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VMware Cloud Foundation Architect (2V0-13.25) Exam Experience

Introduction

I recently took (and passed) the VMware Cloud Foundation 9 Architect (2V0-13.25) exam, and I wanted to share my exam experience while it’s still fresh. This certification marks an important milestone for anyone working with VMware Cloud Foundation 9 (VCF9) , especially for those moving from operations into architecture and design roles or doing both.

Unlike older exams that focused on configuration and feature recall, this one tests your ability to think like an architect — understanding business goals, interpreting requirements, identifying constraints and risks, and mapping them to the right technical solutions.

My Exam Experience

The exam is scenario-driven, with a strong focus on design reasoning. You’ll be given business or technical cases and asked to decide what type of design or model best fits each situation. Here’s how the content broke down for me:

1. Requirements, Constraints, Assumptions, and Risks

A major portion covered the fundamentals of architectural design.

You’ll see scenarios involving stakeholder interviews, with detailed business requirements, technical requirements, functional and non-functional needs, as well as limitations such as existing hardware or compliance obligations.

Be ready to evaluate:

  • What is a requirement versus a constraint
  • How to handle availability, recovery, and service-level expectations
  • How business objectives translate into design choices

2. AMPRS Design Qualities

The next big section explored the design qualities that influence every VCF architecture — Availability, Manageability, Performance, Recoverability, and Security (AMPRS).

Expect to identify which quality a scenario refers to and how your design decisions affect each.

For example:

  • A question about scaling clusters for monitoring capacity may target Performance or Manageability.
  • A question about tenant isolation may be testing your understanding of Security and Recoverability.

3. VCF Architectural and Consumption Models

You’ll face several scenarios around VCF deployment models, tenancy, and consumption in Aria Automation, Aria Operations, and Aria Operations for Logs.

Be prepared to distinguish:

  • When to use a dedicated VCF instance, dedicated cluster, or shared environment
  • How latency, bandwidth, or data sovereignty affect design decisions
  • How multiple tenants can safely consume shared infrastructure using projects, organisations, and role-based access control

This section also tests your ability to apply governance and compliance principles — such as isolating workloads for regulated industries.

4. Logical vs. Physical vs. Conceptual Designs

A recurring theme was identifying which stage of design you’re in:

  • Conceptual — business goals, outcomes, and high-level requirements
  • Logical — relationships between components, dependencies, and services
  • Physical — actual hardware, NIC configurations, and topology

Example: A question describing storage policies or NIC redundancy is part of a physical design, whereas identifying tenant segmentation models belongs to the logical layer.

5. Product-Specific Topics

Although the exam isn’t product-heavy, expect a handful of questions about any VCF9 component.

Example:

  • Aria Operations: high availability, telemetry agents, and alerting for applications and VMs
  • Aria Automation Load Balancing: design for reliability and scalability
  • vSAN Storage Policies: matching performance tiers and failure-to-tolerate levels to requirements
  • NSX: minimal questions, but understand routing concepts (BGP, T1/T0, Edge HA models)

The key is to understand why you’d select one option over another, not just what each feature does.

Key Takeaways

Here’s what stood out from the experience:

  • The exam tests architectural thinking, not command memorisation.
  • Understanding stakeholder communication and translating it into architecture decisions is critical.
  • Be clear on VCF tenancy and consumption models — especially how Aria integrates across them.
  • Expect to interpret AMPRS scenarios and know which trade-offs align with which quality.
  • A few networking and storage questions appear, but the weight is on design logic and justification.
  • Familiarity with multi-tenant operations, monitoring integration, and recovery models will help you reason faster.

Study Resources

Here are some key materials I recommend to prepare for the exam.

References

Recommended Reading

  • VCF Design & Architecture Overview (core reference for conceptual/logical design)
  • Operations & Automation Integration
  • vSAN Design and Best Practices
  • NSX Design Guide (focusing on Edge Clusters and routing models)

Practice

  • VCF Design Scenarios: simulate stakeholder interviews and AMPRS decisions. Use ChatGPT to emulate
  • Alternatively listen recordings about design, a good example is vBrownBag sessions

Final Thoughts

This exam rewards experience and structured thinking. If you work with VCF deployments, have supported upgrades, or helped customers define architecture standards, you’ll find the scenarios familiar — they simply test how well you can connect each layer of design to a real business outcome.

Passing the VCF 9 Architect certification reinforces the value of hands-on design experience or
comfort level with the knowledge expected for design work if you lack the experience — from discovery sessions to governance and operations.

This exam can definitely be completed without being formally an architect if you aspire to do design work.

If this post helped you prepare for your VCF 9 Architect exam, share it with your peers or tag me on LinkedIn — I’d love to hear your thoughts or your own experience with the certification journey.

Disclaimer: The opinions and insights expressed in this article are solely my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer, Broadcom or VMware. This content is based on personal experience and aims to support the broader IT community in their certification journey. Always review the official documentation and certification guides from Broadcom before taking any exam.

Published on Baking Clouds by Guillermo Ramallo

VMware Cloud Foundation Architect (2V0-13.25) Exam Experience
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