VMware 2V0-15.25 Exam Dumps

In vSphere 7+ and VCF-managed clusters, the vSphere Cluster Services (vCLS) VMs must remain powered on for DRS, cluster health, and policy enforcement to function. If the vCLS VMs cannot power on, no workloads---including new VMs---can be deployed to the cluster because vSphere considers the cluster unhealthy.

A common cause is insufficient resources (CPU/memory), datastore issues, or policy conflicts preventing vCLS VMs from starting. VMware provides Retreat Mode as a troubleshooting mechanism to temporarily disable vCLS, allowing the administrator to deploy VMs and correct underlying issues. Enabling retreat mode:

Removes vCLS from the cluster

Restores ability to deploy VMs

Allows remediation of storage/placement issues

Can later be disabled to restore DRS health

Option A (deleting resource pools) does not restore vCLS VM power state. Option B (disabling HA) does not affect vCLS behavior. Option D (setting DRS automation level) does not correct vCLS placement problems.

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 in DER, 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 issues only after the certificate file is successfully parsed. The error described indicates the file itself cannot be parsed, which directly points to encoding.

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

vDefend -- Distributed Firewall is a security capability delivered by NSX within VMware Cloud Foundation. Although VCF components such as SDDC Manager, VCF Operations, and VCF Automation rely on licensing frameworks, the enforcement and activation of NSX features---including Distributed Firewall---occur entirely within NSX Manager.

To enable vDefend (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 installed directly 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.

When VMware Cloud Foundation Operations performs actions on vCenter---such as powering on or off a VM---the tasks are initiated through an integration service account, not the identity of the user logged into the VCF Operations UI. VCF Operations connects to vCenter using a configured collector or integration credential, typically a service account defined during initial setup.

VCF documentation clarifies that all automated or orchestrated tasks originating from VCF Operations use this trusted account to ensure consistent auditing, RBAC enforcement, and operational isolation from user identities. Therefore, in the vCenter task pane, the ''Initiated By'' field always reflects the VCF Operations vCenter service account, even if the end-user triggered the action indirectly.

Option A is incorrect because the logged-in user does not directly interface with vCenter. Option C refers to SDDC Manager's integration account, which is unrelated to VCF Operations workflows. Option D (administrator@vsphere.local) appears only when vCenter's built-in admin performs the action.

vSphere High Availability (HA) depends on the FDM 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 the vmware-fdm VIB on 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 a missing 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 disabled ESXi 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 correctly Admission Control errors affect VM failover capacity, not the ability to start FDM services.

D. HA startup policy not configured correctly There is no per-host HA startup policy that prevents FDM from starting.