NCP-EUC Nutanix Certified Professional - End User Computing (NCP-EUC) 6.10 Exam Question and Answers

https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/solutions/details?targetId=TN-2041-Nutanix-Files:file-server-virtual-machines.html

https://next.nutanix.com/files-storage-71/command-line-access-to-nutanix-file-server-vm-fsvm-via-ssh-nutanix-files-33420

The file server VM (FSVM) is a virtual machine that runs on Nutanix Files and provides file services such as SMB shares and NFS exports. The FSVM is based on CentOS and incorporates all the security and hardening that goes into the Nutanix Controller VM (CVM)2. The CVM is a virtual machine that runs on each node of a Nutanix cluster and provides storage management, data protection, cluster coordination, and other services3.

The FSVMs have some default configuration settings that can be changed depending on your workload requirements. For example, you can change the number of vCPUs, RAM, network interfaces, or disk size of an FSVM2. However, you should not change these settings without consulting Nutanix Support first.

One of the factors that affects the performance of an FSVM is its memory allocation. The more memory an FSVM has, the more cache it can use for file operations. This can improve the throughput and latency of file serving workloads4. Therefore, increasing the FSVM RAM to 96GB can help optimize its performance for a large number of users.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract of Nutanix End User Computing documents:

According to Nutanix Storage Best Practices for Citrix/VDI:

Workload Type: The question specifies Persistent VDI, which typically uses Full Clones.

Deduplication: For Full Clones/Persistent Desktops, the data (OS and Apps) is identical across many VMs but stored independently. Deduplication (specifically Capacity Tier Deduplication) is Enabled to eliminate these redundant blocks and save significant capacity.

Compression: Inline Compression is Enabled by default and recommended for all VDI workloads to improve performance and capacity usage.

Erasure Coding (EC-X): Nutanix documentation explicitly states that Erasure Coding is Disabled for active VDI workloads. EC-X provides capacity savings for "write-cold" data (like backups or archives) but introduces a performance penalty (parity calculation overhead) on random writes, which are common in persistent desktop usage.

Correction: While option D suggests enabling everything, the specific best practice table for "Citrix MCS: Full Clone" lists Erasure Coding as Disabled to maintain optimal user experience.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract of Nutanix End User Computing documents:

According to Nutanix and Citrix Desktop Delivery Models:

Requirement Analysis: The goal is to replace a physical desktop while minimizing Application Compatibility concerns.

Why Persistent VDI? Persistent VDI (often Full Clones) provides a 1:1 user-to-VM mapping where the user's data, profile, and installed applications persist across reboots, exactly mimicking a physical PC. This offers the highest application compatibility because apps that require local installation, hard-coded paths, or local licensing work without the complex layering or virtualization required in non-persistent setups.

Comparison:

Non-Persistent VDI (C): often requires "App Layering" or complex image management for incompatible apps, increasing overhead for difficult applications.

Hosted Shared (B): (RDS) has the lowest app compatibility due to multi-user OS limitations.

When provisioning automated pools (Instant Clones or Linked Clones) in Omnissa Horizon (formerly VMware Horizon), the domain join operation is performed by a specified service account. If this process fails automatically but works manually with an administrator's account, it indicates a permissions issue for that service account, not a general network or DNS failure.

The service account does not require high-level privileges like Domain Admin or Schema Admin. Instead, it requires specific delegated permissions on the Target Organizational Unit (OU) where the new computer objects are created. These permissions include "Create Computer Objects," "Delete Computer Objects," "Write All Properties," and "Reset Password." If these delegations are missing, the automated domain join will fail.

According to the Nutanix Security Guide, Cluster Lockdown is the specific security feature designed to restrict access to the cluster by disabling password-based authentication. When Cluster Lockdown is enabled, the cluster allows access only via SSH keys (RSA keys).

To meet the requirement of allowing access from "selected workstations" while "disallowing password access," the administrator must use Cluster Lockdown. By generating an SSH key pair and configuring the public key within the Cluster Lockdown settings (and removing the "Enable Remote Login with Password" option), the administrator ensures that only workstations possessing the corresponding private key can authenticate. This effectively restricts access to the specific workstations holding the keys and eliminates the risk associated with password-based logins. While IP restrictions (Option B/C) can limit the source addresses, they do not inherently disable password authentication, which is the primary requirement of the question.

Citrix NetScaler VPX is a virtual appliance that provides web and application load balancing, secure and remote access, acceleration, security and offload features1. To set up and configure a Citrix NetScaler VPX appliance, you need to download it from the Citrix website, install it on a hypervisor such as Citrix XenServer or Microsoft Azure23, and log on to the console using the nsroot credentials2.

To expose the Citrix NetScaler VPX private VIP to the internet in order for users to be able to access the Citrix VDI desktops upon a DR failover, one possible solution is to use a floating IP address. A floating IP address is an IP address that can be dynamically assigned to an instance by using API calls. It allows you to redirect network traffic from one instance to another without changing any DNS settings or client configuration.

Users may expect some level of personalization and consistency across their virtual desktop sessions, even if they do not save any changes1. To customize this user experience, administrators can use different solutions that manage user profiles and settings1.

Deduplication is a process that eliminates duplicate data blocks and reduces the amount of storage space required for virtual desktops. Deduplication can be enabled at both cluster level and container level on Nutanix.

Deduplication can also work with VCAI (View Composer Array Integration), which is a feature that uses Nutanix native NFS snapshot technology to clone VMs2. VCAI can improve performance and reduce storage consumption for linked-clone desktop pools.

Another feature that can help with capacity issue is Shadow Clones, which is a distributed caching mechanism that allows multiple VMs to read from a single vDisk copy stored locally on each node3. Shadow Clones can reduce network traffic and improve boot times for virtual desktops.

https://www.nutanix.com/support-services/training-certification/certifications/certification-details-nutanix-certified-professional-ncp-euc-v6

Nutanix Prism Central includes Behavioral Learning and Efficiency reporting tools designed to identify inefficient resource usage.7

To verify if VMs are "using less than their configured memory" (wasted resources), the administrator should view the Over-provisioned VMs list within the Efficiency widget. Nutanix defines an "Over-provisioned VM" as one that is sized with more resources (CPU/Memory) than it actually consumes based on historical performance data.8 This list explicitly identifies these VMs, allowing the administrator to right-size them and reclaim cluster resources, whereas Task Manager (Option A) is manual/individual, and Capacity Runway (Option D) focuses on global cluster storage/resource exhaustion time rather than individual VM efficiency.

According to Nutanix Support & Insights3, you need to install the Nutanix AHV plugin for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops on Delivery Controllers (also called the MCS plugin SDK) to create and manage Citrix-provisioned VMs in a Nutanix AHV infrastructure environment. 

one of the possible Nutanix storage efficiency features that the administrator can use for this solution is Deduplication. Deduplication is a technology that eliminates duplicate blocks of data and reduces storage consumption. Deduplication can be enabled on a per-container basis and can provide significant savings for Citrix virtual desktop deployments that use cloning technologies such as Machine Creation Services (MCS) or Provisioning Services (PVS)1.

When using Nutanix IPAM (Managed Network) for DHCP, the built-in DHCP service has limitations regarding UEFI PXE boot support (specifically regarding the dynamic delivery of architecture-specific boot files like bootx64.efi vs undionly.kpxe).

To successfully provision UEFI VMs in this scenario—particularly for Citrix Provisioning Services (PVS)—the BDM (Boot Device Manager) ISO (referred to here as SDM boot ISO due to common industry acronym variance in exam banks) is required. The BDM ISO allows the VM to boot directly from a virtual CD-ROM that contains the bootstrap information needed to contact the provisioning server, bypassing the limitations of the IPAM PXE implementation for UEFI workloads.

one of the possible ways to optimize the virtual desktop environment is to verify if VAAI plugin is running. VAAI (vStorage APIs for Array Integration) is a technology that enables VMware ESXi hosts to offload storage operations to Nutanix storage controllers. This can improve performance and efficiency of cloning, migrating, and snapshotting virtual machines234.

non-persistent VDI is a type of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) that does not save any changes made by the user on the virtual machine (VM) across sessions. Non-persistent VDI uses a master image to create and delete VMs as needed.

Therefore, if the administrator needs to manage a non-persistent deployment, they should avoid any requirements that involve modifying or installing applications on the VMs, as those changes would not be saved.

https://www.nutanix.com/support-services/training-certification/certifications/certification-details-nutanix-certified-professional-ncp-euc-v6

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract of Nutanix End User Computing documents:

According to Nutanix VDI Troubleshooting and Performance Tuning best practices:

Symptom Analysis: "Sluggish mouse and keyboard response" is a classic symptom of high CPU contention or high Latency on the host or VM. Since the environment was previously stable ("No additional virtual desktops added") and the change was "dramatic," it points to a new process consuming resources unexpectedly.

The "Agent" Factor: In non-persistent VDI environments, a common cause for sudden performance degradation affecting an "entire department" is an Antivirus or Security Agent running a scheduled scan or a signature update simultaneously across all clones. This creates a "storm" of IOPS and CPU usage (often called an AV storm), starving the user sessions of the resources needed for basic input processing (mouse/keyboard).

Why not others?

Unoptimized master image (B): This would cause poor performance from day one, not a "dramatic change" after 60 days of stability.

Legacy drivers (C): Drivers do not degrade suddenly; they would cause issues from the time of installation.

Over-provisioning (D): This usually results in gradual degradation as user concurrency increases, not a sudden cliff-edge drop in performance if user counts haven't changed.

For persistent desktop workloads (full clones) where data efficiency is critical, Nutanix recommends leveraging Inline Compression as the primary reduction technology. To further optimize storage capacity without the heavy memory overhead associated with Deduplication, the recommended complementary technology is Erasure Coding (specifically Inline Erasure Coding in newer AOS versions or EC-X post-process).

Erasure Coding increases the effective usable capacity of the cluster by stripping data parity across nodes (similar to RAID 5/6 logic) rather than relying on the default Replication Factor 2 (RAID 1 logic) for cold or write-cold data. Since persistent desktops often contain large amounts of static data after the initial OS and application installation, Erasure Coding significantly reduces the storage footprint. While Capacity Deduplication (Option D) is available, it is generally reserved for specific use cases (like full clone setups with high data commonality) due to its high RAM requirement for fingerprint metadata, making Erasure Coding the more universally applicable "other" technology for general persistent VDI.

Nutanix AHV Plug-In for Citrix Director provides more information on Citrix generated desktops running on Nutanix AHV. Some of the metrics that are available in customized reports are:

VM CPU Usage

VM Memory Usage

VM Disk IOPS

VM Disk Bandwidth

one of the possible causes of poor performance in a VDI deployment is power management, which can affect CPU frequency and performance. Therefore, it is recommended to disable any power saving features on the BIOS level, such as C-states and P-states.

Another possible cause of poor performance is network configuration, which can affect network throughput and latency. Therefore, it is recommended to update network drivers and firmware on the Dell XC nodes with ESXi23, and ensure that they are compatible with Nutanix software.

https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-workspace/integrate.html

The Prism Citrix Cloud integration feature allows you to configure the Citrix Cloud settings in Prism Central and connect your Nutanix cluster as a resource location in Citrix Cloud4. This enables you to use Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service to deliver applications and desktops to your end users.

To use this feature, you need to meet some prerequisites, such as:

The Prism Central version must be 2020.11 or later.

The AOS version must be 5.15 LTSR or later.

The hypervisor must be AHV or ESXi.

You must have a valid Citrix Cloud account with access to Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service4.

One of the steps for configuring the Prism Citrix Cloud integration is to establish the connection to Citrix Cloud. To do this, you need to provide three pieces of information:

Customer ID: This is a unique identifier for your Citrix Cloud account that can be found in your profile settings2.

Client ID: This is a unique identifier for an API client that can access your Citrix Cloud account. You can create an API client in your identity and access management settings2.

Secret Key: This is a secret string that authenticates the API client. You can generate a secret key when you create an API client2.

Citrix Workspace includes several components that can replace or integrate with the traditional Citrix infrastructure components, such as:

Citrix Cloud Services, which provide management and orchestration capabilities for Citrix Workspace, such as Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service, Citrix Gateway service, Citrix Endpoint Management service, etc.

Citrix Workspace app, which is a client software that enables users to access their apps and desktops from any device.

Citrix Cloud Connectors, which are software agents that establish a secure connection between Citrix Cloud Services and the on-premises or cloud-based resources, such as Active Directory, hypervisors, VDAs, etc.

According to Citrix documentation2, an administrator who chooses to move all of the backend Citrix infrastructure to be managed as a service by Citrix can use the following components:

Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service, which replaces the Citrix Delivery Controllers and provides centralized management and delivery of virtual apps and desktops.

Citrix Studio, which is still available as a web-based console for configuring and managing the virtual apps and desktops environment.

Citrix Gateway service, which replaces the Citrix NetScaler and provides secure remote access to virtual apps and desktops through a single URL.

Citrix StoreFront, which is still available as an optional component for providing users with self-service access to their apps and desktops through a web portal or native receiver.

The default load balancing configuration in Nutanix AHV is Balance-SLB (Source Load Balancing). This setting utilizes all available uplinks by assigning VM traffic to specific uplinks based on source MAC address hashing. To optimize bandwidth usage, the Balance-SLB algorithm periodically evaluates link utilization and may rebalance traffic by moving a VM's assignment from one uplink to another.

According to Nutanix AHV Networking documentation, this rebalancing action involves sending a gratuitous ARP (RARP) to update the physical switch. During this split-second transition, real-time sensitive traffic—such as streaming video or VoIP—may experience dropped packets or out-of-order delivery, resulting in symptoms like "hung/frozen display frames." For environments prioritizing connection consistency over aggregate bandwidth for single VMs (like VDI with streaming requirements), Active-Backup is often recommended to eliminate the potential for rebalancing interruptions. (Note: Option A is a VMware ESXi terminology, not AHV).

According to the Prism Central Guide regarding Reporting, predefined system reports (such as Cluster Efficiency, Environment Summary, etc.) are built-in templates provided by Nutanix. The documentation explicitly states that while administrators can view and run these reports, they cannot delete or modify (Edit) the structure of these predefined reports directly.

However, the valid action an administrator can perform on a predefined report is to Schedule it. Scheduling allows the report to run automatically at specified intervals and email the results to recipients. If modification is required, the administrator must first clone the predefined report to create a custom copy, which can then be edited; the original remains locked.

A cloud-based DR service that allows customers to protect their Nutanix workloads in a Nutanix-owned cloud platform6. Xi Leap eliminates the need for multiple products and provides end-to-end security, automation, and SLA compliance6.

Shadow Clones are a feature of the AOS storage that enables distributed caching of virtual disks (vDisks) that are read by multiple VMs on different nodes. This can improve performance and reduce network traffic in scenarios such as VDI deployments.

Therefore, if Shadow Clones were disabled, it could cause delays in the deployments of VD’ desktops, as they would have to read the vDisk from a remote node instead of a local cache.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract of Nutanix End User Computing documents:

According to Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops architecture documentation utilized in Nutanix EUC designs:

VDA Functionality: The Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA) is the essential software component that must be installed on every machine (virtual or physical) that delivers applications or desktops.

FMA Role: The VDA registers with the Delivery Controller (Broker) and manages the FMA (FlexCast Management Architecture) connection between the machine and the user device. It establishes and manages the HDX connection, allowing the Citrix Workspace app (on the client side) to connect directly to the desktop session.

Distinction:

Citrix Workspace app is installed on the client device (endpoint), not the virtual desktop.

VirtIO drivers are lower-level drivers for disk/network I/O virtualization on AHV, not FMA connection brokers.

NGT provides Nutanix-specific fabric features (SSR, FLR), not Citrix session connectivity.

This is because this option will enable the administrator to add a Nutanix cluster as a new connection by installing and registering the plugin on the Delivery Controllers that manage the connection type menu.

https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/solutions/details?targetId=BP-2079-Citrix-Virtual-Apps-and-Desktops:BP-2079-Citrix-Virtual-Apps-and-Desktops

The schedule has two rows: one for Weekdays and one for Tuesday and Thursday.

Each row has a column for Instances, which indicates how many instances should be running during that time range.

Each row also has a column for Time Range, which indicates the start and end time for running the instances.

The time range is expressed in 24-hour format, where 00:00 means midnight and 24:00 means midnight of the next day.

According to the exhibit, the schedule Dev has the following settings:

On Weekdays (Monday to Friday), five instances are running from 09:00 am till 05:00 pm.

On Tuesday and Thursday, five instances are running from 00:00 am till 24:00 pm.

This option allows you to create a custom report with the required metrics for all VMs across all clusters and send it automatically to the operations team via email4. This way, you don’t have to manually export or FTP the data every month.

alert policies are rules that define the conditions for generating alerts on Nutanix clusters1. You can create custom alert policies based on your specific needs and preferences2Playbooks are automated workflows that perform actions based on triggers such as alerts3. You can create playbooks using predefined alerts or alerts matching criteria3.

To ensure that the vice president of IT infrastructure has the best possible experience and to be notified if any CPU resource constraints on the virtual desktop, one possible solution is to create a new alert policy to alert if the CPU on the virtual desktop is over a certain threshold (for example, 80%) and configure a playbook to send a notification (for example, via email or Slack) to the administrator23. This way, the administrator can monitor the performance of the virtual desktop and take appropriate actions if needed.

https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Prism-Central-Guide-vpc_2022_6:mul-alert-policies-customize-system-pc-t.html

To support non-disruptive operations for sensitive workloads such as VDI user profiles (e.g., FSLogix or Citrix Profile Management), Nutanix Files supports Continuous Availability (CA) for SMB shares.

Standard SMB shares may experience a brief pause or disconnect during an FSVM failover or upgrade (rolling reboot), which causes VDI profile containers to detach, leading to application crashes or session hangs. Continuous Availability enables persistent file handles, allowing the client session to transparently failover to another FSVM node without disconnecting the application or user session. This is the specific feature designed to address connectivity issues during maintenance windows for VDI workloads.

View Composer API for Array Integration (VCAI) is a feature of VMware Horizon that leverages the native cloning abilities in the storage array to offload storage operations within a VMware View environment12. This feature allows customers to offload the creation of linked clones to the storage array3.

In the terminology of Flow Network Security Next-Gen (FNS NG), the components are defined as follows:

Security Policy Model: Defined as "A schema of policies for specifying and enforcing a desired behavior.4 A Policy Model will have one or more policies."5 This model provides the framework (such as Application, Isolation, or Quarantine) within which specific policies are created.

Security Policy: Defined as a "collection of security rules and assets [entities, endpoints, categories, applications, etc.] on which the rules have to be enforced together."6

Therefore, the function that acts as the overarching schema and contains "one or more policies" is the Security Policy Model.7

To achieve logical traffic separation while minimizing physical ports (using the same physical uplinks for multiple traffic types), Nutanix AHV networking best practices recommend the use of 802.1Q VLAN tagging.

The standard validated design is to:

Place the CVM and AHV Host management/storage interfaces on the Native VLAN (untagged) or a specific management VLAN.

Place User VM (Guest) traffic on Tagged VLANs.

This configuration allows storage replication traffic (CVM) and user traffic (VMs) to share the same physical cables (minimizing port usage) while remaining logically isolated at the switch level. Options like separate virtual switches (Option B) often require dedicated physical uplinks, which violates the requirement to minimize ports.

This is because having too many snapshots can cause serialization or deserialization errors when using the JSON serializer5

https://next.nutanix.com/product-updates/ahv-plug-in-for-citrix-director-1-1-4-0-released-39682

Nutanix leverages the Security Configuration Management Automation (SCMA) framework to ensure that services are constantly inspected for variance to the security policy. This framework checks multiple security entities for both Nutanix storage and AHV, automatically reporting log inconsistencies and reverting them to the baseline where applicable.

To prevent these continuous inspections from negatively affecting the cluster's operation, the Nutanix Security Guide specifies that STIG (Security Technical Implementation Guide) scans have the lowest system priority within the virtual storage controller. This design ensures that security checks do not interfere with platform performance or user workloads, regardless of whether the schedule is set to run hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly.

According to Nutanix "Omnissa Horizon on Nutanix Best Practices" (formerly VMware Horizon), Windows system services that create excessive background I/O must be optimized for VDI environments. Specifically, the Windows Search (Indexing) Service is a common cause of high CPU and disk I/O. In a non-persistent environment, if the indexing service is active, it continuously attempts to crawl the file system and update the index database during the user session. This generates a large number of small, random writes (IOPS) which land in the Flash Tier (Hot Tier/Oplog).

The behavior described—usage ramping up during business hours (as users create data/emails) and coming down during off-hours—aligns with the Curator process. Curator scans the cluster periodically (typically every 6 hours or during low load) to perform Tiering (moving cold data from SSD to HDD) and cleanup. If indexing is enabled, the "hot" index data fills the SSD tier during the day; Curator then destages this data or consolidates it during the scan. To resolve the performance impact and unnecessary flash consumption, the administrator must disable the Windows Search service or configure it correctly in the Golden Image.

Storage Efficiency features that will provide better storage efficiency and performance improvement for a mix of full clones and non-persistent desktops deployed via Citrix MCS on a three-node cluster are Compression and Deduplication. Compression is a technology that reduces the size of data blocks by removing redundant information. Deduplication is a technology that eliminates duplicate blocks of data and reduces storage consumption. Both Compression and Deduplication can be enabled on a per-container basis and can provide significant savings for Citrix virtual desktop deployments that use cloning technologies such as MCS2.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract of Nutanix End User Computing documents:

According to the Nutanix Life Cycle Manager (LCM) guide and NVIDIA GRID Host Driver for AHV Installation Guide:

Centralized Efficiency: The most efficient method to upgrade Nutanix clusters, including those with specialized hardware like NVIDIA GPUs, is through Prism Central (PC). Prism Central acts as the unified control plane, allowing administrators to upload the LCM bundles (including NVIDIA drivers) once and apply them across registered clusters.

LCM Workflow: The administrator should log in to Prism Central, navigate to the LCM (Life Cycle Manager) page, and use the Direct Upload feature to upload the NVIDIA GRID driver tar.gz bundle. LCM then automatically handles the inventory, pre-checks, host maintenance mode, and driver installation across the nodes in the cluster.

Why not "install_host_package" (Option D)? While the install_host_package command (CLI) is a valid method for manual installation, it is considered a legacy or fallback procedure ("manual method"). It requires logging into each CVM, running commands, and manually managing host restarts, which is far less efficient than the automated orchestration provided by LCM in Prism Central.

Why not Prism Element (Option B)? While you can perform LCM updates via Prism Element (PE) for a single cluster, Prism Central is the preferred interface for "efficient" management of the environment, especially if it scales or involves multiple clusters, and is the standard direction for all Nutanix management tasks.

The error message "Could not create SSL/TLS secure channel" when attempting to connect Citrix Studio to a Nutanix AHV cluster indicates a protocol mismatch between the Citrix Delivery Controller and the Nutanix Prism interface.

Nutanix AOS enforces strict TLS 1.2 security standards. To communicate effectively with the Nutanix cluster, the Citrix Delivery Controllers must have the correct version of the Nutanix AHV Plugin for Citrix installed. This plugin manages the hosting connection and ensures that the communication utilizes the required TLS 1.2 protocols and cipher suites. If the plugin is missing, outdated, or corrupted, the secure channel cannot be established, resulting in this specific error. Installing or upgrading to the latest supported plugin resolves the communication failure.

According to the Nutanix Network Configuration and RDMA guidelines, uniformity of the physical network layer is a strict requirement for enabling RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE).

Specifically, Nutanix does not support mixing network cards with different speeds within the same cluster when RDMA is involved. If the cluster contains a mix of nodes where some are connected at 10 Gbps and others at 25 Gbps (or higher), the Prism interface will disable (grey out) the RDMA configuration options to prevent an unsupported or unstable fabric configuration. To resolve this and proceed with enabling RDMA network segmentation, the administrator must ensure that all RDMA-capable NICs across all nodes are operating at the same supported speed (typically 25 Gbps or higher).

The feature in Nutanix that would be used to complete the task of deploying virtual desktops to a Hyper-V Nutanix cluster with writable differencing disks using a read-only master image with clones that link back to the image is Shadow Clones. Shadow Clones allow for the creation of a snapshot or a clone of a VM that uses the original VM's disks as read-only, and only writes changes to a separate differencing disk. This is useful when deploying virtual desktops as it can reduce storage requirements and improve performance.

Nutanix shadow clones are a feature that enables distributed caching of virtual disks (vDisks) that are in a multi-reader scenario. This can improve performance and reduce network traffic for scenarios such as VDI or private clone boot storms1

Based on the given information, the administrator is deploying 1000 instant clone virtual desktops, 500 full clone virtual desktops, and 150 applications. To support these workloads, the Nutanix solution will need multiple storage containers.

According to the Nutanix Certified Professional - End User Computing (NCP-EUC) v6 guide, for VDI workloads, it is recommended to create a separate storage container for each type of desktop (e.g. instant clone, full clone) and another container for AppStacks. It is also recommended to have at least one container for metadata and one container for replicas.

Therefore, for this scenario, a total of 3 storage containers should be created:

One container for 1000 instant clone virtual desktops

One container for 500 full clone virtual desktops

One container for 150 applications delivered via AppStacks

So the answer is C. 3.

When migrating Machine Creation Services (MCS) non-persistent (pooled) environments to Nutanix, it is not efficient or recommended to migrate the individual worker VMs using migration tools like Nutanix Move. These VMs are ephemeral clones that are deleted or reset upon reboot.

The correct architectural procedure is to migrate the Master Image (Gold Image). The administrator should replicate the base image VM to the Nutanix cluster (using Nutanix Move or Data Protection replication), install the necessary Nutanix drivers (VirtIO) and the Citrix VDA, and then snapshot this migrated image. This snapshot is then used by the MCS service to redeploy a fresh catalog of worker VMs native to the Nutanix AHV infrastructure. This ensures all clones are properly linked to the new storage architecture and avoids the overhead of moving disposable data.

When configuring Link Aggregation Groups (LAG) or Active-Active NIC bonding (such as balance-tcp with LACP) on Nutanix AHV, there is a strict requirement regarding link negotiation. All interfaces in a bond must run at the same speed.

If the second node has physical NICs that have negotiated different speeds (e.g., one link at 10 Gbps and another at 1 Gbps due to a cabling issue or switch misconfiguration), the bond creation command will fail for that specific node. While identical hardware (Option A) is preferred, it is the actual operating speed of the links that determines whether the OVS bond can successfully form.

https://www.nutanix.com/support-services/training-certification/certifications/certification-details-nutanix-certified-professional-ncp-euc-v6

https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-daas/install-configure/machine-catalogs-create.html

A gold image is a master image that contains the operating system, drivers, patches, and configurations for a virtual desktop. A non-persistent Citrix MCS environment is one where virtual desktops are created from a gold image and discarded after each user session.

Citrix Machine Creation Services (MCS) is a tool that uses a gold image to create and manage virtual machines for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops environments. MCS can create different types of machines, such as pooled random, static assigned, or dedicated2.

One of the challenges of using MCS is managing multiple gold images for different user groups or application needs. Updating multiple gold images can be time-consuming and error-prone. Therefore, it is recommended to use a single base image without any applications and leverage another tool such as Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) to deliver applications dynamically to the cloned virtual desktops3.

This approach can simplify image management, reduce storage consumption, improve performance, and enhance user experience. SCCM can also provide additional features such as patch management, compliance enforcement, inventory reporting, etc.3

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract of Nutanix Prism Operations documents:

According to the Prism Central Intelligent Operations Guide regarding Reporting:

Precedence Rule: When configuring reports, settings can be applied at a Global level (default for all reports) or overridden at the specific Report level.

Outcome: The specific Report level settings take precedence over the Global level settings. This allows administrators to have a general standard while customizing specific reports for unique requirements without breaking the global standard.

Capacity Runway in Prism Central calculates the "Runway" (time remaining before resource exhaustion) based on the consumption of User VMs running on the cluster.

If a cluster is configured with Storage-Only nodes (often used for dedicated Nutanix Files/Unified Storage deployments for profiles), the AHV scheduler is configured to prevent user VMs from running on these nodes (reserving resources strictly for CVMs and storage services). Since there are no general compute workloads (User VMs) consuming CPU/RAM, the Capacity Runway algorithm has no relevant "Guest VM" consumption data to analyze, resulting in the CPU and Memory fields being blank or not displayed, while Storage capacity might still be visible.

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an action that the administrator should take to enable Shadow Clones for a VMWare Horizon Solution on AHV is Connect to Prism Central and execute the cluster enable –cluster_cluster_uuid 0xxx – show_clones=true command. Shadow Clones are a feature that helps decrease read latency by creating local copies of frequently accessed data blocks on each host2. To enable Shadow Clones, the administrator needs to connect to Prism Central and run a cluster command with the appropriate parameters1.

This issue is caused by the NVIDIA vGPU scheduling policy. On many NVIDIA GRID/vGPU architectures (prior to latest MIG capabilities), you cannot mix different vGPU profile sizes (e.g., 2Q and 4Q) on the same physical GPU.

Current State (Breadth Mode): The scheduler is likely distributing the "2Q" VMs evenly across all available GPUs. This means every physical GPU has at least one "2Q" profile active, "tainting" the GPU so it can only accept other "2Q" VMs.

The Fix (Depth Mode): By changing the allocation policy to Depth-First, the scheduler will fill up the first physical GPU with "2Q" VMs until it is full before moving to the next. This consolidates the "2Q" workloads onto fewer cards, leaving other physical GPUs completely empty. These empty GPUs can then accept the "4Q" profile type, allowing both profiles to co-exist on the same host (though on different physical cards).