2V0-13.25 Questions and Answers

In a VCF Fleet with Disaster Recovery (AZ model):

vCenter is replicated to ensure management of vSphere workloads continues after a site failure.

NSX is replicated for networking continuity (segments, TEPs, Edge services).

Other components:

SDDC Manager is fleet-level and not replicated per AZ.

VCF Automation and VCF Operations are optional add-ons and not replicated automatically by the DR model.

Thus, vCenter and NSX are replicated across AZs for resiliency.

According to the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Network Latency and Fleet Expansion Guidelines, the maximum supported latency between VCF instances in a fleet is 100ms round-trip (refer to VCF-NET-REQD-LAT-006). Any latency exceeding this threshold can impact VCF Operations synchronization, NSX Federation communication, and lifecycle management tasks.

In this scenario, Datacenter A (90ms RTT) is within the 100ms limit, whereas Datacenter B (120ms RTT) exceeds it. Therefore, Datacenter A can host a new VCF instance within the existing VCF fleet, maintaining fleet-level manageability and minimal footprint. Datacenter B, on the other hand, requires a separate VCF fleet due to latency exceeding the supported limit.

This design ensures operational continuity while minimizing hardware footprint by using a hybrid deployment strategy — a fleet instance in Datacenter A and a standalone fleet in Datacenter B.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Design Guide — “VCF Network Latency Requirements (VCF-NET-REQD-LAT-006)”

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Fleet Expansion Design Patterns — “Latency Considerations for Multi-Site VCF Deployments.”

In the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Design and Architecture Framework, functional (business) requirements describe what the system must do — the specific behaviors, features, or services it must provide to meet business objectives.

The statement, “The solution must provide the ability for users to view and track the progress of their requests,” defines a business-driven functionality — the need for request visibility in the service catalog, directly impacting user experience and service operations.

By contrast:

Option B defines a Service Level Objective (SLO), categorized as a non-functional (performance) requirement.

Option C pertains to availability and resilience, a non-functional reliability requirement.

Option D is a security and compliance requirement, also non-functional.

Therefore, option A is the only one describing a functional capability — the system feature enabling users to monitor their service request lifecycle.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Design Guide — “Functional vs. Non-Functional Requirements Classification.”

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.2 Architecture Guide — “Mapping Business Functional Requirements to Service Capabilities.”

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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.

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.

VMware Cloud Foundation scales using workload domains (WLDs). Each WLD provides its own vCenter Server, NSX Manager, and lifecycle independence through SDDC Manager.

By using multiple WLDs for each department, the architecture supports independent scaling, policy separation, and lifecycle management.

Option A or C restricts flexibility as all tenants would share a single WLD, leading to lifecycle constraints and “noisy neighbor” issues.

Option D contradicts best practices: multiple departments should not share a single cluster inside a WLD when separation and lifecycle flexibility are required.

This design ensures seamless addition of new workload domains as departments and applications grow.

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.

A single VCF instance with dedicated Workload Domains per tenant strikes the balance between operational efficiency and isolation. It reduces lifecycle tasks since only one management domain must be maintained, while each tenant having a dedicated workload domain ensures isolation of compute resources. This meets all three stated requirements effectively: lifecycle simplicity, minimal overhead, and tenant-specific compute separation.

The requirement ensures data protection, secure access, encryption, auditing, and regulatory compliance—fundamental principles in cybersecurity. These attributes fall squarely within the design quality of Security, which concerns protecting confidentiality, integrity, and compliance. PCI-DSS compliance is about implementing security policies, encryption, access controls, monitoring, and auditing—all aspects of the Security design quality in VMware frameworks.

VCF networking guidance emphasizes independent uplinks and notes that while LACP is supported, it is not recommended and introduces additional operational considerations. Specifically: “Link aggregation to the host is supported but not recommended—the default switch-independent load-based teaming (LBT) provides benefits similar to those of LACP without added configuration complexity.” It further states: “Use of LACP… requires specific LACP configuration and switch setup… Not all vSphere features are supported with LACP… [and is] API only.” The design recommendation is: “Ensure each connection between the fabric switch and host operates as an independent uplink.”

Given the customer constraint that the VMware Administration team cannot re-configure the physical network, the prerequisite physical switch port-channel configuration for LACP cannot be performed. During bring-up and life-cycle operations, the Management Domain must follow VCF’s standardized, automated patterns and therefore cannot rely on fabric changes the team cannot make. As a result, LAG cannot be used in the Management Domain, and the design must adopt independent uplinks (LBT) for management, vMotion, and VM traffic while using NFS as principal storage per the NFS Storage Model.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

• VCF 9.0.1 Design – Network Link Aggregation: support, “not recommended,” API-only, and independent uplink recommendation.

• VCF 9.0.1 Design – Link Aggregation Design Recommendations (independent uplinks).

• VCF 9.0.1 Design – NFS Storage Model (principal NFS usage context).

To ensure zero RPO and high availability for the management domain, the best-fit design is to use a vSAN Stretched Cluster. With a 2ms latency and shared witness site, this design enables synchronous replication and automatic failover, ensuring no data loss (RPO 0) and minimal downtime.

For the workload domains where 24-hour RTO is acceptable, Live Recovery (leveraging replication and automation like Site Recovery Manager or Aria Automation Orchestrator) can be used to minimize operational effort and still meet recovery timelines. This strategy also aligns with minimizing hardware overhead by using the standby test infrastructure as failover capacity.

Requirements define what the solution must deliver.

B (block-based storage in WLD) is a technical requirement that specifies a mandatory design need.

Other options:

A (must use existing storage) is a constraint.

C (sufficient storage) is an assumption.

D (network team not trained) is a risk.

Hence, the valid requirement is that block-based storage must be used in the workload domain.

According to the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 Architecture and Design Guide, under the section “VKS Cluster Networking”, VMware Kubernetes Service (VKS) supports two Container Network Interface (CNI) options — Antrea and Calico — for pod and service networking. The documentation explicitly states:

“A VKS cluster provisioned by the VKS supports two CNI options: Antrea (default) and Calico.”

It further explains that Antrea is automatically selected as the default and requires no explicit configuration unless the user specifies Calico in the cluster YAML file.

Antrea, developed by VMware, leverages Open vSwitch (OVS) for networking and supports advanced features such as network policy enforcement, encapsulation, and traffic visibility, making it the optimal default CNI for VKS clusters. Calico, using Linux bridge and BGP, remains an alternative for organizations requiring specific network topologies or integrations.

Thus, unless otherwise defined, all new VKS workload clusters in VMware Cloud Foundation are deployed using Antrea as the default network provider to maintain consistency, integration with NSX networking, and full compatibility with VCF lifecycle management.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 Design Guide – “VKS Cluster Networking: Antrea (default) and Calico options.”

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 – “Set the Default CNI for VKS Clusters” (System-defined default: Antrea).

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.

To support MFA and integration with third-party authentication, the external VCF Identity Broker model (VIDB) is required. The external model is designed to interface with advanced identity providers supporting MFA, which the embedded model cannot accommodate.

Furthermore, to avoid shared components across multiple VCF instances and to reduce the impact of operational errors (e.g., configuration or certificate issues), a dedicated Identity Broker per VCF instance ensures complete separation and fault isolation.

This approach aligns with VMware’s recommended high availability and security practices for VCF 9.0. It ensures the MFA requirement is met and operational risks are minimized.

Logical design decisions define how conceptual requirements are realized by technology features and configurations.

A is a logical design choice because it specifies how replication will be configured (synchronous) to meet an RPO requirement.

B is a requirement, not a design decision.

C is a physical design choice, as it specifies subnetting (/16 networks).

D is an application-level requirement, not a VCF infrastructure logical decision.

Thus, the logical design decision is using synchronous replication to satisfy RPO.

The VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Design Guide defines Manageability as the design quality that focuses on monitoring, configuration, reporting, and operational management capabilities. It states:

“Manageability encompasses the ability to monitor, configure, and control the solution effectively, ensuring operational insights and compliance with business objectives.”

The requirement to support 10,000 monitored objects and retain monitoring data for 24 months directly relates to the system’s ability to manage and retain operational metrics, not to its performance or availability. These parameters ensure long-term visibility, compliance, and data analytics consistency—core elements of Manageability.

In contrast:

Performance focuses on throughput and latency.

Availability ensures uptime and fault tolerance.

Recoverability deals with restoration after failure.

Therefore, the classification of these requirements falls under Manageability, as they directly define how the system manages and retains monitoring data.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Architecture Guide — “Design Qualities: Availability, Manageability, Performance, Recoverability, and Security.” (pp. 72–74)

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.2 Design Framework — “Classification of Monitoring and Retention Requirements under Manageability.”

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.”

According to the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.2 Design Guide, a vSAN stretched cluster provides zero data loss (RPO = 0) and automated failover between two availability zones within the same region. It ensures continuous availability of workloads with minimal performance impact. The guide specifies:

“Stretching a vSAN cluster automatically initiates VM restart and recovery and has a low recovery time for unplanned failures. The solution supports synchronous replication with a maximum inter-site latency of 5ms RTT.”

This design fully satisfies the RPO (≤5 minutes) and RTO (≤30 minutes) requirements while minimizing performance impact, as all writes are synchronously mirrored between sites.

In contrast:

Backup-based recovery (A) and asynchronous replication (B) cannot achieve RPO < 5 minutes.

Array-based synchronous replication (D) is not applicable to vSAN-only VCF environments and introduces additional complexity.

Therefore, the vSAN stretched cluster is the recommended and VMware-validated solution for meeting near-zero RPO/RTO and automated failover requirements in a business-critical VCF environment.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.2 Design Guide — “Stretching vSAN Clusters Across Availability Zones.” (pp. 1039–1042)

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Architecture Overview — “Disaster Avoidance and Recovery with vSAN Stretched Clusters.” (pp. 290–292)

Constraints are design limitations that cannot be changed and must be worked around.

B (no funding for new storage, so existing must be used) is a clear constraint, as it restricts the architect from proposing new storage hardware.

A (out of maintenance) represents a risk (unsupported hardware may fail).

C and D are requirements, not constraints, because they describe desired functionality of the solution.

Thus, the correct constraint is that existing storage must be used due to funding limitations.

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.

According to the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Design Framework, Technical Requirements describe how the business and functional goals are to be implemented through technology, configuration, and design mechanisms. The document defines:

“Technical requirements determine how a solution’s business and functional objectives are achieved using technical means such as architecture components, configurations, and integrations.”

These are distinct from business requirements, which define what must be achieved, and constraints, which limit design options. Technical requirements translate abstract needs (for example, availability, scalability, performance) into actionable design implementations (such as anti-affinity rules, distributed switches, NSX federation, or vSAN stretched clusters).

By following VMware’s VCF Design Methodology, architects use technical requirements to shape logical and physical architectures, ensuring that all solution components meet the identified business outcomes and compliance standards.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Design and Architecture Guide — Requirements Classification and Technical Requirements Definition (pp. 58–61).

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.2 Design Framework — Business, Functional, and Technical Requirement Mapping to Design Decisions.

According to VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 documentation, when a stretched cluster is deployed across sites with sub-5ms latency and high-speed interconnects, vSAN can be configured for zero RPO (Recovery Point Objective), ensuring 100% data consistency and availability in the event of a site failure. vSAN supports co-locating management and application workloads and provides the shared storage functionality with automatic failover capabilities.

Additionally, vSphere Virtual Volumes (vVols) provide granular control of virtual machine storage, and when backed by a storage system that supports replication and failover across sites (with support for VASA 3.0 or later), vVols can meet the same requirements for data availability and disaster recovery.

The NSX VPC Full Services Model allows tenant isolation using VRF-lite, enabling independent routing tables within the same Tier-0 gateway.

This ensures dedicated external access without requiring a separate NSX Edge cluster per tenant, thereby minimizing the number of Edge clusters.

VMware VCF 9.0 recommends VRF Lite for multi-tenant environments with centralized Edge clusters and segmented routing needs.