VMware 2V0-13.25 - VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Architect

Physical Switch MTU set to 9000 ensures optimal performance and reduced packet fragmentation for vSAN and NSX-T overlay networks—critical in HA scenarios.

vSAN Cache Tier Sizing at 800GB provides the necessary performance buffer to support high I/O operations and ensures continued service availability under failure or maintenance events.

Other options like DHCP lease time or NIC load-based routing do not directly influence availability SLA adherence.

D: Setting UserVars.SuppressShellWarning = 0 ensures warnings are shown when shell access is used, improving auditability and compliance.

E: Using certificates signed by a trusted military Root CA aligns with security compliance standards for certificate trust and chain of custody.

Options A and C are operational best practices, but not military hardening. B is about operations automation, not compliance-level hardening.

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.

The first workshop focuses on understanding business drivers, objectives, and outcomes before diving into design specifics. VMware design methodology stresses that architects should start with business requirements and then move toward conceptual, logical, and physical designs.

A and C are premature — topology and design decisions should not be presented before business outcomes are captured.

B focuses on product features, which is technical and should come later.

D is correct because identifying business objectives ensures the architecture aligns with customer goals.

Per the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 and 9.0.4 Architecture and Automation Design Guides, VCF Automation enables multi-tenancy by assigning dedicated orchestration instances per organization for secure separation of workflows.

The documentation specifies:

“The embedded VCF Operations orchestrator is installed by default as part of the Provider Consumption Organization. Each tenant organization that requires workflow autonomy must deploy its own external VCF Operations orchestrator instance.”

Thus, in a multi-tenant model:

The Provider Tenant uses the embedded VCF Operations Orchestrator instance to manage global workflows.

Each Tenant Organization must use its own external orchestrator instance for isolation, control, and workflow management.

This design ensures logical separation, prevents cross-tenant interference, and aligns with VCF’s security and autonomy best practices for service provider and enterprise models.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Design Guide — “VCF Automation Orchestrator Deployment Options (Embedded vs. External).”

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 Design Guide — “VCF Operations Orchestrator Integration for Multi-Tenant Organizations.”

Business requirements describe the high-level goals of the organization, typically related to user experience, cost reduction, compliance, or agility.

A (best end-user experience) aligns directly with business objectives.

B, C, and D are technical requirements: they specify infrastructure design behaviors (migration, security, SLA).

Therefore, the business requirement is ensuring the best end-user experience.

The VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 Architecture and Design Guide, in the section covering Istio Service Mesh integration, defines that objects and configurations in a service mesh are grouped and managed under Service and Cluster scopes.

“In an Istio Service Mesh deployment, objects are collected into groups to simplify policy management and routing. These groups can represent logical services or clusters to which policies apply, allowing consistent control across the environment.”

Service groups organize workloads that share a common application or microservice. They enable the consistent application of routing, observability, and security policies (e.g., mTLS, rate limiting).

Cluster groups define the boundary for multi-cluster management, enabling federated control and workload discovery across multiple Kubernetes clusters within the VMware Cloud Foundation ecosystem.

These group types allow centralized configuration, policy enforcement, and telemetry aggregation across workloads deployed in VCF-managed Kubernetes environments.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 Architecture and Design Guide — “Istio Service Mesh Architecture and Grouping Constructs.” (pp. 5798–5802).

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 — “Service and Cluster Group Management in Multi-Cluster Istio Deployments.

According to the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Architecture Guide under the VMware Kubernetes Service (VKS) Lifecycle Management section, the management and orchestration of Kubernetes clusters within VCF occur through three controller layers. These are explicitly identified as the Virtual Machine Service, the Cluster API (CAPI), and the Cloud Provider Plugin (CPP).

The Virtual Machine Service (VMS) acts as the integration layer between vSphere and Kubernetes, enabling Kubernetes objects (such as clusters and machines) to be represented as vSphere resources. The Cluster API provides declarative lifecycle management for Kubernetes clusters, automating provisioning, upgrades, and scaling through Kubernetes-native APIs. The Cloud Provider Plugin integrates the cluster lifecycle with vSphere infrastructure management, ensuring alignment of networking, storage, and compute resource operations.

Together, these three controller layers deliver a fully automated, policy-driven, and API-centric approach to cluster provisioning, maintenance, and scaling in VCF-based environments, supporting consistent lifecycle operations across workload domains. This framework replaces traditional manual configuration and ensures full compliance with VCF’s software-defined architecture principles.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

• VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Architecture and Design Guide – “VMware Kubernetes Service (VKS) Lifecycle Management Architecture.”

• VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Detailed Design Library – “VKS Cluster Architecture: Virtual Machine Service, Cluster API, and Cloud Provider Plugin.”

• VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.2 Reference Design – “Cluster Lifecycle Controller Layers in VCF Kubernetes Service.”

In VMware’s Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Design and Architecture Guide, design inputs are categorized into four classifications — requirements, constraints, assumptions, and risks. A constraint is defined as “a limiting factor that restricts the architect’s design choices or available options.”

The stakeholder statement dictates that “all new host server hardware must be deployed using our selected hardware vendor and server model,” which limits the architect’s ability to choose alternative hardware configurations. This statement explicitly restricts design flexibility and hardware options — hence, it is classified as a constraint.

VMware emphasizes that constraints are often based on corporate standards, vendor contracts, or compliance policies and must be adhered to during solution design. The architect must document such constraints clearly, as they directly influence hardware compatibility, procurement, and lifecycle management decisions.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Design Guide — “Design Inputs: Requirements, Constraints, Assumptions, and Risks”

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Architecture Overview — “Hardware Vendor and Compatibility Constraints”