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

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.

VCF 9.0 introducesLog Data Transferinitiatedfrom VCF Operations. The docs say: “You can transfer log data for up to 90 days from Aria Operations for Logs 8.x… The migrated logs are stored in VCF Operations for logs.” and “To transfer logs… navigate to the Logs Data Transfer card in Administration > Control Panel… click the INITIATE TRANSFER button… You can select the duration of logs to transfer…” (emphasis added).

They further clarify that simple forwardingdoes not transfer already ingested logs: “Forward logs… does not transfer already ingested logs. Transfer historical logs up to 90 days… using the Log Data Transfer feature in VCF Operations.”

Hence, the correct action is toinitiate the transfer in VCF Operations (Administration > Control Panel > Logs Data Transfer).

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TheVCF 9.0 Operations DocumentationidentifiesOperations for Networksas the key enabler for the Network Operations feature:

“VCF Operations for Networks (formerly vRNI) provides visibility into network traffic flows, NSX fabric health, application dependency mapping, and micro-segmentation planning. It integrates directly into VCF Operations dashboards under Network Operations.”

The vDefend firewall is unrelated, as it provides workload-level security. The VCF Operations Collector is required for telemetry ingestion but does not provide full Network Operations. NSX itself provides the underlying virtual networking, but it must be monitored throughVCF Operations for Networks. Therefore, the correct answer isVCF Operations for Networks.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

According to theVCF 9.0 Container Registry Documentation, Harbor is defined as:

“Harbor is an open source registry that secures artifacts with policies and role-based access control, ensures images are scanned and free from vulnerabilities, and signs images as trusted.”

This description aligns exactly with option A. Harbor is not Bitnami (B), though it integrates with open-source images. It includes vulnerability scanning but is not only an image scanner (C). It does not require GitHub as a source (D); Harbor can integrate with multiple registries.

Therefore, Harbor’s primary role within VCF is to act as asecure image registry with RBAC, scanning, and signing capabilities.

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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TheVCF 9.0 Kubernetes Service documentationconfirms thatAntreais the default CNI used for VMware Kubernetes Service (VKS) workload clusters.

“When deploying a new VKS workload cluster, the Antrea Container Networking Interface is automatically enabled by default to provide pod-to-pod and pod-to-service networking. Antrea is fully integrated with NSX-T for advanced policy control.”

Flannel, Calico, and Cilium are widely used CNIs in upstream Kubernetes but are not the default in VCF. Administrators can optionally integrate with third-party CNIs, but the supported default choice isAntrea.

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 Deployment Guidenotes: “All ESXi hosts must be installed with a supported ESXi version using a VMware ISO before they are commissioned into SDDC Manager. Commissioning is always performed via the management domain vCenter.” The new workload domain vCenter does not exist until the domain is deployed, ruling out option A. The VCF Installer is used for initial bring-up, not workload domain expansion (E). Therefore, the two required steps are:install ESXi using a valid ISO (D)andcommission hosts via the management domain vCenter (B).

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.

TheVCF 9.0 Operations Guide – Views and Reportsexplains the four types of views available for custom dashboards:

Object Relationship View:Displays dependencies and hierarchy between objects (for example, VMs, hosts, datastores) but does not provide exportable tabular data.

Scoreboard View:Provides a high-level KPI visualization of a few key objects but is not intended for large tabular exports.

List View (Correct):Displays tabular data across many objects, such as CPU, memory, and disk metrics for VMs. The guide states:“List views are useful when you want to compare metrics across multiple objects and can be exported to CSV for further analysis.”

Trend View:Focuses on historical data and growth over time, but export to CSV is not its primary purpose.

Because the security team requires bothtabular comparison of VM resource usageand the ability toexport the data to CSV, theList Viewis the only option that meets both requirements.