VCP-VCF Architect · Exam 2V0-13.25 · VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0

Exam 2V0-13.25 does not test whether you can build VMware Cloud Foundation. Read its blueprint and all twenty objectives sit in architecture, products and design. The install and troubleshoot sections are marked as having no testable objectives at all. Written design work is what prepares you for it, and this workbook gives you 158 exercises of it, mapped to every objective.

FirstWhat this exam actually is

Facts from the published exam guide, last updated 15 August 2025:

Source: the official exam guide for 2V0-13.25, published by Broadcom. Read it yourself before you book. Everything below is written against the objectives in that document.

SecondHow it differs from the advanced Architect exam

The professional exam and the advanced one, VCAP-VCF Architect 3V0-12.26, both test design and nothing else. Both put twenty objectives in Sections 1 to 3. But they divide them differently, and the difference tells you how to prepare:

Two things stand out. Section 1 is bigger here, and it adds a separate objective for risk mitigation and another that asks you to tell a conceptual model from a logical and a physical design. And the professional exam’s design objectives name the VCF parts outright. Objectives 3.3 and 3.4 each list the same eight areas: prerequisites, fleet topology, network infrastructure, the management domain, workload domains, VCF networking, VCF Automation and VCF Operations. The VCP is a design exam with far more product detail in it.

ThirdWhere the real marks are

Objectives 3.3 and 3.4 are the heaviest in the blueprint, with eight sub-objectives each. That is why sections J to Q take forty-six exercises between them. Each section covers one VCF area at both layers, logical first and then physical, because that is how a real design is written and how the exam separates them.

FourthWhere to put extra time

I passed this exam, and wrote up what it was like. That experience and a close read of the blueprint point to the same four things:

• Almost every option looks correct. Every objective in Section 3 begins “given a scenario”, and in the exam two or three options often look workable. You are picking the one that fits the stated requirement best. Read the requirement, find the constraint, eliminate the weaker options.
• Networking runs through everything. Network infrastructure and VCF networking are two of the eight areas named in both 3.3 and 3.4, and most availability and security decisions depend on them. Sections L and O.
• Lifecycle, workload domains, availability and recovery each have their own objective or sub-objective. Sections N, R, S and U.
• Containers are a real share of it. Supporting modern applications is a named sub-objective of 3.11, and when I sat it at least five to seven questions touched Kubernetes, the Supervisor and containers. Exercises 144 to 146.

FifthHow to practise a design exam

• Re-document a design you already built. Extract the requirements, then write the design properly: conceptual, logical, physical, every decision justified and traced. You will find decisions you cannot defend. That is the point.
• Work from one-page briefs. The exam gives you a scenario and asks for the design decision that fits it. Practise pulling numbered requirements out of prose until it is quick.
• Write under a clock. Section Z is a full design in timed pieces, the closest thing to exam pressure.

Workbook158 exercises, in design order

Sections A to G build the vocabulary of Section 1. Section H is the single Section 2 objective. Sections I to Y walk Section 3: discovery and the conceptual model, then logical and physical design across each VCF area, then each quality objective, then migration, consumption and monitoring. Section Z is a full design against the clock. Numbers in grey at the right are the objectives.

Every exercise produces something written. If you finish one with nothing on paper, you have not done it.

The first objective, and the distinction every later one depends on.

1. 1Take a real project you worked on and write ten statements the customer actually made, in their words.1.1›
2. 2Classify each of the ten as a business requirement or a technical requirement, and defend the ones you found hard to place.1.1›
3. 3Write the one-line test you used to decide, so you can apply it in seconds under exam pressure.1.1›
4. 4Find a statement that sounds like a requirement but is really a solution, and rewrite it as the need behind it.1.1›
5. 5Write a requirement that cannot be measured, then rewrite it so it can be verified.1.1›

Three layers that the exam expects you to tell apart from a single sentence.

1. 6Write one sentence defining each of the three layers, and what each one deliberately leaves out.1.2›
2. 7Take one component, the network, and describe it at all three layers.1.2›
3. 8Sort twenty design statements into conceptual, logical or physical, and note any that sit on a boundary.1.2›
4. 9Find a logical design statement that names a product or a number, and move the detail to where it belongs.1.2›
5. 10Write why a conceptual model contains no product names, and what goes wrong when it does.1.2›

Plus dependencies, which the candidate profile names alongside them.

1. 11Classify your ten statements as requirement, assumption, constraint or risk. Several will move from section A.1.3›
2. 12Write the one-line test for each of the four.1.3›
3. 13Take three constraints and write what each one removes from the design space.1.3›
4. 14Take three assumptions and write what happens to the design if each proves false.1.3›
5. 15List the dependencies in a VCF design that sit outside your control, such as DNS, NTP and the physical network, and who owns each.1.3›
6. 16Find a statement in your list that is two things at once, and split it.1.3›

Availability, manageability, performance, recoverability and security. The vocabulary the whole exam is written in.

1. 17Define each of the five qualities in one sentence, without using the word itself.1.4›
2. 18Classify twenty requirements from a scenario against the five, and note any that belong to none.1.4›
3. 19Write what separates availability from recoverability, with a design that has one and not the other.1.4›
4. 20Take one design decision and write its effect on all five qualities, including the ones it harms.1.4›
5. 21Find two qualities that conflict in a real design, and write how you resolved it.1.4›

Not just naming risks: deciding what to do about each and who owns it.

1. 22Write the four responses to a risk: avoid, mitigate, transfer, accept. Give a VCF example of each.1.5›
2. 23Take five risks from a VCF design and score each for impact and likelihood.1.5›
3. 24Write a mitigation for each, with an owner and the trigger that tells you the risk has occurred.1.5›
4. 25Convert an unprovable assumption into a risk, and write its mitigation.1.5›
5. 26Produce a one-page risk register for a small VCF design, ready to review at a design gate.1.5›

The skill the exam tests most often, in every section, from every angle.

1. 27Write a design decision in a fixed structure: decision, justification, implication, and the requirement it serves.1.6›
2. 28Take ten decisions from a past design and rewrite them all in that structure.1.6›
3. 29Trace each decision back to a requirement, constraint or assumption. Delete any that trace to nothing.1.6›
4. 30Write the implications of three decisions, including what each rules out later.1.6›
5. 31Write a decision whose implication creates a new risk, and record the risk.1.6›
6. 32Write the alternative you rejected for one decision, and why.1.6›

How you prove the design meets the requirements before anyone builds it.

1. 33Write what a design validation strategy contains and who it is for.1.7›
2. 34Take ten requirements and write the test that proves each one is met.1.7›
3. 35Separate the checks you can make on paper from the ones that need the built platform.1.7›
4. 36Write the entry and exit criteria for validation, so done has an agreed meaning.1.7›
5. 37Produce a requirement to test traceability matrix for a small design.1.7›

Section 2 is a single objective: given a scenario, pick the architecture. Build the comparison before you need it.

1. 38Write what a VCF fleet, a VCF instance and a domain are in VCF 9.0, and how they nest.2.1›
2. 39Write which components sit at fleet level and which sit inside every instance.2.1›
3. 40Write the difference between a consolidated and a standard architecture, and the point at which you move from one to the other.2.1›
4. 41Given a single site with 150 workloads and a small team, choose an architecture and justify it in three sentences.2.1›
5. 42Given two regions with a data residency requirement, choose an architecture and justify it.2.1›
6. 43Write the paths into VCF 9.0: a new deployment, converging an existing vSphere estate, and importing one. Say when each fits.2.1›
7. 44Write when a second VCF instance is the right answer and when another workload domain is.2.1›
8. 45Write what changes if a second site is added later rather than planned from the start.2.1›

Section 3 begins here. Everything downstream is only as good as this.

1. 46Write the ten questions you would ask in a first discovery workshop, in order.3.1›
2. 47Take a one-page customer brief and extract every requirement from it, numbered.3.1›
3. 48Write what the brief does not say that you must ask before designing.3.1›
4. 49Write the business objectives behind the requirements, in the customer language rather than yours.3.1›
5. 50Prioritise the requirements as must, should and could, and record who agreed it.3.1›
6. 51Produce a conceptual model for the brief: entities, relationships and the qualities each needs.3.2›
7. 52Map every business objective to an element of the conceptual model.3.2›
8. 53Write the questions the conceptual model raises that the logical design must answer.3.2›

The first sub-objective of both 3.3 and 3.4. Most failed bring-ups are a prerequisite somebody missed.

1. 54List every prerequisite for a VCF 9.0 deployment: DNS, NTP, networks, hosts, licences, software depot.3.3›
2. 55Write the DNS records a management domain needs, forward and reverse, and who will create them.3.4›
3. 56Write the networks and address ranges bring-up needs, with VLAN, subnet, gateway and MTU for each.3.4›
4. 57Write how you confirm the hosts are supported before you order them.3.4›
5. 58Given a scenario where one prerequisite cannot be met on time, write the decision and the risk.3.3›

Logical first, then physical: how many instances, where, and what is shared.

1. 59Draw the logical fleet topology for a single-site customer.3.3›
2. 60Draw the logical fleet topology for a customer with two regions and a third, smaller site.3.3›
3. 61Write which fleet-level components you deploy once and where they live.3.3›
4. 62Write the physical placement of the fleet-level components: which instance, which cluster, which site.3.4›
5. 63Write what the fleet loses if the site hosting the fleet-level components is lost.3.4›
6. 64Write the design decisions for single sign-on across the fleet, and where the identity source lives.3.3›

The physical network VCF sits on. Outside your platform, inside your design.

1. 65Write the logical network infrastructure: which traffic types exist and which must be separated.3.3›
2. 66Decide where the layer 3 boundary sits, at the top of the rack or above it, and justify it.3.3›
3. 67Write the physical design: switches per rack, uplinks per host, and how a switch failure is survived.3.4›
4. 68Write the MTU requirement for every network and where it must be set end to end.3.4›
5. 69Write the VLAN and subnet plan for one management domain and one workload domain.3.4›
6. 70Write the routing design between the edges and the physical network, and who configures the physical side.3.4›

The domain that runs everything else, so it is sized and protected before anything else.

1. 71Write what runs in the management domain in VCF 9.0, appliance by appliance.3.3›
2. 72Write the decision on whether the management domain also runs workloads, against a scenario.3.3›
3. 73Size the management domain: appliance sizes, total resources, and host count with spare capacity shown.3.4›
4. 74Write the storage design for the management domain and why.3.4›
5. 75Write what grows the management domain as the estate grows, and when you would add hosts to it.3.4›
6. 76Write the availability design for the management components themselves.3.3›

When to separate, when to add a cluster, and what each choice costs.

1. 77Write the reasons that justify a new workload domain, and the reasons that only justify a new cluster.3.3›
2. 78Given three customer workload groups, decide how many workload domains you need and justify it.3.3›
3. 79Write the decision on a shared or a dedicated NSX Manager for a workload domain.3.3›
4. 80Size one workload domain: hosts per cluster, cluster count, and the calculation behind it.3.4›
5. 81Write the principal storage choice for a workload domain, vSAN or external, and the reason.3.4›
6. 82Write the decision for a workload domain that needs GPU hosts, and what it changes.3.4›

NSX design. Expect more of these items than you think: networking runs through every scenario.

1. 83Write the logical NSX design for one instance: edge cluster, Tier-0, Tier-1 and segments.3.3›
2. 84Decide between active-active and active-standby for the Tier-0 gateway, against a scenario with stateful services.3.3›
3. 85Write when virtual private clouds suit the design better than segments created by the platform team.3.3›
4. 86Size the edge cluster: node count, node size, and the reason for each.3.4›
5. 87Write the physical placement of the edges, and what happens when an edge host fails.3.4›
6. 88Write the east-west security design using the distributed firewall.3.3›
7. 89Write the decision on load balancing: which load balancer and why.3.4›

Logical and physical design for the consumption layer.

1. 90Write the logical VCF Automation design: provider, organizations, regions and projects.3.3›
2. 91Decide between All Apps and VM Apps organizations for a scenario, and justify it.3.3›
3. 92Write the deployment model you choose, single node or highly available, and its cost in the management domain.3.4›
4. 93Write which vCenters and clusters each region exposes, and why.3.4›
5. 94Write what happens to consumers when VCF Automation is unavailable, and whether that is acceptable.3.3›

Logical and physical design for the operations layer.

1. 95Write the logical VCF Operations design: what it monitors, manages and reports on across the fleet.3.3›
2. 96Size VCF Operations for a stated number of objects, with node count and size.3.4›
3. 97Write where collectors go in a multi-site design, and why they sit close to what they collect.3.4›
4. 98Write the decision on VCF Operations for logs: retention, sizing and placement.3.4›
5. 99Write when VCF Operations for networks is needed, and what it adds.3.3›

Two sub-objectives: availability within one availability zone, and across zones.

1. 100Write the availability requirement as a number, and state what it is measured against.3.5›
2. 101Design cluster sizing and HA admission control to survive a host failure, with the capacity cost shown.3.5›
3. 102Design vSAN fault domains to survive the loss of a rack inside one zone.3.5›
4. 103Write when a stretched cluster is the right answer and when it is not.3.5›
5. 104Design a stretched cluster across two zones: the witness, the storage policy, and the network between them.3.5›
6. 105Design availability for the management domain across zones, not only for workloads.3.5›
7. 106Write the single points of failure left in your design, and whether each is accepted or mitigated.3.5›
8. 107Write what your design does when a whole zone is lost, step by step.3.5›

Three sub-objectives: lifecycle, scalability and capacity management.

1. 108Write the lifecycle approach: what is upgraded by which tool, and in what order across the fleet.3.6›
2. 109Write the decision on cluster images and how hardware firmware is kept in step.3.6›
3. 110Write the maintenance window design, including what is disrupted during an upgrade.3.6›
4. 111Write the units the design grows in, hosts, clusters, domains or instances, and the trigger for each.3.6›
5. 112Check your design against published maximums and record where you are closest to one.3.6›
6. 113Design capacity management: what is forecast, the headroom kept, and the lead time it must give.3.6›
7. 114Write the manageability cost of three decisions you have made elsewhere in the design.3.6›

One sub-objective, examined through scenarios. Numbers, and the evidence behind them.

1. 115Write the performance requirements in a scenario as measurable figures, not adjectives.3.7›
2. 116Size compute for them, stating the consolidation ratio you assumed and why.3.7›
3. 117Design storage to meet a stated latency requirement, and write which choice made the difference.3.7›
4. 118Design the network for a stated throughput requirement, including east-west traffic.3.7›
5. 119Write the first bottleneck the design would hit under growth, and when.3.7›

Business continuity and disaster recovery, for management components and workloads separately.

1. 120Write the difference between business continuity and disaster recovery, in one sentence each.3.8›
2. 121Write the recovery strategy for management components and the one for workloads, and why they differ.3.8›
3. 122Design file-based backup for the management components: what, where, how often and how long kept.3.8›
4. 123Write the restore order for the management components after a total loss.3.8›
5. 124Write recovery point and recovery time objectives per workload tier, as numbers.3.8›
6. 125Design workload disaster recovery between sites to meet those numbers.3.8›
7. 126Write how and how often recovery is tested.3.8›

One sub-objective with two halves: management components and workloads.

1. 127Extract the security and compliance requirements from a scenario, including those implied by the industry.3.9›
2. 128Design access to the management components: identity source, roles, and who may do what.3.9›
3. 129Design certificate management across the fleet, including renewal.3.9›
4. 130Design workload segmentation with the distributed firewall, and say where each rule is enforced.3.9›
5. 131Design encryption: what is encrypted at rest and in transit, and where the keys live.3.9›
6. 132Write the residual security risks and who accepted them.3.9›

Getting the existing estate into VCF, which the scenario almost always contains.

1. 133Write the migration options into VCF 9.0 and when each fits: converge, import, HCX, cold migration.3.10›
2. 134Given an existing vSphere estate, decide between bringing it under VCF and migrating off it.3.10›
3. 135Group a set of workloads into migration waves by dependency.3.10›
4. 136Write the network decision: extend layer 2 during migration, or re-address.3.10›
5. 137Write the rollback plan for one wave.3.10›
6. 138Write the onboarding step that makes migrated workloads visible to automation and operations.3.10›

Four sub-objectives: tenant design, self-service and governance, automating infrastructure, modern applications.

1. 139Write who consumes the platform and in what units: virtual machines, namespaces, applications.3.11›
2. 140Design the tenant model: organizations, projects, and the boundary between tenants.3.11›
3. 141Design the self-service catalogue and what consumers may and may not change.3.11›
4. 142Design quotas, approvals and the policy when a quota is exhausted.3.11›
5. 143Write the decision on automating infrastructure components through APIs and infrastructure as code, and who owns the code.3.11›
6. 144Design for modern applications: Supervisor, namespaces and VKS clusters per team.3.11›
7. 145Write the decision on Supervisor networking and load balancing for a scenario.3.11›
8. 146Design a Supervisor that survives the loss of a zone, and what it needs.3.11›

The last objective: management components and workloads, as two separate designs.

1. 147Write what monitoring must answer for the management components, and for whom.3.12›
2. 148Design what is collected from the management components, at what interval, and how long it is kept.3.12›
3. 149Design monitoring for workloads: performance, capacity and the owner who sees it.3.12›
4. 150Design alerting: which conditions page someone, which raise a ticket, and which only inform.3.12›
5. 151Write how monitoring proves each AMPRS quality is met in production.3.12›

Do this section twice in the final week, from a scenario you have not seen before.

1. 152From a one-page brief, extract and number every requirement, assumption, constraint, risk and dependency. 20 minutes.1.3›
2. 153Produce the conceptual model. 15 minutes.3.2›
3. 154Choose the architecture and draw the fleet topology. 15 minutes.2.1›
4. 155Write the logical design: management domain, workload domains, networking, Automation, Operations. 30 minutes.3.3›
5. 156Write the physical design with sizing shown. 30 minutes.3.4›
6. 157Write the availability, recoverability and security design. 30 minutes.3.5›
7. 158Write fifteen design decisions with justification and implication, and present them to someone who will challenge them.1.6›

How to use itFour weeks, if that is what you have

When an item asks for the best answer, it is testing whether you know which requirement wins. Go back to the requirements, find the highest priority one the options affect, and answer against that. Read the requirements twice and the options once.

Exam details are from the published Broadcom exam guide for 2V0-13.25, last updated 15 August 2025, and were checked on 5 October 2026. Broadcom revises blueprints regularly, so confirm the current version before you book. Exercises here are my own, written from the published objectives; they are not exam content.