGW.

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 underOrganization 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 underBase Settings(E) would apply globally rather than inheriting from the Organization Policy.

In NSX 4.x integrated with VCF 9.0,default segment security profiles block DHCP servers by default. TheNSX Admin Guidestates: “To allow DHCP servers on a segment, edit the applied segment security profile and set the DHCP Server Block option to NO.”

Cloning profiles (B, C) is an optional best practice but not required for functionality. The DHCP server block resides in thesecurity profile, not the IP discovery profile, making C and D incorrect. Therefore, the required step is toedit the default segment security profile, set DHCP Server Block = NO, and apply it.

In VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0, the VCF Service Broker is the component responsible for providing a self-service catalog of available services, blueprints, and content to end users in the VM Apps tenant. The documentation explains:

“Service Broker acts as the catalog service for VM-based and cloud-native applications, allowing organizations to expose curated content to end users while applying policies, constraints, and governance.”

VCF Operations Orchestrator (A) provides workflow automation but does not expose services directly in a self-service catalog.

VCF Assembler (B) is used for designing blueprints and application templates but not for publishing them to end users.

VCF Config (D) is responsible for infrastructure configuration management and desired state compliance, not catalog services.

Thus, the correct component for the catalog is the VCF Service Broker.