3V0-24.25 Advanced VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 vSphere Kubernetes Service Questions and Answers

Configuration Sequence (in order):

Create the vSphere Namespace

Assign the zones

Select workload networking

Assign the zonal storage policy

Define resource quotas / limits

Grant RBAC / permissions

A zonal vSphere Namespace is created as a standard namespace first, then “zonalized” by associating it with one or morevSphere Zonesso workloads can be scheduled according to zone placement rules. You start bycreating the namespacebecause it is the tenancy and governance container where networking, storage access, quotas, and permissions are applied. Next, youassign the zones, since zone association is what makes the namespace “zonal” and determines where Kubernetes workloads (and their node pools) are allowed to land.

With zones set, you configureworkload networking, because namespaces must have the correct network attachment and IP behavior for the workloads that will be placed across the selected zones. Then youassign the zonal storage policy, ensuring that persistent volumes can be provisioned using storage that is valid/available for the zone placement model you selected. After networking and storage access are defined, you setresource quotas/limits(CPU, memory, storage) so multi-tenant consumption stays within governance boundaries. Finally, yougrant RBAC/permissionsso the right DevOps/users can consume the namespace and provision clusters/workloads under the enforced controls.

A Supervisor upgrade impacts the lifecycle and compatibility of Supervisor Services (including Core Supervisor Services). VMware guidance emphasizes validating compatibility for the components that depend on the Supervisor and remediating any incompatibilities as part of the overall upgrade process. If a Core Supervisor Service remains stuck in“Configuring”after the Supervisor is upgraded, a common and expected cause is that the service version isnot compatiblewith the upgraded Supervisor/vCenter software state. In those cases, the upgrade workflow expects you toidentify and update incompatible Supervisor Servicesto versions that match the new supported software level. Ensuring the vSphere Kubernetes Service is at asupportedversion (for the upgraded Supervisor) aligns with the documented approach: run compatibility checks and thenupdate the versions of incompatible Supervisor Servicesso they can complete reconciliation and reach a healthy state.

VCF 9.0 states that you can provision Kubernetes clusters using both GUI and CLI approaches, and it explicitly calls out the CLI clients: “the VCF CLI and kubectl provide command-line interfaces for provisioning Kubernetes clusters.” That directly maps tokubectl (A)andVCF CLI (E)as supported clients for provisioning and lifecycle operations. Separately, VCF 9.0 explains that vSphere administrators can “manage and monitor vSphere Pods, VMs, and VKS clusters by using the vSphere Client,” which corresponds tovSphere UI (C)in the question. In addition, the vSphere Client is used to access Supervisor-facing self-service interfaces (for example, the Local Consumption Interface through the vSphere Client), reinforcing vSphere UI as an operational entry point for managing Supervisor-backed services and workloads.

By contrast,Cluster APIis a controller framework (not an operator “client” for admins in this context), andesxtop/esxcliare ESXi host tools that do not represent the documented, supported interfaces for provisioning and managing VKS clusters at the Kubernetes service layer.

VCF 9.0 explicitly states: “The VKS exposes three layers of controllers to manage the lifecycle of a VKS cluster,” and then enumerates those layers. The first layer is the set of components that integrate the workload cluster with Supervisor-backed resources, including aCloud Provider Plug-inthat integrates with the Supervisor and enables infrastructure integrations such as persistent volume requests being passed to the Supervisor (which is integrated with Cloud Native Storage). The second layer isCluster API, described as providing “declarative, Kubernetes-style APIs for cluster creation, configuration, and management,” driven by resources that represent the cluster, the VMs making up the cluster, and cluster add-ons. The third layer is theVirtual Machine Service, which provides a declarative API for managing VMs and associated vSphere resources and is used to manage the lifecycle of the control plane and worker node VMs hosting a VKS cluster.

Therefore, optionAis the only answer that matches the three lifecycle controller layers defined in the VCF 9.0 documentation.

In a vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) environment, resource management follows aDeclarative Model. When an administrator uses kubectl edit deployment to manually scale a running workload from 5 to 10 replicas, they are modifying thelive stateof the deployment. However, thesource of truthfor a Tanzu Kubernetes cluster in VCF 9.0 is theCluster YAML specificationmaintained by the Cluster API (CAPI) provider within the Supervisor.

If the administrator redeploys the cluster or if the Supervisor’s controller performs a reconciliation loop, it refers back to the original configuration file. If that cluster YAML file still defines the replica count as 5, the Supervisor will terminate the 5 "extra" pods to match the desired state defined in the configuration. This is a common administrative pitfall; for changes to be persistent across redeployments or updates in VCF 9.0, the underlying manifest (the "Desired State") must be updated. Manually editing the live object only provides a temporary change that will be overwritten during the next synchronization or lifecycle event because the cluster YAML file was not updated to reflect the requested increase.

VCF 9.0 distinguishes betweenbacking up the Supervisor control planeandbacking up workloadsthat run on the Supervisor, includingvSphere Pods. In the “Considerations for Backing Up and Restoring Workload Management” table, the scenario “Backup and restore vSphere Pods” explicitly lists the required tool as“Velero Plugin for vSphere”, with the guidance to “Install and configure the plug-in on the Supervisor.”

The same document is explicit thatstandalone Velero with Restic is not valid for vSphere Pods, stating: “You cannot use Velero standalone with Restic to backup and restore vSphere Pods. You must use the Velero Plugin for vSphere installed on the Supervisor.”

vCenter file-based backup is documented for restoring theSupervisor control plane state, not for backing up and restoring vSphere Pod workloads themselves. Therefore, to meet the requirement to protect third-party applications running asvSphere Pods, the architect should propose theVelero Plugin for vSphere.

VCF 9.0 defines VKS as an upstream Kubernetes offering that isbuilt for vSphereand delivered with “well-thought-out defaults” to reduce operational burden. It states VKS provides an“opinionated installation of Kubernetes”with defaults “optimized for vSphere,” which “reduce[s] the amount of time and effort” typically spent deploying and running an enterprise Kubernetes cluster—this directly supportssimplified management and operations (A).

VCF 9.0 also emphasizes VKS is“integrated with the vSphere infrastructure”(storage, networking, authentication) and is built on a Supervisor that maps to vSphere clusters, creating a “unified product experience.” This supportsconsistent Kubernetes deployment on vSphere (B)because clusters are provisioned and operated in a standardized, vSphere-native way.

Finally, VCF 9.0 states VKS clusters “use open source Linux-based” components from VMware by Broadcom and notes key integrations (for example, CNI options) are open source—supportingleveraging open-source technologies (D).

OptionsCandEare not VKS benefits as stated: VKS targets VKS-provisioned upstream Kubernetes clusters (not “any distribution”), and “pods directly on ESXi” is described asvSphere Pods(Workload Management), not a defining benefit of VKS clusters.

VCF 9.0 documentation explicitly indicates thatvCenter upgrades and the Supervisor/cluster (Workload Management) upgrade are distinct, noting that “if you have only upgraded vCenter and not the cluster” then DevOps engineers have reduced permissions until the cluster is upgraded. This supports the stated standard that VKS/Workload Management lifecycle can be treated separately from vCenter. For the private registry requirement, VCF 9.0 provides an operational mechanism to authenticate and pull artifacts from private registries: “Registry secrets allow package and repository consumers to authenticate to and pull images from private registries,” implemented via a standard Kubernetes Secret of type kubernetes.io/dockerconfigjson.

Taken together, the standard implies (1)asynchronoushandling (separate lifecycle from vCenter) and (2)privatesourcing (images pulled from an internal registry with registry secrets). Therefore, selectingAsynchronous Privatebest matches both requirements in a single configuration choice, aligning with the documented separation of upgrades and the documented need to use authenticated access to private registries.

In VCF 9.0, ingress is described as part ofVKS cluster networking. The documentation’s VKS Cluster Networking table lists“Cluster ingress”and identifies its role asrouting inbound pod traffic. It further clarifies that this function is delivered by athird-party ingress controller, and explicitly namesContouras an example (“you can use any third-party ingress controller, such as Contour”).

That mapping is exactly what optionAdescribes: Contour is deployed to provideingresscapabilities so that inbound requests from outside the cluster can be routed to Kubernetes services and pods according to ingress rules. In other words, Contour is not a storage component (that would align to CSI/CNS/pvCSI), not a node lifecycle manager (that is handled by VKS/Cluster API/VM Service), and not an infrastructure health monitoring tool (that would be metrics/observability tooling). VCF 9.0 positions Contour specifically within theingresspart of the networking feature set, makingAthe correct answer.

In VCF 9.0 VKS clusters, network policy is a core Kubernetes networking control implemented by the cluster’s CNI (Antrea or Calico). The VCF documentation’s “VKS Cluster Networking” table describesNetwork policyas the feature that “controls what traffic is allowed to and from selected pods and network endpoints,” and identifies Antrea or Calico as the providers for this capability. That definition precisely matches optionB: it governs pod-to-pod and pod-to-external endpoint communication rules. This is different from ingress routing (which the same table describes separately as “Cluster ingress … routing for inbound pod traffic”), so option C is not correct for “network policy.” It is also different from NodePort behavior (external access via a port on each worker node through the Kubernetes network proxy), which is explicitly listed as “Service type: NodePort.” Finally, creating/operating clusters natively in Supervisor is a broader lifecycle function (Cluster API/VKS API), not the definition of network policy. Therefore,NetworkPolicyis the Kubernetes-layer mechanism to define and enforce allowed traffic flows.

Kubernetes Service

When adding a Kubernetes cluster to anexisting vSphere Namespace, the workflow is initiated from within that namespace’s context in the vSphere Client. The administrator first opens the target namespace (as shown in the left navigation where the namespace is selected), then uses theKubernetes Servicearea to create and manage Kubernetes clusters associated with that namespace. In the namespaceSummaryview, theKubernetes Servicetile/card provides the entry point for cluster lifecycle actions, typically via an action link such asManage(and from thereCreate Cluster). This is because the Kubernetes cluster is anamespace-scoped resourcein the Supervisor environment: it inherits namespace-level policies and configuration such as permissions/RBAC, resource limits, storage policies, and networking selections that have already been defined for that namespace. Navigating to other areas likeStorageorNetworkis used to validate or adjust prerequisites (for example, storage policy availability or network settings), but the actual “create cluster” operation is launched fromKubernetes Servicewithin the namespace to ensure the cluster is created under the correct tenant boundary and governance model.

The errors described—specifically the memcache.go failure, the inability to fetch resource lists for Antrea, and the YAML context error—are classic symptoms of aConfiguration Context mismatch. In VCF 9.0, there are two distinct layers of API interaction: theSupervisor Cluster API(used for management tasks like creating clusters) and theGuest Cluster API(used for deploying workloads within the VKS).

When an administrator upgrades a Supervisor, the API endpoint or the available API groups may change. If the administrator attempts to run kubectl commands against a VKS cluster while their kubeconfig context is still pointing to the Supervisor (or vice versa), the client will encounter "mapping values" errors and "unable to handle request" errors because it is sending requests to an endpoint that does not recognize those specific resource definitions (like Antrea stats in the wrong context). To resolve this, the administrator must ensure they have switched to the correct context using kubectl config use-context after the Supervisor update to ensure the local client is communicating with the correct API server and version of the Kubernetes binaries.

The VCF 9.0 documentation explicitly states that“the VKS exposes three layers of controllers to manage the lifecycle of a VKS cluster.”Those three controller layers map directly to the answer choices:

Cloud Provider Plug-in: VKS-provisioned clusters include components needed to integrate with vSphere Namespace resources, including aCloud Provider Plug-inthat integrates with the Supervisor and supports infrastructure-integrated functions (for example, passing persistent volume requests to the Supervisor which integrates with Cloud Native Storage).

Cluster API: The documentation describesCluster APIas providing declarative APIs for “cluster creation, configuration, and management,” including resources for the VMs and cluster add-ons.

Virtual Machine Service: TheVirtual Machine Serviceprovides declarative APIs to manage VMs and associated vSphere resources, and is used to manage the lifecycle of the control plane and worker node VMs that host a VKS cluster.

CNI and CSI are important cluster components, but the document distinguishes these from thethree controller layersresponsible for lifecycle management.

Configuration Order (in order):

Verify the name of the original VolumeSnapshot object in the Supervisor.

Create a VolumeSnapshotContent object.

Create a VolumeSnapshot object.

Verify that the VolumeSnapshot is marked with ReadyToUse as true.

Apre-provisioned snapshotworkflow means the snapshot already exists at the Supervisor/storage layer, and you are “importing” it into Kubernetes by creating the Kubernetes objects that reference it. That’s why the first step is toidentify/verify the exact snapshot nameas it exists in the Supervisor context—this is the authoritative identifier you must point to when you create Kubernetes snapshot metadata. Next, you create theVolumeSnapshotContentobject, which represents theactual snapshot on the storage backendand includes the handle/reference to that pre-existing snapshot. With the content object in place, you then create theVolumeSnapshotobject, which is theuser-facing Kubernetes object(namespaced) that binds to the pre-provisioned VolumeSnapshotContent (either explicitly or via binding rules). Finally, you validate the outcome by checking that theVolumeSnapshot shows ReadyToUse: true, confirming the binding succeeded and Kubernetes can use the snapshot for restore/clone workflows.

VCF 9.0 explicitly lists thecomponents that run in a VKS clusterand groups them into areas such as authentication/authorization, storage integration, pod networking, and load balancing. In that list, the documentation names:“Container Storage Interface Plugin”(a paravirtual CSI plug-in that integrates with CNS through the Supervisor),“Container Network Interface Plug-in”(a CNI plugin that provides pod networking), and“Cloud Provider Implementation”(supports creating Kubernetes load balancer services).

These three items map directly to the answer choicesD (Container Storage Interface),F (Container Network Interface), andA (Cloud Provider Implementation). The same VCF 9.0 section also mentions an authentication webhook, but that component is not offered as a selectable option in this question, so the best three matches among the provided choices are the CSI, CNI, and cloud provider implementation entries that the document explicitly states are present inside a VKS cluster.