2V0-13.25 Practice Exam Questions with Answers VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Architect Certification

The requirements specify:

Large-scale migration (800 workloads).

No downtime.

Strict change window (4 weeks).

HCX Replication Assisted vMotion (RAV) is the only method that combines large-scale migration efficiency with zero downtime:

Workloads are replicated in advance.

During the cutover, a vMotion-like switchover completes with no outage.

Other methods:

Cross vCenter vMotion works for live moves but is not efficient for hundreds of VMs within a short timeline.

HCX OS Assisted Migration is for physical-to-virtual or non-vSphere workloads (not applicable).

HCX Bulk Migration is efficient but introduces downtime during cutover.

Thus, HCX RAV best meets the no-downtime, large-scale requirement.

The constraint forces the use of the existing array. However, there’s a risk that performance/capacity may be insufficient. VMware’s best practice for risk mitigation in RACR is to plan for contingency.

A is correct because securing budget allocation for additional hardware addresses the risk if the array cannot meet requirements.

B (RAID mirroring) improves redundancy, not performance or capacity.

C contradicts the constraint (cannot ignore existing array).

D (extra Fibre Channel switches) doesn’t address storage array performance/capacity.

Thus, the best mitigation is budget planning for new hardware if the array fails to meet requirements.

Advanced Memory Tiering with NVMe optimizes memory performance, essential for workloads that are latency-sensitive.

NSX Enhanced Data Path (EDP) is specifically designed for high-performance, low-latency packet processing, critical in real-time applications.Options like Global Deduplication or Deep Snapshots can negatively impact latency due to additional processing overhead.

Upgrading a vSphere + vSAN environment to a full VMware Cloud Foundation deployment requires introducing the components that make up the integrated software-defined data center (SDDC):

A. NSX – Provides network virtualization, overlay segments, distributed firewalling, and routing required in VCF.

B. SDDC Manager – The core management and lifecycle automation tool of VCF, responsible for bring-up, patching, and upgrades.

E. vSphere Supervisor – Required to enable VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) and modern application deployment in VCF environments.

Why not the others?

C. VCF Identity Broker – Provides federated authentication but is not mandatory for initial upgrade. It is optional depending on identity requirements.

D. VCF Operations – This is VMware Aria Operations (for monitoring/analytics). While strongly recommended, it is not required to upgrade from vSphere/vSAN to VCF.

VCF Automation (Aria Automation) supports multi-tenancy with separate AD integration:

B: Each tenant must use their own AD instance, aligning with independence across business units.

C: Create a tenant per business unit, ensuring isolation and dedicated resource allocation.

D (projects per business unit) could work in a single-tenant scenario but doesn’t address multi-AD separation.

A/E force consolidation into corporate AD or single projects, violating independence requirements.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation (Based on VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.3 and 9.0.1 Guides):

The VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.3 Disaster Recovery Planning Guide emphasizes that testing and validation of DR plans must occur regularly and whenever infrastructure changes are made. It states:

“You can perform test runs periodically to ensure the existing disaster recovery plan works with underlying infrastructure and the configured RPO limit. VMware Live Recovery recommends users perform planned migration at regular intervals to validate the integrity of the existing DR plan.”

Additionally, the VCF 9.0.1 Design Blueprints specify that a well-defined process for reviewing and updating DR documentation between changes ensures continuity and compliance with defined Service Level Objectives (SLOs).

Thus, the correct mitigation action is to establish a structured change management process that includes DR plan updates and monthly end-to-end validation tests. Simply limiting change frequency (option C) or setting replication intervals (option D) does not ensure DR plan integrity.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.3 Disaster Recovery Guide — “Validating and Testing DR Plans with VMware Live Recovery.”

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Design Guide — “Change Management and DR Validation Requirements.”

Dedicated NSX instances per workload domain provide the highest level of logical isolation and allow independent upgrade cycles, fulfilling the requirement of tenant-specific customization. Each workload domain with its own NSX instance can be managed separately, updated independently, and configured with its own security policies, BGP/VRF, segments, and gateways.

NSX Federation could achieve some level of centralization but does not support independent upgrade cycles per domain. A shared NSX instance breaks isolation and would tightly couple upgrade cycles, violating two of the key stated requirements.

RTO (Recovery Time Objective) measures the maximum downtime tolerated before a service must be restored.

RPO (Recovery Point Objective) measures the maximum tolerable data loss.

In this scenario:

Business-critical workloads tolerate 2 hours of data loss (RPO).

Infrastructure must be operational again within 8 hours (RTO).

Thus, RTO = maximum allowable recovery time for service restoration.

This statement expresses a financial limit — “Remaining budget” — constraining future expenditures on hardware. This is clearly a constraint, as it restricts the design options (e.g., can't procure new hardware). In the VMware Conceptual Model framework, constraints are factors that limit design choices without introducing risk or goal definitions.

As defined in the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Architecture and Design Guide, the vSAN Compute Cluster Storage Model is designed to allow compute and storage scaling to occur independently. The guide specifies:

“A vSAN Compute Cluster is a vSphere cluster that does not contribute storage resources to the vSAN datastore. Instead, it consumes storage from a remote vSAN cluster through HCI Mesh. This architecture enables compute and network resources to scale independently of storage.”

This design provides flexibility in disaggregated architectures, allowing organizations to expand compute clusters without needing to expand vSAN capacity nodes and vice versa. Such a model is particularly useful for data-intensive workloads or environments with unpredictable growth patterns in compute versus storage.

Other options, such as vSAN ESA Storage Model or vSAN ESA Storage Cluster Model, represent Enhanced Storage Architecture configurations but do not inherently separate compute scaling. Hence, the correct answer is the vSAN Compute Cluster Storage Model, as it uniquely supports independent scalability while maintaining centralized management under the VCF architecture.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Architecture and Design Guide — “vSAN Compute Cluster Model (Disaggregated Storage Architecture)” (pp. 870–875).

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.2 Design Guide — “Compute and Storage Independent Scaling using HCI Mesh.”

According to the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 Documentation (p.5802–5804), administrators can configure resource limits for vSphere Namespaces, which define how much CPU, memory, and storage can be consumed.

The guide specifies under “Set Resource Limits to a vSphere Namespace”:

“As a vSphere administrator, you can set resource limits and container defaults on a vSphere Namespace. Options include CPU, Memory, and Storage. Container defaults set CPU limits, CPU requests, memory requests, and memory limits for containers within the Namespace.”

These limits provide governance and ensure that workloads deployed within a namespace do not exceed predefined consumption levels, maintaining cluster resource balance and preventing noisy-neighbor scenarios.

The document further clarifies that storage limits are applied per storage policy and CPU and memory limits define the total reserved compute capacity available to workloads and pods running in the namespace.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 — “Set Resource Limits to a vSphere Namespace” (p.5802–5803)

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 — “Self-Service Namespace Template Provisioning Workflow.”

In VMware Cloud Foundation, each VI workload domain is backed by a single vCenter Server instance. By deploying multiple clusters within the same VI workload domain, the architect can support multiple use cases (e.g., separating prod/dev), without provisioning new vCenters. This design reduces management overhead and operational complexity.

However, if stricter separation is needed (e.g., multi-tenancy or lifecycle independence), separate workload domains may be more suitable. While vSAN is the default, it's not mandatory unless vSAN Ready Nodes are used for bring-up.

To enforce strict separation of monitoring data, logs, and access control, deploying two separate VCF Operations instances is the recommended solution. This ensures that each department (HR and Finance) has a completely isolated monitoring stack, including dashboards, alerts, log retention, and user roles.

Although scopes and index partitions can provide some level of logical segregation within a single instance, they do not guarantee complete security isolation, especially in environments with strict compliance or multi-tenancy concerns. Deploying two separate instances ensures compliance with data isolation and privacy requirements, making it the most secure and compliant option.

Logical design decisions specify how features are configured to meet conceptual requirements. In VMware Cloud Foundation logical design, tuning VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) parameters such as latency sensitivity for workload clusters is explicitly part of logical design because it directly impacts workload performance and cluster behavior. Options A and B are conceptual or operational, and option D is a standard best practice at the physical design layer. VMware documents emphasize that logical design choices define how features (like DRS, HA, and vSAN policies) are implemented .

BGP loop prevention relies on unique AS numbers. If the same AS is reused, routes may be dropped. In NSX VPC designs, assigning a unique private AS per Tier-0 gateway ensures clean routing without triggering loop detection.

A: Timer adjustment affects convergence, not loop detection.

C: iBGP with physical routers is non-standard and doesn’t solve the loop issue.

D: TEP traffic is unrelated to BGP routing loops.

Conceptual model items are categorized as requirements, assumptions, risks, and constraints:

A is a clear requirement, aligned with the business objective of continuous uptime and availability.

B is a valid risk, as the availability of the external internet provider impacts the user experience.

F is an assumption, implying that budget will not be a limitation in achieving the desired level of performance.

Items like C are too technically specific for the conceptual layer. D directly contradicts the business objective, and E relates more to operational constraints rather than high-level design goals.

The VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.2 Design Guide identifies Harbor as the enterprise-grade container registry integrated with vSphere with Tanzu and Supervisor Clusters. It states:

“Harbor provides a cloud-native registry that supports image scanning, replication, and image signing. It is the recommended solution for storing, securing, and distributing container images within VCF environments.”

Harbor integrates with vSphere Namespaces and supports content trust, vulnerability scanning, and image replication across multiple sites — capabilities not available with Docker Hub or Gitea, and only partially supported in Azure ACR.

Therefore, Harbor is the correct and VMware-recommended component for a Supervisor image store that requires enterprise security and replication capabilities.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.2 Design and Architecture Guide — “Harbor Image Registry Integration with Supervisor.”

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Tanzu Integration Guide — “Using Harbor as the Image Registry for Supervisor Namespaces.”

According to the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 Architecture and Design Guide, the vSphere Supervisor leverages the Cluster API open-source project to provide declarative, Kubernetes-style APIs for the creation, configuration, and lifecycle management of VMware Kubernetes Service (VKS) clusters.

The documentation states:

“The Cluster API provides declarative, Kubernetes-style APIs for cluster creation, configuration, and management. The inputs to Cluster API include a resource describing the cluster, a set of resources describing the virtual machines that make up the cluster, and a set of resources describing cluster add-ons.”

This API-driven model allows for automated provisioning and scaling of Kubernetes clusters by defining the desired state through YAML manifests. Cluster API (CAPI) is a CNCF open-source project that VMware has extended and integrated into vSphere Supervisor to deliver infrastructure-level automation, ensuring consistency, repeatability, and lifecycle management for VKS clusters.

In contrast, Grafana is used for monitoring, Contour for ingress control, and Kubeadm is a bootstrapping tool for standalone Kubernetes clusters — none of which provide cluster lifecycle automation in VKS.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 Architecture and Design Guide — “VKS Architecture and Components.” (pp. 5635–5637)

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 Supervisor Components — “Cluster API Integration for VKS Lifecycle Management.”

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation (Based on VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Design Guide):

The VCF 9.0.1 Design Guide and vSphere HA Design Best Practices define N+1 as a configuration where one additional host is reserved to ensure full workload recovery in case of a host failure. It specifies:

“To satisfy N+1 availability, the number of cluster hosts must exceed the required workload hosts by one to provide failover capacity.”

Therefore, for five resource-intensive VMs, a six-host cluster (D) ensures that in case of one host failure, performance and availability SLAs are maintained.

In addition, using automated placement rules (A) (e.g., anti-affinity rules) ensures that mission-critical VMs are separated across hosts, minimizing risk of concurrent failure. Resource pools (B) only control scheduling priority and do not affect availability, and keeping all VMs together (C) violates redundancy principles.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Design Guide — “N+1 Cluster Sizing and Availability Considerations.” (pp. 902–905)

VMware vSphere HA Best Practices — “VM Placement Rules and Anti-Affinity Configuration.”

Validating a BCDR strategy in VCF with vSAN DP requires both impact analysis and active testing:

B. Assess the impact of failover scenarios – Ensures application dependencies, such as inter-site routing, DNS, and external services, are validated against failover scenarios. This prevents unexpected downtime due to overlooked dependencies.

D. Planned and unplanned failover tests – VMware best practices emphasize testing both scheduled and unexpected recovery workflows to validate RTOs and confirm operational procedures.

Why not the others?

A (annual testing only) contradicts VMware guidance, which recommends frequent and scenario-based validation.

C (generic plans) reduces workload alignment; VMware requires application-aware recovery plans.

E (vSphere HA/DRS) does not replace site-level recovery orchestration and validation — HA/DRS only handles local host failures, not site disasters.

RTO (Recovery Time Objective) defines how quickly a system/service must be restored after a disruption. In this scenario, the infrastructure components should be fully functional within 4 hours.

This contrasts with RPO, which measures data loss tolerance. RTO focuses on downtime tolerance.

VMware Cloud Foundation documentation on BCDR (Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery) explicitly defines these metrics during availability planning.

According to the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.2 Design Library and NSX Segment Profiles Design Section, “If you do not associate a custom segment profile when you create a segment, the NSX Manager automatically associates a corresponding default system-defined segment profile.” These default segment profiles provide baseline Layer 2 networking configurations — including SpoofGuard, Segment Security, MAC Discovery, and QoS controls — that ensure security and operational compliance for most workload use cases.

The guide explains that these defaults “cannot be deleted or modified” but “can be inherited by custom segment profiles,” offering a reliable starting point for secure and consistent lifecycle management. The rationale for using them in a design is to maintain operational simplicity, consistent enforcement of baseline security policies, and reduced administrative overhead when deploying or scaling segments across workload domains.

This approach aligns with the VCF design principles of standardization, automation, and maintainability, ensuring that the network fabric adheres to validated security baselines without requiring complex customization unless dictated by specific use cases (such as industrial or multi-tenant environments).

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.2 — NSX Segment Profiles and Default Behavior (pp. 1700–1703).

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 — NSX Networking Design Guide: Segment Profiles and Default Settings Overview.

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Design Recommendations — VCF-NSX-DES-RCMD-SEG-PROFILE-001.

The requirement to maintain software at N-1 versioning ensures that all components in the system maintain the most recent stable version of software while avoiding risks associated with "bleeding-edge" updates. This is a Security design quality because N-1 compliance mitigates exposure to vulnerabilities that might be present in older, unsupported versions. Additionally, VMware Cloud Foundation emphasizes maintaining the full stack within a supported compatibility matrix, aligning with security and compliance frameworks.

According to the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.2 Design Guide (NSX Bridging and Layer 2 Connectivity), when workloads or appliances require Layer 2 adjacency with physical network devices and do not support overlay encapsulation (Geneve), NSX Edge bridging is the validated solution.

The documentation states:

“The bridge functionality extends an overlay segment into a VLAN identified by a VLAN ID on an uplink of the NSX Edge. This enables Layer 2 connectivity between virtual machines on NSX overlay segments and physical workloads on VLAN-backed networks.”

By connecting the third-party appliance to a VLAN-backed segment and configuring NSX bridging, the appliance gains direct L2 connectivity to the firewall, while the workloads on overlay segments can still communicate seamlessly through the bridge.

This approach maintains the logical separation of NSX networks while satisfying L2 adjacency requirements, a common design pattern for integrating non-overlay-capable systems.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.2 Architecture and Design Guide — “Edge Bridging: Extending Overlay Segments to VLAN.”

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.2 NSX Design Recommendations — “Bridge Profiles and VLAN Uplink Configuration.”