2V0-15.25 Questions and Answers

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 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.

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 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 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.

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.

When troubleshootingBGP peering issueson an NSX Edge Transport Node, VMware documentation directs administrators to examinerouting logs, because BGP failures are often caused by adjacency negotiation errors, authentication mismatches, keepalive/hold timer issues, or route-policy failures.

The NSX Edge CLI command:

get log-file routing follow

streams real-time routing logs, including BGP daemon logs (bfdd, routed, wdog) and provides detailed insight into:

BGP session establishment and teardown

Keepalive and hold timer exchanges

Neighbor state transitions

Route advertisement or rejection

Authentication mismatches

MTU or connectivity issues on TEP / uplinks

This is theonlycommand in the list that exposesdiagnostic-level BGP informationneeded to troubleshoot peering.

Option A (edge-cluster status) shows cluster membership only.

Option B (get logical-routers) shows logical router configuration, not BGP logs.

Option C (edge-cluster history state) is unrelated to routing.

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.

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 introduces a major architectural redesign that replaces the traditional SDDC Manager–centric domain management model with aunified Fleet Management architectureimplemented throughVCF Operations Fleet Manager. In this model, each Workload Domain operates withits own vCenter, but Enhanced Linked Mode (ELM) isremovedto improve isolation, reduce blast radius, and support multi-site scalability. As a result, administrators logged into the vSphere Client of the Management Domaincan no longer manage or expand clusters in other Workload Domains, which explains why the vSphere UI blocks the attempted expansion of WLD-02.

Fleet Manager becomes the new authoritative control plane for lifecycle, topology, host commissioning, and workload domain expansion. Only Fleet Manager maintains the fullglobal viewnecessary to orchestrate cluster addition operations across distributed vCenters and domains. Because WLD-02 is running VCF 9.0 and is fully fleet-aware, its expansion must occur throughVCF Operations Fleet Manager, not through the vSphere Client or legacy SDDC Manager workflows.

Options involving WLD-03 are invalid since that domain is running VCF 5.2.1, is isolated, and cannot participate in fleet-aware operations. SDDC Manager (A) is no longer the correct interface for VCF 9.0 domain expansion operations.

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.

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 VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Automation, eachAutomation Regionmust be associated with adedicated NSX Local Manager. A single NSX Local Manager instancecannot be reused across multiple Automation Regions.

In the provided scenario:

The existing environment hasWLD1andWLD2, both sharingone NSX Local Manager.

Region-1 in VCF Automation already consumes this shared NSX Local Manager.

When creatingRegion-2, the interface shows“No results”when selecting an NSX Local Manager.

This behavior matches documented VCF Automation constraints:an NSX Local Manager can only be mapped to a single Automation Region. Once it is consumed by one region, it isnot availablefor any additional region.

To create a second region (Region-2), anew NSX Local Manager instancemust exist in the environment. The only supported method to obtain a new NSX Local Manager is todeploy a new workload domain, because NSX Local Manager is deployed as part of every VI Workload Domain.

Thus, the administrator mustdeploy a new (third) workload domain, which includes its own NSX Local Manager package, allowing Region-2 to be created successfully.