2V0-15.25 VMware Certified Professional - VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Support Free Practice Exam Questions (2026 Updated)

The error message com.vmware.esx.settings.daemon.software.scan_spec (reconstructed from the typo setungs_aaemon.sonware.scan_spec) is a specific failure generated by thevSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM)compliance engine on the ESXi host.

Cause - Removed Component:This error is a documented known issue in vSphere 8.x/VCF 5.x+, specifically occurring when an administrator hasremoved a componentfrom the Cluster Image that the system validates as "required" or "structural" for the host's hardware configuration (common with hosts using DPUs or specific OEM add-ons).

The Scenario:The mention of "High CPU ready times" likely implies the administrator attempted to streamline the host image byremovinga perceived "bloatware" component (like a vendor monitoring agent or unused driver) to improve performance.

The Result:When vLCM attempts to build the "Scan Specification" (scan_spec) to validate the host against this modified image, the internal struct validation fails because the removed component creates an invalid dependency state, throwing the Invalid field software_spec... or scan_spec exception.

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 with vSAN ESA, storage policies must match the capabilities of the existing cluster. The scenario describes a5-node vSAN ESA clusterwhere the vSAN Default Storage Policy isRAID-1 (FTT=1). The administrator attempts to apply a2 Failures – RAID-6policy, which ESA supportsonly on clusters with at least 7 nodes. Because the cluster has only five nodes, the policy fails immediately—this is expected and documented in the vSAN ESA design specifications.

Since RAID-6 is not an option and capacity is low, the administrator must look for a method to reclaim storage usage without requiring additional nodes or unsupported policy changes. Converting VMs fromthick provisioning to thin provisioningis a safe and effective mitigation approach. Thin provisioning reduces consumed space by allowing disks to grow only as needed, immediately recovering unused blocks. This is a standard vSAN-supported method to temporarily alleviate capacity pressure.

Enabling encryption (A) or compression (D) doesnotreduce capacity usage retroactively and may actually increase overhead. Using RAID-5 (B) is also not possible because RAID-5 requiresat least 6 ESA-enabled hosts.

vDefend – Distributed Firewall is a security capability delivered byNSXwithin VMware Cloud Foundation. Although VCF components such as SDDC Manager, VCF Operations, and VCF Automation rely on licensing frameworks, the enforcement and activation ofNSX features—including Distributed Firewall—occur entirely withinNSX Manager.

To enablevDefend (Distributed Firewall), NSX Manager must detect a valid NSX license that includes security features. Without applying the correct license directly to NSX Manager:

The Distributed Firewall feature remains locked

vDefend cannot be enabled in workload domains

Security rules and micro-segmentation capability remain unavailable

VCF does not apply NSX security licensing at the SDDC Manager, VCF Automation, or VCF Operations layers. Instead, NSX Manager handles all feature entitlement checks internally.

Therefore, the new license must be installeddirectly in NSX Manager, under:

System → Licensing → NSX → Add License

Options A, C, and D are incorrect because none of those components control NSX feature activation.

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.

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 VCF 9.0, when deployingVCF Automationusing the VCF Installer in aSimple Deployment Model, the appliance requirestwo IP addresses:

Primary IP– Management interface

Secondary IP– Required for service separation and internal routing for Automation services

VMware’s JSON schema for VCF Installer enforces this requirement. If the second IP is missing, incorrectly formatted, or placed under the wrong JSON section, the installer validation will fail immediately with a JSON schema error before deployment begins.

This is one of themost common causesof validation failure for VCF Automation deployment.

Option A (component binaries missing) produces abundle downloaderror, not JSON schema failure.

Option C (NSX Manager size = large) is allowed and does not break JSON validation.

Option D (separate vDS for vSAN) is allowed if defined correctly and also does not cause JSON schema failure.

When importing an existing vSphere environment into VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) as a workload domain, several strict prerequisites must be met. One of the key requirements documented in VCF 9.0 is that allVMkernel adapters (vmk ports)used for vSAN, vMotion, management, or other system trafficmust have statically assigned IP addresses. DHCP-assigned VMkernel IPs arenot supportedfor VCF workload domain bring-up or import operations.

In the provided scenario, the environment includes:

vSphere 8.0 U3

A 3-node vSAN OSA cluster

Two VDS switches

VMkernel adapters using DHCP

Before VCF can successfully validate and import the environment, the administrator must convert these VMkernel interfaces tostatic IP addressing. VCF uses IPAM assumptions and deterministic host networking configurations; DHCP introduces variability incompatible with automated lifecycle operations.

Option A (consolidating VDS) is unnecessary—VCF supports multiple VDS configurations during import.

Option B (upgrading to vSphere 9.0) is not required for import.

Option D (convert OSA to ESA) is impossible pre-import and not required—VCF supports OSA clusters.

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.

In VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 Automation,Provider Administratorsmanage which types of Organizations can be created:

VM Apps Organizations

All Apps Organizations

These capabilities are controlled byFeature Flagswithin theVCF Automation Provider Management Portal. If the administrator logs in and only sees the ability to createAll Apps Organizations, it means that the feature flag enablingVM Apps Organization creationhas not been turned on.

VCF Automation requires the Provider Admin to explicitly enable creation ofVM Apps Organizations, because doing so exposes VM-centric consumption models and allows the environment to differentiate between VM-only and hybrid (VM + Kubernetes) application deployments.

Therefore, the administrator simply needs to navigate to:

Provider Management Portal → Administration → Feature Flags → Enable “Create VM Apps Organizations”

Option A (creating via API) is unnecessary—the UI will support it once the feature is enabled.

Option B (deleting existing VM Apps orgs) has no effect on feature availability.

Option C (deleting All Apps orgs) is unrelated and would not unlock VM Apps org creation.

To collect detailed per-VM CPU metrics—especiallyCPU Ready (%RDY)—the correct command-line utility on an ESXi host isesxtop. This tool provides real-time, low-level performance data for CPU, memory, disk, and network usage, and is the authoritative method for diagnosing CPU contention issues in VMware environments.

When troubleshootinghigh CPU Ready times, esxtop allows administrators to:

View CPU contention at the VM level

Inspect co-stop, wait, and scheduling delays

Monitor NUMA distribution and pCPU saturation

Capture historical performance snapshots using batch mode

The other options do not provide the necessary VM-level CPU scheduling metrics:

A. vimtop: Only available on vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA), not ESXi; doesnotshow VM CPU ready.

B. esxcli: Used for configuration and health checks; not for real-time CPU metrics.

C. vim-cmd: Used to manage VMs via vSphere API bindings; not a performance monitoring tool.

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.

In VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0, supplemental storage such as NFS is fully supported for workload domains when configured correctly. When an NFS datastore mounts successfully in vSphere but users cannot write data, the issue almost always lies in theexport permissions on the NFS server. vSphere will allow mounting a read-only NFS export, but write operations will fail silently at the VM or guest OS level.

VCF documentation confirms that ESXi requires explicitread/write export permissions, typically configured per-host or by IP subnet, on the NFS server. Even if network connectivity and VM-level access appear healthy, incorrect server-side permissions prevent ESXi from executing write operations.

Option A is incorrect because NFS servers are not validated by the HCL for write capability.

Option B (rebooting the host) is unnecessary and unrelated to permission enforcement.

Option D (MTU mismatch) may cause performance issues, not write-access failures.

Thus, the next troubleshooting step is to verify that the ESXi hosts haveread/write accesson the NFS share, makingCthe correct answer.

Application Monitoring in VCF Operations uses Telegraf agents running inside virtual machines. These agents forward metrics to theCloud Proxy, which then sends them to the Operations analytics cluster. One of the most common reasons an agent stops reporting data—especially exactly24 hoursafter deployment—isclock drift or time mismatchbetween the VM (running the Telegraf agent) and the Cloud Proxy.

VCF Operations enforcesstrict timestamp validation. If the timestamps from the agent are outside the acceptable drift window, the Cloud Proxyrejectsincoming data as invalid. In this case, the Telegraf agents appear installed and functional, but no new metrics are received by the analytics engine.

This is a well-known issue documented in VMware Aria/VCF Operations agent-based monitoring, where:

Agents send metrics with local system time.

Cloud Proxy enforces time validation to prevent corrupt metric ingestion.

A drift >5 minutes commonly results inzero data collectiondespite healthy connectivity.

Options B and C cannot stop data flow after exactly 24 hours; they would preventinitialcollection. Option D (virtual hardware/tools compatibility) affects VM operations butnotTelegraf metric time-stamp validation.

In VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Automation, every Organization requires a properly configured Networking Configuration for each Region in which it operates. This configuration step—performed by the Provider Administrator—creates the NSX Project corresponding to the Organization, enabling Namespace creation, VPC visibility, and workload provisioning.

The error “Failed to list VPC after selecting a region” combined with the absence of an NSX Project in NSX Manager is a direct indicator that the Organization’s Networking Configuration was never initialized. VCF Automation automatically creates the NSX Project only when the Provider Admin completes this step.

Option B is invalid because the Organization Administrator cannot create NSX Projects manually; they are system-generated during networking setup.

Option C is incorrect because role assignment affects administrative permissions, not NSX project creation.

Option D is also incorrect—the Organization Admin cannot create a VPC until the NSX Project exists.

A Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation: When enabling vSphere Supervisor with NSX Classic (using the traditional NSX-T Data Center networking stack rather than the newer NSX VPC mode), the vSphere Workload Management wizard filters the list of available NSX Edge Clusters to ensure they are explicitly designated for use with Kubernetes workloads.

The "WCPReady" Tag Requirement: The primary mechanism vCenter uses to identify a valid, compatible Edge Cluster for Workload Management is a specific tag on the NSX Edge Cluster object. This tag must be WCPReady (case-sensitive).

Symptoms: If this tag is missing—which often happens if the Edge Cluster was created manually in NSX Manager rather than through the SDDC Manager automation—the validation process will fail to find any usable clusters. This results in the specific error message: "No valid edge cluster for VDS [UUID]", or simply an empty list of compatible clusters in the wizard.

Resolution: The administrator must log in to the NSX Manager, navigate to System > Fabric > Nodes > Edge Clusters, select the target cluster, and manually add the tag WCPReady (often with the scope "Created for", though the tag itself is the critical filter).

Why other options are incorrect:

B: Large Edge nodes are actually a requirement for vSphere Supervisor (Small/Medium are typically unsupported for this role), so deploying them as Large would make the cluster compatible, not incompatible.

C: vSphere Supervisor fully supports Distributed Connectivity (connecting directly to the VDS), so Central Connectivity is not a hard requirement causing this specific error.

D: While AVI (NSX Advanced Load Balancer) is a supported load balancer, the "No valid edge cluster" error occurs during the Edge Cluster discovery phase, preceding the load balancer configuration.

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.