2V0-15.25 VMware Certified Professional - VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Support Questions and Answers

The symptoms described—reduced cluster capacity,degraded virtual machine components, andautomatic component rebuild operations—are classic indicators of avSAN disk failure or disk group degradation. vSAN continuously monitors the health of disks, disk groups, and network paths. When a physical disk or disk group becomes unavailable, vSAN will:

Mark affected components as degradedbecause the required number of replicas or witnesses cannot be maintained.

Trigger automatic repair/rebuild operations, provided there are enough healthy disks remaining in the cluster to satisfy the storage policy (e.g., FTT=1, RAID1/5/6).

Reduce available storage capacitybecause the failed device is removed from contributing to the vSAN datastore.

These behaviors align directly with documented vSAN failure-response logic, which states thatcomponent rebuilds begin automatically after a disk failure, assuming the cluster still has adequate resources.

The other options do not match the symptoms:

A. VM migration to another cluster→ does not reduce vSAN capacity nor trigger component rebuilds.

B. vSAN license capacity too small→ restricts features, not component state or capacity changes.

C. Too many VMs created→ may cause capacity pressure but doesnotmark components degraded or trigger automated rebuilds.

Onlyphysical disk failureaccurately explains all three observations simultaneously.

In VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 usingdisconnected mode licensing, VCF Operations does not automatically synchronize license status with VMware’s cloud services. Instead, the administrator must periodically refresh the license file using amanual offline workflow. When the VCF Operations console reports that licenses have expired, it means the license entitlement in theVCF Business Services portalis out of date, and therefore VCF Operations cannot validate the current usage.

The VMware-documented offline licensing workflow requires the following steps:

Export the usage filefrom VCF Operations.This usage file contains consumption details needed to generate a new offline license.→C is correct.

Upload the usage file to the VCF Business Services consoleand generate a new offline license file.In disconnected mode, the Business Services portal is the only mechanism to create updated license entitlements.→D is correct.

Import the updated VCF license file into VCF Operations, specifically assigning it to theSDDC Manager.SDDC Manager is the system that validates and enforces licensing across workload domains, so the new license must be applied there—not only to a vCenter.→F is correct.

Options A and B do not affect license validation.

Option E is incorrect because workload-domain vCenter licensing is independent and not the root cause of VCF license expiration.

InVMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0, the management of appliance credentials and lifecycle operations is centralized within theVCF Operations Fleet Manager(which subsumes the roles of the legacy SDDC Manager Life Cycle Management).

The Problem:The administrator is unable to log in as root via the console or SSH. This indicates a credential synchronization issue or account lockout, which prevents them from manually enabling SSH via the console (the traditional method).

The Solution (Remediate Password):The "Remediate Password" workflow in VCF Operations allows the administrator to reset and synchronize the root password for VCF components (like the VCF Ops instance itself) directly from the management plane.

By navigating toFleet Management > Passwords(or similar path in VCF 9.0), the administrator can select the affected instance and chooseRemediate.

This process updates the password in the centralized database and on the appliance, restoring the ability to log in.

Once the root access is restored via remediation, the administrator can then proceed to enable SSH (either via the VCF Operations settings UI or the console). Without the correct password (which "Remediate" fixes), SSH cannot be enabled.

Note: Options A and B (Reset/Reboot) are legacy manual steps that do not ensure the VCF inventory database is updated, potentially leading to further "configuration drift" or sync errors. Option C is unnecessary for a credential issue.

In VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0, supplemental storage such as NFS is fully supported for workload domains when configured correctly. When an NFS datastore mounts successfully in vSphere but users cannot write data, the issue almost always lies in theexport permissions on the NFS server. vSphere will allow mounting a read-only NFS export, but write operations will fail silently at the VM or guest OS level.

VCF documentation confirms that ESXi requires explicitread/write export permissions, typically configured per-host or by IP subnet, on the NFS server. Even if network connectivity and VM-level access appear healthy, incorrect server-side permissions prevent ESXi from executing write operations.

Option A is incorrect because NFS servers are not validated by the HCL for write capability.

Option B (rebooting the host) is unnecessary and unrelated to permission enforcement.

Option D (MTU mismatch) may cause performance issues, not write-access failures.

Thus, the next troubleshooting step is to verify that the ESXi hosts haveread/write accesson the NFS share, makingCthe correct answer.

In VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Operations,tags created inside VCF Operations do not automatically appear in vCenter. Tags must be explicitly synchronized ("pushed") to the selected vCenter instance before they become usable for VM tagging within vCenter. This is because VCF Operations maintains its own metadata store for tags, super metrics, groups, and policies.

The correct workflow is:

Create the tag in VCF Operations.

Push (synchronize) the tag to the appropriate vCenter instance.

The tag then appears in vCenter’sTags & Custom Attributessection.

Administrators can then assign the tag to VMs.

If the push step is skipped, the tag exists only inside VCF Operations and cannot be referenced by vCenter, which is exactly the symptom described:tag not found when attempting to assign it to a VM.

Option A is incorrect because Custom Groups do not affect vCenter tag visibility.

Option B is incorrect because tag synchronization is not tied to a specific vCenter version as long as the vCenter is officially supported by VCF 9.x.

Option D is irrelevant—VMware Tools has nothing to do with tag visibility.

In VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0, publishing aVCF Operations Orchestratorworkflow to aVCF Automation project catalogrequires that the Organization has a valid integration withVCF Operations Orchestrator. The question states that the usercannot see the Workflows option under Content Hub, and theorganization is not a Provider Consumption Organization (PCO). According to the VCF 9.0 documentation, only organizations withVCF Operations Orchestrator integrationare allowed to publish workflows into the catalog. Both embedded and external orchestrator integrations must be configured depending on the environment. Ifno orchestrator (embedded or external)is integrated with the organization, workflows cannot be listed or published. This aligns with the documented VCF Automation and VCF Operations Orchestrator design requirements, which specify that workflow publishing is only available when the orchestrator instance is properly registered.

Additionally, user role permission issues could prevent workflow visibility, but the key blockers described in the scenario are the missing workflow section and the organization type. Because the organization isnot a PCO, advanced provider features—including workflow publishing—are disabled unless a proper orchestrator integration exists. Therefore, the two most likely causes are:

A:An external VCF Operations Orchestrator is not integrated with their Organization.

D:An embedded VCF Operations Orchestrator is not integrated with their Organization.

These two conditions directly match the documented behavior in VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.

In VCF 9.0, when adding a host to a vSAN ESA-enabled cluster, the hostmust be commissioned with a network pool that includes a vSAN network configuration. Network pools define host-level networking templates for VCF, including management, vSAN, vMotion, and overlay networks. A host commissioned with avMotion-only network pooldoes not have the required vSAN ESA network interfaces (vmk + NIC mapping) to join an ESA cluster.

Because the administrator successfully commissioned the new host but only using avMotion-only network pool, VCF correctly prevents the host from being added to the ESA cluster.

The required action is:

Reassociate the host with the correct network pool that includes the vSAN ESA network.

Option A (reinstall ESXi) is unnecessary; commissioning workflows can be redone.

Option C (manual vCenter configuration) is explicitly unsupported—VCF manages host networking.

Option D (reconfiguring the existing pool) is not correct because the new host must be associated with thesame network pool used by the existing ESA cluster, not change the pool definition itself.

Therefore, the precise and VMware-documented resolution isB.

In vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA),Auto-Policy Managementdetermines which default storage policies can be used based on the number of hosts in the cluster. RAID-5 and RAID-6 policies require a minimum number of hosts to satisfy fault domain and component placement rules.

ForvSAN ESA, the minimum hosts required are:

RAID-1 (FTT=1)→ minimum3 hosts

RAID-5 (FTT=1)→ minimum4 hosts

RAID-6 (FTT=2)→ minimum6 hosts

In this scenario, the administrator deployed athree-host ESA cluster. Since RAID-5 requires at leastfourESA-capable hosts, vSAN Auto-Policy Managementautomatically falls back to RAID-1, the highest level of resilience possible with the available cluster size. This results insignificantly higher storage consumption, which matches exactly what the administrator observed.

Option A is incorrect because RAID-5 is fully supported on ESA—but only with enough hosts.

Option C (Force Provisioning) does not change the default policy selected.

Option D (Host Rebuild Reserve) does not control RAID policy selection.

The status"Node Not Ready"in the NSX Manager UI (specifically in theConfiguration Statecolumn of the Edge Transport Nodes view) indicates that the NSX Manager has failed to push or validate the necessary configuration to the Edge VM.

Check Uplink Network Configuration (Option C):This is the most common cause for a "Node Not Ready" state during deployment or operation. For an Edge Node to be "Ready" (Success/Up), it must have a validTransport Nodeconfiguration, which includes theUplink Profile,IP Pool(for TEPs), and mapping to theFastpath Interfaces(N-VDS). If the uplink configuration is missing, incorrect, or the management plane cannot communicate with the edge to apply it, the node remains in a "Not Ready" state.

Why not Option A?While an Edge must be in anEdge Clusterto beutilizedby a Tier-0 Gateway, a standalone Edge Node should still report a status of "Success" (Configuration) and "Up" (Node Status) if it is healthy. Adding a "Not Ready" (unhealthy/unconfigured) node to a cluster will not fix the underlying configuration issue.

Why not Option D?Missing CPU reservations typically lead to a"Degraded"status or service crashes (Dataplane down), but "Node Not Ready" is the specific indicator of an incomplete or stalled configuration workflow, usually tied to the transport/uplink setup.

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.x usesVMware Identity Broker (VIDB)as the central identity provider for the entire VCF fleet. VIDB synchronizes user and group metadata from the connected enterprise identity source, in this caseActive Directory. When a user is added to an AD groupafterthe group was already synced into VIDB,VIDB does not automatically resync group membership on demandunless a directory synchronization is performed.

In this scenario, the groupVCFA_ProviderAdminswas synchronized five days earlier. When the new userprovideradmin05was later added to the AD group, VIDB—and therefore the VCF Automation Provider Management Portal—does not recognize that new user until amanual directory resynchronizationoccurs fromVCF Operations.

This operation forces VIDB to:

Requery Active Directory

Update group membership information

Repopulate available users for import into VCF Automation

Options B and D are incorrect because they donotinfluence Identity Broker directory synchronization. Option C (disable VCF SSO) would break authentication and is not a valid solution.

In VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Automation for All Apps, avSphere Namespacecan span multipleSupervisor Zones. However, workloads—including catalog item deployments—canonlybe deployed into zones that are explicitlyassigned to that Namespace. The user in the scenario successfully deploys intozone1andzone2, which confirms that those zones are correctly associated with the Namespace.

The failure to deploy intozone3, while deployments into the other zones work, strongly indicates thatzone3 is not part of the Namespace configuration.

This behavior matches how Supervisor Zones function:

A zone must beadded to the Namespacein Supervisor configuration.

If the zone is not associated,VCF Automation will not present it as an eligible deployment location, and deployment into that zone fails.

Option A and D (project roles) are incorrect because insufficient permissions would prevent deploymentinto any zone, not a single missing zone.

Option B (Namespace Class) is irrelevant because Namespace Classes define resource limits, not which Supervisor Zones the Namespace is mapped to.

During VMware Cloud Foundation bring-up,time synchronization across all management components is mandatory. The VCF Installer, ESXi hosts, NSX Manager nodes, and vCenter must all sync tothe same NTP servers. If even one host or component has a time skew exceeding VMware’s allowed limits, VCF will report time sync errors during bring-up or post-deployment.

The administrator validated NTP configuration, DNS resolution, ping connectivity, and time synconly on the VCF Installer appliance, butdid not verify the ESXi hosts' time synchronization. NSX Manager obtains its time reference from the underlying ESXi host during deployment, so if the ESXi hosts are not synchronized with the same NTP sources, NSX Manager will drift, triggering the exact error described.

Option B (iptables) does not apply—the VCF Installer does not block outbound NTP by default.

Option C refers to workbook formatting, which would fail earlier in deployment—not after NSX Manager is running.

Option A is incorrect because ESXi should never use “host time sync”; NTP must be used.

vSphere High Availability (HA) depends on theFDM agent(Fault Domain Manager) that runs on every ESXi host in the cluster. When an administrator enables HA on a cluster, vCenter automatically installs or updates thevmware-fdm VIBon each participating ESXi host. This VIB contains the HA agent binaries and is mandatory for HA services to start.

The error encountered:

"A general system error occurred: Failed to start fdm service on host"

is a classic and well-documented symptom of amissing or corrupted vmware-fdm VIB. When vSphere HA is toggled off and on, vCenter attempts to reinstall or restart the FDM agent; if the VIB is not present, HA cannot deploy successfully, and the FDM service fails to start.

Why the other answers are incorrect:

A. The vmware-fdm service is disabledESXi does not allow manual disabling of this system service in normal operations. If the service fails to start, the root cause is usually the absence or corruption of the VIB—not a disabled service.

C. Admission Control settings not configured correctlyAdmission Control errors affectVM failover capacity, not the ability to start FDM services.

D. HA startup policy not configured correctlyThere isno per-host HA startup policythat prevents FDM from starting.

In avSAN Stretched Cluster, communication between thewitness nodeanddata nodesrequires several specific TCP/UDP ports. The ability to successfully execute:

vmkping -I -s 1472 -d

confirms that:

L2/L3 connectivity is present

MTU is correctly configured

ICMP traffic flows without fragmentation

However,vmkping alone does not verify vSAN control-plane communication.

For the vSAN Witness to properly form a cluster,TCP port 12321must be openbidirectionallybetween:

Witness → Data nodes

Data nodes → Witness

Port12321is required for:

vSAN cluster membership

Witness traffic

vSAN object health/state synchronization

If this port is blocked by firewall policy or misconfigured network ACLs, the nodes can ping each other, butvSAN witness traffic will fail, preventing the stretched cluster from forming.

Why the other options are incorrect:

B. Port 443— Required for management, not cluster formation.

C. No VMs in cluster— Hasno impacton witness formation.

D. Jumbo frames not enabled— Already ruled out by the successful 1472-byte vmkping with DF bit.

In VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 Automation, the visibility of debug-level information in Task Logs is controlled centrally by theProvider Administratorthrough theProvider Management portal. Debug logging is not enabled by default because it exposes verbose operational details intended primarily for troubleshooting. According to the VCF Automation architecture and operations model, advanced logging capabilities—including debug output—are gated behindfeature flags.

To enable debug-level information, the Provider Admin must navigate to:

Provider Management → Administration → Feature Flags → Display Debug Information

Once this flag is enabled, the system begins emitting additional diagnostic detail into Task Logs, improving insight into failures, orchestration flows, API calls, and service-to-service interactions. This aligns with VCF’s multi-tenant design, where only the Provider tier has permission to modify global settings that affect all Organizations.

Options A, C, and D are incorrect because Organization-level settings do not control system-wide logging, and the Events/Tasks or General Settings sections do not contain the mechanism for enabling debug output. Only theFeature Flagsection controls this capability.