2V0-15.25 VMware Certified Professional - VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Support Questions and Answers

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.

In VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0,all host commissioning operationsare performed throughVCF Operations, not through vSphere Client, Cloud Builder, or the VCF Installer. Once VCF is deployed, Cloud Builder is no longer used, and the VCF Installer is for lifecycle and bundle management—not for host workflows. The vSphere Client also cannot commission hosts because host commissioning is a foundational VCF workflow requiring hardware validation, storage type checks, NIC checks, HCL conformance, and version compatibility.

The error message provided:

“Hosts must be unassigned, commissioned with at least one physical NIC and the same storage type… and the ESX version must be compatible…”

is a standard VCF 9.0 validation message shown whenno commissioned hostsmatching the workload domain requirements exist. VMware documentation states that hosts must be commissioned under:

VCF Operations → Fleet Management → Hosts → Commission Host

Here, VCF validates:

Storage type (vSAN ESA, vSAN OSA, NFS, FC, etc.)

Network pool membership (matching the WLD plan)

ESXi version compatibility with the Management Domain baseline

NIC mapping and certifications

Until hosts are commissioned, they cannot appear in the workload domain creation wizard.

Thus, the correct method to commission hosts isD. Using VCF Operations.

In VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0, aProvider Gatewayin VCF Automation is always backed by anexisting Tier-0 or Tier-0 VRF gatewayin NSX. When the administrator launches theCreate Provider Gatewayworkflow and no Tier-0 gateways appear for assignment, this indicates that VCF Automation cannot discover any valid Tier-0 gateways in the associated region.

The VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 documentation explicitly states thatbefore adding a Provider Gateway, an administratormust first create an Active-Standby Tier-0 Gateway in NSX Manager. The Provider Gateway workflow only lists Tier-0 gateways that already exist and are properly configured in NSX. If none are present, the list will be empty.

From the documentation:“To add a provider gateway, first you must create an Active Standby tier-0 gateway in the NSX Manager associated with the region to back it.”. Provider gateways in VCF Automationare discovered from these preexisting Tier-0 gatewaysand cannot be created until they exist.

Creating a Tier-1 gateway (Option B) does not satisfy the requirement because Provider Gateways must map specifically toTier-0, not Tier-1. Retrying the workflow (Option D) will not resolve the issue because the Tier-0 backing resource is missing. Creating a new region (Option A) is unnecessary unless required for other organizational reasons, and it still would not produce a Tier-0 gateway.

Therefore, the correct and verified solution is tolog in to NSX Manager and create the required Tier-0 gateway, after which it will appear in the Provider Gateway creation workflow.

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.

VCF Operations enforces strict certificate format validation when importing certificate chains. According to VMware Cloud Foundation 9.x certificate management requirements,all uploaded certificates must be PEM-encoded. A PEM certificate must contain:

ASCII-encoded content

Proper headers such as:

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----

-----END CERTIFICATE-----

If the certificate is encoded inDER, PFX, PKCS#12, or any non-PEM format, VCF Operations will reject the upload with the error:

“The provided certificate content is invalid.”

This matches the behavior described in the question.

Option B (chain order invalid) and Option C (missing root CA) can cause validation issuesonly afterthe certificate file is successfully parsed. The error described indicatesthe file itself cannot be parsed, which directly points to encoding.

Option D (missing private key) is incorrect becausecertificate chain uploads must NOT include a private key— private keys are only used during CSR signing and are handled separately by the system.

In avSAN Stretched Cluster, communication between thewitness nodeanddata nodesrequires several specific TCP/UDP ports. The ability to successfully execute:

vmkping -I -s 1472 -d

confirms that:

L2/L3 connectivity is present

MTU is correctly configured

ICMP traffic flows without fragmentation

However,vmkping alone does not verify vSAN control-plane communication.

For the vSAN Witness to properly form a cluster,TCP port 12321must be openbidirectionallybetween:

Witness → Data nodes

Data nodes → Witness

Port12321is required for:

vSAN cluster membership

Witness traffic

vSAN object health/state synchronization

If this port is blocked by firewall policy or misconfigured network ACLs, the nodes can ping each other, butvSAN witness traffic will fail, preventing the stretched cluster from forming.

Why the other options are incorrect:

B. Port 443— Required for management, not cluster formation.

C. No VMs in cluster— Hasno impacton witness formation.

D. Jumbo frames not enabled— Already ruled out by the successful 1472-byte vmkping with DF bit.

To resolve the "partial or invalid or not reachable" error when configuring the VCF 9.0 Offline Depot, the administrator must address two critical misconfigurations related to the protocol and the file path mapping:

Switch to HTTPS (Option E):VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 enforcesHTTPSby default for all depot connections to ensure security. The administrator's configuration uses http://, which the VCF Fleet Manager will reject (or fail to connect to) unless the system has been explicitly modified via internal properties files to allow insecure transport. Changing the Repository URL to https://10.138.148.160/depot/ aligns with the default security requirements of the VCF 9.0 binaries download and validation process.

Reconfigure Web Server Pathing (Option A):The command --depot-store=/VCF instructs the download tool to create a repository structure rooted at /VCF. The administrator then copied this "downloaded folder"intothe /depot folder on the web server, resulting in a nested path (e.g., /var/www/html/depot/VCF/...). However, the configured URL is .../depot/, which points to the parent directory where the required index.json or metadata files are not immediately visible. The administrator must reconfigure the web server (e.g., via DocumentRoot or Alias settings) to explicitly share the specific /vcf/ (or /VCF/) folder content at the target URL so the Fleet Manager can locate the manifest files.

To successfully configure aMicrosoft Certificate Authority (CA)inVMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Operations(formerly vRealize/Aria Operations), the service account used for the integration must have specific permissions on the Certificate Template (e.g., the "VMware" template).

Required Permissions:The VCF 9.0 and Aria Operations documentation explicitly states that the service account must be assignedReadandEnrollpermissions on the target Certificate Template.

Read:This permission is critical for the "Discovery" and "Validation" phase. It allows VCF Operations to query the CA, list available templates, and read the template's properties (like Key Usage and Extended Key Usage) to ensure they meet the security requirements (e.g., Server Authentication, Non-Repudiation).

Enroll:This permission allows the account to actually submit a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) via the interface and receive a signed certificate.

The Cause of Failure (Option A):If the user account is configured withonly the "Enroll" permission, it effectivelylacks the "Read" permission. Without "Read", VCF Operations cannot "see" or validate the template during the configuration wizard. The application attempts to fetch the template details, fails (because the template is invisible to it), and throws the error"Certificate authorities update failed."

Why other options are incorrect:

Option D (Read and Enroll):This is thecorrectand recommended configuration. If the user had these permissions, the operation would succeed (assuming other prereqs like Basic Auth are met).

Option C (Autoenroll):TheAutoenrollpermission is designed for Windows Group Policy-based background renewal. It isnot requiredfor the VCF Operations API-based integration, which relies on explicit "Enroll" calls.

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.

When upgrading fromVCF 5.0 to VCF 9.0, the upgrade workflow requires that theSDDC Manager be upgraded firstbefore any other component bundles (vCenter, ESX, NSX) become visible. This is explicitly stated in the VMware Cloud Foundation upgrade process:the upgrade bundles for the management domain components are dependent on the SDDC Manager version. The online depot will not present the 9.0 upgrade bundles for vCenter, ESX, or NSX until the SDDC Manager itself has reached the target major version (in this case, 9.0).

This is because SDDC Manager contains the updatedLifecycle Management (LCM)engine and updatedbundle manifests, which are required to understand, download, and orchestrate the remaining component upgrades. Attempting to download the other bundles without upgrading SDDC Manager first is not supported.

Options B and D (download tools) are incorrect because the issue isnot that the bundles are missing from the depot, but that SDDC Manager 5.x cannot interpret 9.0 component bundles. Option C (upgrade to 5.2 first) is also incorrect because the VCF 5.x → 9.x upgrade path is directly managed by the upgrade planner once SDDC Manager is upgraded.

Thus, the correct resolution is toupgrade the SDDC Manager to 9.0, after which the remaining component bundles will become available.

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 VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0, password changes mademanually on an NSX Edge Transport Nodearenot automatically synchronizedwith VCF Operations. VCF Operations maintains secure credential records for all managed components, including NSX Manager appliances and NSX Edge Transport Nodes. When credentials become stale—such as after a password expiration and manual reset—VCF Operations marks the credential object asout of syncand requires administrative remediation.

The official workflow described in VCF 9.0 Operations documentation states that administrators must use the“Remediate Password”function whenever a password was changed outside of VCF Operations, ensuring that the platform revalidates and updates the stored credentials used for monitoring, log collection, and automation tasks. Options such as “rotate,” “sync,” or “update” do not apply because rotation implies generating a new password managed by VCF, and “sync” does not overwrite the stored credential. Only remediation forces VCF Operations to re-validate and align credentials with the external system.

Therefore, after manually resetting the NSX Edge admin password, the administrator must perform passwordremediationin VCF Operations to restore operational consistency, makingBthe correct and verified answer.

To diagnose and resolve the intermittent performance and connection drop issues with the supplemental iSCSI storage, the administrator should focus on network layer consistency and health, particularly regarding packet size (MTU) and delivery (TCP).

Examine the iSCSI VMkernel port for TCP retransmissions (Action B - Diagnose):"Intermittent" connection drops and slow I/O are classic symptoms of packet loss or fragmentation issues. By examining the ESXi network stats (e.g., using esxtop key n or viewing vSphere performance charts) forTCP retransmissions, the administrator can confirm if packets are being dropped or lost in transit.Checksum offload errorscan also indicate issues where the NIC hardware is incorrectly validating packets, causing the OS to drop them. This step identifies theroot cause(packet loss/corruption).

Ensure all ESX hosts have the VMkernel port MTU set to 9000 (Action E - Resolve):For high-performance storage traffic like iSCSI in a VMware Cloud Foundation environment, it is best practice to useJumbo Frames (MTU 9000)end-to-end (Host -> Switch -> Storage Array).

The symptom thatsomehosts are affected suggestsconfiguration driftwhere those specific hosts might be set to a different MTU (e.g., 1500) or are mismatched with the physical network/target (which is likely set to 9000 for performance).

An MTU mismatch (e.g., Target sending 9000-byte frames to a Host/Switch expecting 1500) typically results in the "Do Not Fragment" (DF) bit causing packet drops, leading to the reported connection drops and retransmission delays. Ensuring a consistent MTU of 9000 across the fleet resolves this and aligns with VCF performance standards.

Note: Option A (CHAP) is for authentication security, not performance. Option C (Update network plugin) is a lifecycle task but less likely to be the immediate fix for "some hosts" having intermittent drops compared to the common issue of MTU mismatch. Option D (MTU 1500) would resolve drops if the physical network doesn't support Jumbo Frames, but would degrade performance, making E the preferred resolution for a "performance" storage tier.

When troubleshooting NSX on an ESXi host, VMware requires verification that NSX VIBs (vSphere Installation Bundles) are installed and in the correct state. VIBs are responsible for NSX datapath, control-plane modules, and kernel extensions on ESXi. The authoritative and documented method to list VIBs on an ESXi host is the command:

esxcli software vib list

This command displays all installed kernel modules, version numbers, NSX packages, and their installation status. For NSX-T (now part of VCF networking), administrators expect to see VIBs such asnsx-aggservice,nsx-bridge,nsx-esx-datapath, and others. If any required NSX VIBs are missing or inconsistent, the ESXi host will fail to join NSX transport nodes or will show “Not Ready.”

Option A (esxtop) is for performance monitoring and does not show VIB information.

Option C (nsxcli get version) checks NSX version on Edge Nodes or host transport nodes butdoes not list VIBs.

Option D (esxcfg software list) is an outdated and invalid command.

In vSAN ESA or OSA networking configured through a dedicated vSphere Distributed Switch (vDS), each vSAN vmkernel port must have at least oneActivephysical uplink available at all times. The scenario describes a vDS withtwo physical adaptersandtwo uplinks, but after failure of the active uplink,vSAN traffic was lost. This only occurs when the second physical NIC isnot actually assigned to the vSAN port group—typically because its uplink is set to“Unused”.

In such a misconfiguration:

vSAN traffic only uses the single active uplink.

When that uplink fails, vSAN hasno failover path, causing immediate connectivity loss.

Option A (storage policies) does not affect network uplink behavior.

Option B (VLAN tagging) could cause connectivity failure but would not suddenly break only after an uplink failure.

Option D (failover policy not allowing fallback) affects recovery order, not immediate redundancy.