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.

Hosts and Clusters

To create avSphere Zone(used as a Supervisor Management Zone and/or Workload Zone), the administrator must start from the vSphere Client inventory wherevCenterand its clusters are managed. That’s why the correct starting point in the “Inventories” toolbar isHosts and Clusters—it is the entry point used to select the vCenter object and the target clusters.

VCF 9.0 documents the zone-creation workflow as:navigate to vCenter, thenSelect Configure, thenselect vSphere Zones, and finally clickAdd New vSphere Zone. After naming the zone, youselect a vSphere cluster to add to the zoneand finish the wizard.

This sequence matches the intent of the hotspot: you must first open the inventory view that exposes vCenter and clusters (Hosts and Clusters), then perform the configuration steps under vCenter to define vSphere Zones. Once created, these zones can later be selected during Supervisor deployment (for multi-zone placement) or assigned to namespaces for workload placement.

Istio is available in VCF 9.0 as an optional package that can be installed for VKS clusters. The VCF 9.0 documentation explicitly lists “Istio” among the optional packages that “can be optionally installed” for the vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS). In Kubernetes platforms, Istio is a service mesh that secures and manages service-to-service (east-west) traffic by establishing authenticated and encrypted connections between workloads. The encryption mechanism it provides for inter-service communication ismutual TLS (mTLS), which means both ends (client and server workloads) authenticate each other and negotiate encrypted transport for every service call—meeting the requirement to “encrypt the transport and communications between services.” This is distinct from host-level mechanisms like IPsec/IKEv2 (network-layer) or “AES-256” (an algorithm, not the service-to-service transport model). Enabling Istio Service Mesh is therefore aligned to deliver encrypted, identity-aware service communications across the cluster at the application service layer.

VCF 9.0 describes a standardized approach to deploying optional capabilities on VKS clusters viastandard packages. In the VCF Automation cloud services overview, VMware listsIstioamong the packages that “can be optionally installed” for VKS. For installing those packages, the VCF CLI provides a dedicatedpackage pluginthat “works on a workload cluster” and exposes explicitinstallworkflows.

The VCF CLI command reference shows the syntax for installing a package:

vcf package install INSTALLED_PACKAGE_NAME --package PACKAGE_NAME --version VERSION (with optional values files and overlays). This is the supported, VCF-aligned way to install standard packages such as Istio onto a VKS workload cluster in a controlled, declarative manner, including tracking reconciliation status and providing configuration via a values file.

Options that rely on ad-hoc downloads (curl) or building tooling (docker build) do not match the documented VCF package-management workflow for VKS standard packages. Therefore, the correct command family isvcf package install.

A ReplicaSet is a core Kubernetes workload controller used in VKS clusters to maintainavailability and steady-state capacityfor stateless applications. Its primary purpose is to ensure that adesired number of identical pod replicasare running continuously. If a pod is deleted, crashes, or is evicted because a node fails, the ReplicaSet detects that the current number of matching pods has dropped below the target and immediately creates replacement pods to restore the requested replica count. Conversely, if too many matching pods exist (for example, due to manual creation or a transient surge), it scales down by deleting excess pods to return to the desired state.

This behavior makes ReplicaSets foundational to reliable, self-healing application operation in Kubernetes and therefore in VKS. In practice, administrators and DevOps teams usually interact with ReplicaSets indirectly through higher-level controllers likeDeployments, which manage rolling updates and revisions while using ReplicaSets underneath to enforce the replica count for each version of an application. Options A, B, and D map to other Kubernetes objects (Service, StatefulSet, and DaemonSet respectively), not ReplicaSet.

VCF 9.0 describes a vSphere Namespace as the control point where administrators defineresource boundariesfor workloads, explicitly stating that vSphere administrators can create namespaces and “configure them with specified amount ofmemory, CPU, and storage,” and that you can “set limits forCPU, memory, storage” for a namespace. This directly supports stepAas a day-2 control to keep multi-tenant clusters governed and prevent resource contention across different teams and workload types.

For monitoring and optimization, VCF 9.0 explains that day-2 operations include visibility into utilization and operational metrics for VKS clusters, noting that application teams can use day-2 actions and gain insights intoCPU and memory utilizationand advanced metrics (including contention and availability) for VKS clusters. In addition, VCF 9.0 monitoring guidance for VKS clusters states thatTelegraf and Prometheusmust be installed and configured on each VKS cluster before metrics and object details are sent for monitoring, and that VCF Operations supports metrics collection for Kubernetes objects (namespaces, nodes, pods, containers) via Prometheus. Since the Prometheus stack commonly includes Grafana dashboards for visualization, deployingPrometheus + Grafanamatches the required monitoring/optimization outcome inC.

cert-manager addresses the operational risk described (manual creation/renewal causing outages) by making certificate lifecycle management anative, declarative Kubernetes workflow. Instead of treating TLS certificates as manually managed files, cert-manager extends the Kubernetes API with custom resources such asCertificate,Issuer, andClusterIssuer, so certificates and their issuing policies become first-class objects that can be version-controlled and automatically reconciled. This directly satisfies the requirement to usetrusted certificates issued through the corporate CA, because an Issuer/ClusterIssuer can represent that corporate CA integration and define how certificate requests are fulfilled. Once configured, cert-manager continuously monitors certificate validity andautomatically renews and rotatescertificates before expiration, then updates the referenced Kubernetes Secrets so Ingress endpoints remain protected without human intervention. In a vSphere Supervisor / VKS environment, VMware also uses cert-manager on the Supervisor for automated certificate rotation in platform integrations (for example, rotating certificates used by monitoring components), reinforcing the model of automated rotation rather than manual certificate handling.