Free VMware 2V0-13.25 Practice Exam with Questions & Answers | Set: 3

According to the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Design Guide (Table 543 & vSAN Storage Cluster Separation Distributed Switch Model), when an organization enforces strict network zoning and isolation, two vSphere Distributed Switches (vDS) are used to separate management/storage traffic from workload/overlay traffic.

The vDS01 handles Management, vMotion, and Storage (vSAN/NFS) traffic within the secure zone 1, ensuring no cross-zone connectivity. The vDS02 is dedicated to workload and NSX overlay traffic (Host TEPs, Edge TEPs, and Edge uplinks) within zone 2, which aligns with NSX networking and security best practices.

This dual vDS model enforces compliance with security zone isolation policies and eliminates inter-zone traversal, as required by the design. It also aligns with VCF best practices which state:

“Provides support for traffic separation across different uplinks or vSphere Distributed Switches. Each vDS supports a distinct set of traffic types, ensuring isolation and compliance with network zoning policies.”

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Design Guide — “vSAN Storage Cluster Separation Distributed Switch Model” (p.808–809)

VMware Cloud Foundation 5.2 Networking Design — “Multiple vSphere Distributed Switches and Traffic Separation.”

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation from VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Documentation:

According to VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Design Guide (Table 59, “Certificate Management Design Recommendations”), VMware explicitly mandates that “Use a SHA-2 algorithm or higher for signed certificates. The SHA-1 algorithm is considered less secure and has been deprecated.” This recommendation (VCF-SEC-RCMD-CERT-002) is a foundational part of securing communication between management components and workload domains across the VCF environment.

The use of SHA-2 or higher ensures that all certificates used for SSL/TLS communication within the SDDC ecosystem (including vCenter, NSX Manager, and SDDC Manager) meet modern cryptographic standards to prevent vulnerabilities such as collision attacks. VMware Cloud Foundation enforces certificate management policies that require replacement of default VMCA-signed certificates with CA-signed certificates, and the SHA-2 algorithm ensures cryptographic integrity, authenticity, and resistance to tampering or impersonation.

This configuration directly satisfies the customer’s requirement for secure communication in the logical design of the workload domain. It ensures data in transit between components—such as management clusters, workload domains, and external systems—remains encrypted and trustworthy, aligning with VMware’s zero-trust and compliance-focused architectural principles.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Architecture Guide):

Table 59: Certificate Management Design Recommendations — “VCF-SEC-RCMD-CERT-002 Use a SHA-2 algorithm or higher for signed certificates.”

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 PDF, pp. 306–308, 376, and 592 (Certificate Management Design Recommendations Sections).

VMware Cloud Foundation Security Governance and Compliance Design Section (VCF-SEC-RCMD-CERT-002).

The Conceptual Model documents requirements, assumptions, risks, and constraints (RACR). Here, the business use cases explicitly call for migration and containerization, which translates into a requirement for the solution to support VM and containerized workloads.

A = Constraint (UI accessibility).

C = Assumption.

D = Risk.Only B directly aligns with the business use cases and objectives.

When gathering business requirements, VMware’s VCF Design and Planning methodology (referenced in the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Architecture and Design Guide) specifies that architects must first analyze the business-level inputs that define availability, manageability, and compliance objectives. The documentation identifies Service-Level Agreements (SLAs) and Organizational Structure as key influencing factors on design decisions because they define the scope of reliability, operational responsibility, and risk tolerance of the solution.

SLAs determine the required uptime, RPO/RTO targets, and recovery policies, directly impacting design elements such as stretched clusters, backup configuration, and resource redundancy. Similarly, the organizational structure affects operational models and determines how administrative domains, roles, and tenancy will be separated — influencing whether to implement single-tenancy or multi-tenancy within VCF Automation and how management domains are segregated.

Other options such as product versions, VM sizes, or storage capacity are important for implementation and scaling phases, not the business requirements stage. VMware explicitly distinguishes between business requirements (goals, SLAs, governance) and technical requirements (capacity, configuration) in the VCF Design Library.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Design Guide — Business Requirements Gathering Framework (VCF-DES-PLN-BREQ-001).

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Architecture Overview — SLAs and Organizational Models Impact on Design Decisions.

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Design Library — Mapping Business Requirements to Design Factors.

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.”

To achieve 99.95% availability in the management domain, the architecture must protect critical management components (like vCenter) and ensure rapid recovery:

A. vCenter HA – Protects the vCenter Server by providing an active-passive-failure detection architecture, ensuring no single vCenter outage impacts operations.

D. Restart priority policy = High – Ensures vCenter recovers first and fastest during a host failure, minimizing downtime.

Why not the others?

B/E (EtherChannel Enable/Disable) – Link aggregation is networking config, not directly tied to SLA.

C (das.iostatsinterval = 0) – This disables HA datastore heartbeating, reducing resiliency rather than improving it.

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.

As defined in the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Design and Architecture Guide, the design quality of Performance relates to how well the system responds to workloads under specified conditions — including throughput, latency, scalability, and responsiveness. Performance requirements typically specify concurrent workload capacity, transaction throughput, or system responsiveness under load, distinguishing them from availability (uptime), recoverability (RTO/RPO), or manageability (administrative efficiency).

The requirement to “support 50,000 workloads concurrently” and “concurrent deployment of up to 10 workloads” clearly defines system throughput and scalability targets, both of which are categorized under performance in VMware’s design quality framework. The VCF design methodology explicitly states that “Performance design factors ensure the platform can sustain the expected workload and scale appropriately under peak load without degradation.”

Thus, the architect must classify these as Performance requirements and ensure design validation includes capacity planning, cluster scalability testing, and vSAN throughput validation to confirm that the system can meet these operational demands.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Architecture and Design Guide — “Design Qualities: Performance, Availability, Manageability, Recoverability”

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.2 Design Library — “Mapping Business Requirements to Performance Criteria.”

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.