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1V07121 AppMod Associate (1V0-71.21)
VMware Certified Technical Associate – Application Modernization (1V0-71.21) teaches core concepts of modernizing workloads, Kubernetes architecture, Tanzu platforms, cloud‑native design patterns, and Spring/DevOps fundamentals, enabling practitioners to build and manage containerized applications efficiently.
135
Minutes
51
Questions
300/500
Passing Score
$250
Exam Cost
Who Should Take This
IT professionals, developers, and system administrators who are new to cloud‑native technologies benefit from this certification. It targets individuals with foundational Linux or virtualization experience seeking to validate skills in Kubernetes, VMware Tanzu, and modern application pipelines. By passing the exam, they demonstrate readiness to support digital transformation initiatives within enterprise environments.
What's Covered
1
Domain 1: Modernization Concepts
2
Domain 2: Kubernetes Architecture
3
Domain 3: VMware Tanzu
4
Domain 4: Cloud-Native Patterns
5
Domain 5: Spring and DevOps
6
Domain 6: Kubernetes Operations and Security
7
Domain 7: Platform Engineering and Operations
What's Included in AccelaStudy® AI
Adaptive Knowledge Graph
Practice Questions
Lesson Modules
Console Simulator Labs
Exam Tips & Strategy
20 Activity Formats
Course Outline
62 learning goals
1
Domain 1: Modernization Concepts
2 topics
Strategies and Patterns
- Identify modernization approaches: rehost, replatform, refactor, rebuild, and replace and describe the cost/benefit tradeoffs of each.
- Describe cloud-native application characteristics: microservices, containerization, dynamic orchestration, declarative APIs, and immutable infrastructure.
- Explain the twelve-factor app methodology guiding cloud-native development: config externalization, statelessness, disposability, and port binding.
- Analyze a legacy application and determine the most appropriate modernization strategy based on business value, complexity, and risk.
Container Fundamentals
- Identify container concepts: images, registries, runtimes (containerd, CRI-O), namespaces, cgroups, and how containers differ from VMs.
- Describe how container images are built via Dockerfiles or Cloud Native Buildpacks with layered filesystems stored in OCI-compliant registries.
- Explain container networking (CNI), storage volumes, resource requests/limits, and namespace isolation for containerized workloads.
- Differentiate standalone container runtimes from orchestration platforms and identify when Kubernetes orchestration becomes necessary.
- Analyze a containerization scenario and determine appropriate image build strategy, registry choice, and resource limit configuration.
2
Domain 2: Kubernetes Architecture
2 topics
Control Plane
- Identify K8s control plane components: API server, etcd, scheduler, controller manager, and cloud controller manager.
- Describe the API server's role in authentication, admission control, persistence to etcd, and serving the reconciliation loop.
- Explain how worker nodes run pods via kubelet, manage networking via kube-proxy, and provide container runtime via containerd.
- Analyze a cluster health issue and identify whether the API server, scheduler, etcd, or node kubelet is the failing component.
Workloads and Services
- Identify workload resources: Pods, ReplicaSets, Deployments, StatefulSets, DaemonSets, Jobs, and CronJobs.
- Describe Deployments managing rolling updates, rollback history, replica scaling, and pod template revisions for stateless applications.
- Explain Services (ClusterIP, NodePort, LoadBalancer) and Ingress controllers for routing external traffic to application pods.
- Configure a Deployment with resource requests/limits, readiness/liveness probes, and a LoadBalancer Service for external access.
- Analyze a workload failure and determine whether image pull errors, quota exhaustion, probe misconfiguration, or scheduling constraints are the cause.
3
Domain 3: VMware Tanzu
2 topics
Tanzu Kubernetes Grid
- Identify TKG as a Kubernetes runtime deploying conformant clusters on vSphere, AWS, and Azure using the Cluster API lifecycle model.
- Describe TKG management and workload cluster architecture and the Cluster API reconciliation loop for declarative cluster lifecycle.
- Explain vSphere with Tanzu (Supervisor cluster) enabling native Kubernetes on vSphere through vSphere Pods and TKG service clusters.
- Explain TKG package integration: Harbor registry, Contour ingress, Fluent Bit logging, Prometheus monitoring, and Cert Manager.
- Analyze a deployment scenario and determine whether TKG standalone, vSphere with Tanzu, or managed K8s (EKS/AKS/GKE) is appropriate.
Tanzu Application Platform and Mission Control
- Identify TAP as a developer platform providing supply chain automation, developer workloads, service bindings, and application accelerators.
- Describe TAP supply chains automating source-to-URL through build, test, scan, and deploy stages using Cartographer choreography.
- Explain Tanzu Mission Control for centralized multi-cluster lifecycle management, policy enforcement, and data protection.
- Analyze a multi-cluster governance scenario and determine appropriate TMC cluster groups, workspace policies, and access controls.
4
Domain 4: Cloud-Native Patterns
2 topics
Microservices
- Identify microservices characteristics: service autonomy, bounded contexts, independent deployment, polyglot persistence, and API-first design.
- Describe communication patterns: synchronous REST/gRPC and asynchronous messaging via event buses, message queues, and event sourcing.
- Explain resilience patterns: circuit breakers (Resilience4j), retries with exponential backoff, timeouts, bulkheads, and fallback methods.
- Analyze a microservices architecture identifying appropriate service boundaries, communication patterns, and failure isolation strategies.
Observability and Service Mesh
- Identify observability pillars: metrics (Prometheus), logs (Fluentd/Fluent Bit), and distributed traces (OpenTelemetry/Jaeger/Zipkin).
- Describe service mesh (Istio/Envoy, Tanzu Service Mesh) providing traffic management, mutual TLS, observability, and policy enforcement.
- Explain distributed tracing propagating context across service boundaries for end-to-end latency visibility in complex microservice call graphs.
- Analyze a performance issue using traces, metrics, and logs to identify the failing microservice, bottleneck, and root cause.
5
Domain 5: Spring and DevOps
2 topics
Spring Boot
- Identify Spring Boot as an opinionated Java framework with auto-configuration, starter dependencies, embedded servers, and actuator endpoints.
- Describe Spring Boot features: dependency injection, externalized configuration (application.yml), profiles, actuator health/metrics/info endpoints.
- Explain containerizing Spring Boot apps using Cloud Native Buildpacks or multi-stage Dockerfiles for Kubernetes deployment.
- Configure Spring Boot with K8s-compatible health probes, graceful shutdown, ConfigMap externalization, and HPA-compatible metrics.
- Analyze a Spring Boot deployment and recommend containerization strategy, configuration management, and scaling approach for K8s.
CI/CD and GitOps
- Identify CI/CD stages: source, build, unit test, integration test, security scan, artifact publish, and deploy with rollback capability.
- Describe GitOps using Git as the single source of truth with reconciliation controllers (ArgoCD, Flux) for declarative deployments.
- Explain supply chain security: container image scanning, SBOM generation, signing (Cosign/Sigstore), and admission policy enforcement.
- Analyze a CI/CD pipeline and recommend stages, security gates, and deployment strategies (blue-green, canary, rolling) for cloud-native apps.
6
Domain 6: Kubernetes Operations and Security
2 topics
Cluster Operations
- Identify operational tasks: cluster upgrades, node scaling, etcd backup/restore, certificate rotation, and OS patching.
- Describe namespaces, ResourceQuotas, and LimitRanges for multi-tenant isolation and resource governance in shared clusters.
- Explain persistent storage management via StorageClasses, PersistentVolumeClaims, and CSI drivers for stateful workloads.
- Configure Helm charts for repeatable application deployments with templated values, release management, and chart repository integration.
- Analyze a cluster capacity and multi-tenancy scenario recommending namespace structure, quotas, and storage class configuration.
Kubernetes Security
- Identify K8s security primitives: RBAC, ServiceAccounts, NetworkPolicies, PodSecurity standards, Secrets, and admission controllers.
- Describe RBAC with Roles, ClusterRoles, RoleBindings, and ClusterRoleBindings controlling least-privilege Kubernetes API access.
- Explain NetworkPolicies restricting pod-to-pod communication based on label selectors, namespaces, and CIDR blocks for micro-segmentation.
- Explain PodSecurity admission levels (baseline, restricted, privileged) preventing containers from running with dangerous host privileges.
- Analyze a security scenario determining appropriate RBAC, NetworkPolicy, PodSecurity, and Secrets configuration for workload isolation.
7
Domain 7: Platform Engineering and Operations
2 topics
Developer Experience
- Identify developer self-service capabilities: namespace provisioning, catalog-based cluster creation, and IDE-integrated Kubernetes tooling.
- Describe how Tanzu Application Platform accelerators provide project templates, starter code, and best-practice scaffolding for cloud-native development.
- Explain how service bindings connect applications to backing services (databases, message queues, caches) using the Kubernetes Service Binding specification.
- Analyze a developer productivity scenario and recommend the appropriate platform engineering configuration for self-service Kubernetes access.
Day-2 Kubernetes Operations
- Identify day-2 K8s operational concerns: cluster upgrades, node OS patching, certificate rotation, etcd backup, and monitoring stack maintenance.
- Describe how Tanzu Kubernetes Grid automates cluster upgrades through rolling node replacement and control plane version bumps via Cluster API.
- Explain how Velero provides Kubernetes backup and restore including namespace-scoped backups, schedule policies, and cross-cluster migration.
- Analyze a cluster lifecycle scenario and recommend appropriate upgrade strategy, backup frequency, and monitoring configuration.
Scope
Included Topics
- Application modernization concepts, containers, Kubernetes fundamentals, VMware Tanzu portfolio (TKG, TAP, TMC), microservices, Spring Boot, CI/CD, and cloud-native observability aligned to VCTA-AM.
- Container images, registries, pods, deployments, services, ingress, storage, RBAC, namespaces, Helm, and GitOps fundamentals.
Not Covered
- Advanced K8s operator development, custom CRDs, and service mesh configuration at VCP/Specialist depth.
- Spring Framework internals and reactive programming.
- Specific CI/CD platform configurations beyond concepts.
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