NCP-MCI-6.5 Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud Infrastructure (NCP-MCI) v6.5 exam Question and Answers

Curator is the process that runs on every node in a Nutanix cluster and is responsible for data management tasks such as deduplication, compression, erasure coding, and replication factor compliance. Curator also handles disk failure recovery by scanning Cassandra to find all data previously hosted on the failed disk, and all disks in that node. Curator then rebuilds the data on other nodes in the cluster using the distributed storage fabric1.

https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Prism-Central-Guide-Prism-v5_10:mul-pc-install-scratch-c.html

 According to the Nutanix Support & Insights web search result4, Prism Central can be installed manually on an AHV cluster by using three disk images: boot, home, and data. These disk images must be downloaded from the portal for the Prism Central VM and uploaded to an image service on the AHV cluster. The boot image contains the operating system and kernel for Prism Central. The home image contains the configuration files and logs for Prism Central. The data image contains the database and application files for Prism Central.

https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/solutions/details/?targetId=BP-2029_AHV:BP-2029_AHV

Administrators can use Acropolis with IPAM to deliver a complete virtualization deployment, including network management, from the unified Prism interface. This capability radically simplifies the traditionally complex network management associated with provisioning VMs and assigning network addresses. To avoid address overlap, be sure to work with your network team to reserve a range of addresses for VMs before enabling the IPAM feature.

The Acropolis master assigns an IP address from the address pool when creating a managed VM NIC; the address releases back to the pool when the VM NIC or VM is deleted.

According to the Nutanix Community1, users can authenticate using their Active Directory credentials when Active Directory support is enabled for Prism Central. To enable Active Directory support, you need to configure Role Mapping12, which defines how Active Directory groups map to Prism Central roles.

https://next.nutanix.com/ncm-intelligent-operations-formerly-prism-pro-ultimate-26/configuring-authentication-38051

The change password at next logon attribute is a setting that forces a user to change their password when they log on to a domain for the first time or after their password has expired. This attribute is enabled by default for new Active Directory user accounts or when an administrator resets a user’s password4.

However, Prism Central does not support this attribute for Active Directory authentication. Users with this attribute enabled will not be able to log on to Prism Central using their Active Directory credentials. They will receive an error message saying “Invalid credentials” or “Authentication failed” when they try to log on5.

Therefore, if an administrator is not able to log on to Prism Central using a new Active Directory user account, the most likely cause of this issue is that the change password at next logon attribute is set for that user account. To resolve this issue, the administrator should disable this attribute for the user account or log on to a domain workstation first and change their password before accessing Prism Central6.

The correct answer is A. Long term storage of data which is written once and read infrequently.

Erasure Coding is a feature that increases the usable capacity on a Nutanix cluster by reducing the amount of data replication. Instead of replicating data, Erasure Coding uses parity information to rebuild data in the event of a disk failure. The capacity savings of Erasure Coding is in addition to deduplication and compression savings1.

Erasure Coding is most beneficial for scenarios where the data is written once and read infrequently, such as long term storage of archival data, backup data, or cold data. This is because Erasure Coding has some trade-offs and limitations that may affect the performance and availability of the cluster. Some of these trade-offs and limitations are2:

• Erasure Coding requires more CPU and memory resources than replication, as it involves more complex calculations for encoding and decoding data.
• Erasure Coding increases the network bandwidth consumption, as it involves more data transfers between nodes for encoding and decoding data.
• Erasure Coding reduces the resiliency of the cluster, as it can tolerate fewer node failures than replication. For example, a cluster with redundancy factor 2 can tolerate one node failure with replication, but only two disk failures with Erasure Coding.
• Erasure Coding is not effective for workloads that have many overwrites or random writes, as it involves more overhead for updating the parity information.
• Erasure Coding is not supported for some features, such as volume groups, file server VMs, or Metro Availability.

Therefore, if an administrator needs to configure a container on a Nutanix cluster, they should enable Erasure Coding only if the container will store data that is written once and read infrequently. This way, they can maximize the capacity savings of Erasure Coding without compromising the performance and availability of the cluster.

https://next.nutanix.com/blog-40/net work-load-balancing-with-acropolis-hypervisor-6463

A Nutanix cluster requires a minimum of three nodes to maintain quorum and data availability. Removing a node from a 3-node cluster would violate the redundancy factor and cause data loss. Therefore, it is not possible to remove a host from a 3-node cluster using Prism or CLI. The only way to replace a node in a 3-node cluster is to use the Foundation tool, which will erase the existing cluster configuration and create a new cluster with the new node1.

Based on the VM performance metrics shown in the exhibit, the most likely cause of the poor performance in the particular VM is that the host’s CPU is severely overloaded. This is indicated by the high percentage of Hypervisor CPU Ready Time, which is shown as 96% in the CPU ready chart. CPU Ready Time is a metric that shows the amount of time a VM is ready to run but is unable to run because the host CPU resources are not available. In a healthy environment, this value is typically low. A high percentage indicates that the VMs are waiting for available CPU cycles, which means the CPU is not able to schedule the VM effectively, often due to overcommitment or heavy CPU load.

When the CPU ready time is consistently high, it is a clear indicator that the VM is frequently waiting for CPU resources, which can lead to performance issues such as sluggishness or delays in processing. It is not related to the storage subsystem (Oplog fullness or SSD tier size), nor directly to the number of vCPUs assigned to the VM. While adding more vCPUs might seem like a solution, it could actually exacerbate the issue if the host is already CPU constrained.

To resolve this issue, an administrator should consider balancing the load across the hosts more effectively, possibly by using Nutanix's built-in automation and balancing features, or by scaling out the cluster to add more CPU resources. It is also advisable to check for any VMs with unusually high CPU demand and to adjust resource allocation as needed. Nutanix provides extensive documentation and guidelines in their Resource Management Guide to help administrators identify and resolve such performance issues.

https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details/?targetId=Web-Console-Guide-Prism-v51:wc-block-services-c.html

According to the Troubleshoot high memory issues on Azure virtual machines web search result2, one of the common factors in a low memory situation is over-provisioning memory for a VM. Over-provisioning memory can cause memory pressure, which leads to swapping and degraded performance. Therefore, to fix this issue, the administrator should reduce the amount of memory assigned to the VM, based on the average hardware requirements for that operating system and application load.

According to the Nutanix Support & Insights web search result3, advertised capacity is an advanced container setting that allows the administrator to reserve an advertised storage space for a storage container. An advertised capacity setting gives the hypervisor a maximum storage size that the storage container can use. This setting can be any arbitrary value greater than or equal to the resiliency required. The hypervisor ensures that the storage container storage doesn’t go beyond the advertised capacity. If the administrator wants a container to be displayed and limited to 1TB in the hypervisor, they should set the advertised capacity to 1TB.

Automated live migration is a feature of Nutanix that allows the cluster to automatically move VMs from one host to another without any downtime, in order to optimize the performance and availability of the cluster. According to the Nutanix documentation1, automated live migration can occur in the following scenarios:

• Cluster resource hotspot: When a host or a group of hosts experience high resource utilization, such as CPU, memory, or network, the cluster can automatically migrate some VMs to other hosts with lower utilization, in order to balance the load and avoid performance degradation.
• AOS upgrade: When upgrading the Nutanix software (AOS), the cluster can automatically migrate the VMs from the host that is being upgraded to another host in the same availability zone, in order to maintain the VM availability and minimize the impact of the upgrade process.
• AHV host maintenance mode: When putting an AHV host into maintenance mode, the cluster can automatically migrate all the VMs from that host to another host in the same availability zone, in order to prepare the host for maintenance operations such as hardware replacement or firmware update.

NGT is a software package that enables advanced VM management features provided by Nutanix, such as file-level restore, VM mobility, and application-consistent snapshots12. To use NGT, you need to enable the NGT feature for a VM in the Prism Element web console, mount the NGT installer (ISO disk file) in the VM, and install NGT in the VM1. However, before installing NGT, you need to ensure that the VM can communicate with the NGT-Controller VM service, which runs on the Controller VM (CVM) of each Nutanix node3. The NGT-Controller VM service listens on port 9943 for incoming requests from the guest VMs3. Therefore, you need to enable port 9943 on the ESXi-hosted VM to allow communication with the NGT-Controller VM service.

The default network configuration for AHV hosts and CVMs is a bond named br0-up with two or more uplinks in active-backup mode. This means that only one uplink is active at a time, while the others are in standby mode. This provides high availability, but not load balancing or increased bandwidth. To increase the bandwidth available to the AHV host and the CVM, the administrator can change the bond mode to Active-Active, which allows all uplinks to be used simultaneously. This can be done using the manage-ovs commands on each AHV host. The steps are as follows1:

• Log in to the AHV host using SSH.
• Enter maintenance mode on the CVM by running allssh 'cluster status | grep -i cvm | grep -i down'.
• Change the bond mode to Active-Active by running manage_ovs --bond_mode active-active update_uplinks br0-up , where  is a comma-separated list of uplink interfaces (for example, eth0,eth1).
• Verify the bond mode by running manage_ovs show_uplinks.
• Exit maintenance mode on the CVM by running allssh 'cluster start'.

The cluster time zone is a setting that determines the time zone used by all CVMs in the cluster. The cluster time zone affects the timestamps of Nutanix logs, events, alerts, and reports. The cluster time zone also affects the scheduling of tasks such as snapshots, replication, and upgrades. By default, the cluster time zone is set to UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) when the cluster is created3.

To change the cluster time zone, the administrator needs to use the ncli (Nutanix command-line interface) on any CVM in the cluster. The steps are as follows4:

• Log in to any CVM using SSH.
• Run ncli cluster get-timezone to check the current cluster time zone.
• Run ncli cluster set-timezone timezone= to change the cluster time zone, where  is a valid time zone identifier (for example, America/New_York).
• Run ncli cluster get-timezone again to verify that the cluster time zone has been changed.

Note that changing the cluster time zone does not affect the time zone of Prism Element or Prism Central VMs. To change their time zone, the administrator needs to use Prism Element UI or Prism Central UI respectively5.

According to the web search results, the most efficient action an administrator should take to ensure a supported state when adding a node with a higher AOS release to an existing cluster is to perform a standalone reimage of the new node and then add it to the cluster1. This way, the new node will have the same AOS version as the existing nodes, and there will be no compatibility issues or downtime. Therefore, option C is correct, while options A, B, and D are not.

A bond is a logical interface that combines two or more physical interfaces on an AHV host. A bond provides high availability and load balancing for the network traffic of the host and its VMs. A bond can have different modes that determine how the traffic is distributed and how the bond handles failures of the physical interfaces. The most common bond modes are active-backup, active-active, and LACP1.

Nutanix recommends including at least two physical interfaces in every bond to ensure high availability and redundancy. If one of the physical interfaces fails or is disconnected, the other interface can take over the traffic without affecting the connectivity of the host or its VMs. Having at least two physical interfaces in a bond also allows for maintenance operations such as firmware upgrades or cable replacements without downtime2.

Nutanix does not recommend including NIC models from different vendors in the same bond, as this may cause compatibility issues or performance degradation. Nutanix also does not recommend using only one physical interface in a bond, as this provides no redundancy or load balancing benefits3.

The output in the exhibit indicates that the node's network interfaces (eth0-eth3) are bonded together using LACP (Link Aggregation Control Protocol) with 'balance-tcp' as the bonding mode and LACP speed set to 'fast'. For LACP to function correctly, the switch ports to which the node is connected must also be configured to support LACP. If the ports on the upstream switch are not configured for LACP, the bond will not be able to establish properly, and the node will not communicate effectively on the network, making it undiscoverable when attempting to expand the cluster.

The absence of an operational LACP configuration could prevent the new node from joining the existing cluster as the node's network interfaces would not be able to pass traffic correctly. This can be verified by checking the switch configuration to ensure that the ports are set to participate in an LACP bond.

The other options, such as a firewall blocking discovery traffic (Option A) or the node being on different VLANs (Option C), are possible causes for a node not being discovered, but given the specific command output provided, the most likely cause is related to the switch port configuration for LACP. Option D, regarding completing LACP configuration after cluster expansion, is not correct because LACP needs to be operational for the node to communicate with the cluster during the expansion process.

Proper LACP configuration is critical for network communication in a Nutanix AHV cluster, and this is covered in detail in the Nutanix AHV and Networking documentation. It outlines the steps for configuring network bonds and LACP on both the AHV hosts and the connecting network infrastructure.

Shadow Clones is a Nutanix feature that provides effective caching optimization in VDI environments. VDI stands for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, which is a technology that allows users to access virtual desktops hosted on a centralized server. VDI environments typically have a high degree of similarity among desktop images, which means that many VMs access the same data blocks from the storage layer. Shadow Clones leverages this similarity by creating read-only copies of frequently accessed data blocks on each node’s SSD tier, reducing network traffic and improving performance. Shadow Clones works automatically and transparently without any configuration or intervention from the administrator.

References: : [Fault Tolerance - Nutanix Bible] : [Block Awareness - Nutanix Bible] : [Block Awareness - Nutanix Support & Insights] : [Shadow Clones - Nutanix Bible] : [Shadow Clones - Nutanix Support & Insights] : [Shadow Clones - Nutanix Community]

According to the Nutanix Support & Insights, IPAM enables AHV to assign IP addresses automatically to VMs using DHCP. You can configure each virtual network and associated VLAN with a specific IP subnet, associated domain settings, and group of IP address pools available for assignment.

When a VM is connected to a Nutanix managed network, the IP address is assigned when the VM is powered on. A Nutanix managed network is a network that is created and managed by Prism Central using IP address management (IPAM). IPAM allows Prism Central to automatically assign IP addresses to VMs from a pool of available addresses in a subnet. IPAM also tracks the IP address usage and availability across clusters and networks4.

When a VM is connected to a Nutanix managed network, the administrator can choose one of the following assignment types for the IP address:

• Assign Static IP: This option allows the administrator to manually specify a static IP address for the VM from the subnet range. The IP address will not change unless the administrator changes it.
• Assign with DHCP: This option allows Prism Central to dynamically assign an IP address for the VM from the subnet range using DHCP. The IP address may change depending on the DHCP lease time and availability.
• No Private IP: This option allows the administrator to skip assigning an IP address for the VM. This option is useful for scenarios where the administrator wants to use an external IPAM solution or assign an IP address later5.

Regardless of the assignment type, the IP address is assigned when the VM is powered on. This is because Prism Central needs to communicate with the hypervisor (AHV or ESXi) to configure the virtual NIC (vNIC) of the VM with the IP address information. This communication can only happen when the VM is in a powered on state6.

References: 4: IP Address Management - Prism Central Guide 5: Creating a New Report - Prism Central Guide 6: IP Address Assignment - AHV Networking Guide

https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documen ts/details/?targetId=Prism-Central-Guide-Prism-v510:mul-alert-policies-user-defined-configure-pc-c.html

Answer: D. Load the Virtual SCSI pass-through controller.

The error message shown in the image indicates that Windows 10 setup cannot find any drives to install the OS. This is because the Nutanix AHV hypervisor uses a virtual SCSI pass-through controller to present disks to the VMs, and Windows 10 does not have a built-in driver for this device. Therefore, the administrator needs to load the Nutanix VirtIO driver for the virtual SCSI pass-through controller during the OS installation process. The Nutanix VirtIO driver package contains various drivers that are specifically used by Windows VMs hosted in the Nutanix environment to enhance their stability and performance1. The administrator can download the latest Nutanix VirtIO driver package from the VirtIO downloads page of the Nutanix support portal. The administrator can then follow these steps to load the driver and install the OS2:

• On the Windows 10 setup screen, click Load driver.
• Insert a USB drive or mount an ISO image that contains the Nutanix VirtIO driver package.
• Browse to the location of the driver package and select the folder that matches the OS architecture (32-bit or 64-bit).
• Select the vioscsi.inf file and click Next.
• Wait for the driver to load and then click Refresh.
• Select the disk where you want to install Windows 10 and click Next.

References: 1: VirtIO Driver Versions for Windows 2: Installing Windows on AHV

According to the Nutanix Files Guide, Nutanix Files instances are composed of a set of VMs (called FSVMs). Files requires at least three FSVMs running on three nodes to satisfy a quorum for high availability. By default, Files deploys three FSVMs when you create a file server instance.

Configure VM-Host affinity for the nodes that meet the application’s GPU requirement. This is because VM-Host affinity allows the administrator to specify which nodes a VM can run on or must not run on1. By creating a VM-Host affinity rule that binds the application VM to the three nodes that have the physical GPU, the administrator can ensure that the VM will always run on a node that meets its requirement, regardless of any HA or migration events. This also allows the other nodes in the cluster to host other VMs without any restrictions.

Port 389 is the default port for LDAP without SSL encryption. Port 636 is used for LDAP over SSL (LDAPS). Port 3268 and 3269 are used for Global Catalog (GC) and Global Catalog over SSL (GCSSL), respectively2.

API Explorer page will launch when an administrator presses the letter A on the keyboard after logging into Prism Element. This is one of the keyboard shortcuts that Prism Element provides for accessibility and ease of use1. API Explorer is a tool that allows users to explore and test Nutanix REST APIs within Prism Element1.

https://www.nutanixbible.com/3b-book-of-prism-navigation.html

According to the web search results, the two actions that the administrator should perform to determine if the current cluster can accommodate the new VMs are:

• Utilize Optimize Resources for VM efficiency: Optimize Resources is a feature in Prism Central that helps the administrator improve the efficiency and performance of their VMs by identifying and resolving issues such as overprovisioning, inactivity, constraints, or bullying3. By using Optimize Resources, the administrator can reclaim unused resources and optimize the resource allocation for their VMs3.
• Determine utilization with Cluster Runway: Cluster Runway is a feature in Prism Central that helps the administrator estimate how long their cluster can continue to run normally based on the current consumption rate of CPU, memory, and storage resources4. By using Cluster Runway, the administrator can see how adding more VMs will affect the resource utilization and capacity of their cluster4.

Flow Networking is a feature that enables software-defined networking for AHV clusters. It allows users to create and manage virtual private clouds (VPCs), subnets, and network services such as NAT, DHCP, routing, and VPN. Flow Networking also supports service insertion and chaining, which enables integration with third-party network functions such as firewalls and load balancers. Flow Networking is built on top of the microservices infrastructure (MSP) in Prism Central, which provides the platform for running various Nutanix services such as Calm, Karbon, and Objects. Therefore, to enable Flow Networking, the MSP must be enabled first on Prism Central1. The MSP can be enabled from the Prism Central settings page or from the command line interface (CLI) of the Prism Central VM2. Enabling the MSP will also enable Flow Microsegmentation, which is another feature that provides network security and visibility for AHV clusters.

Deploy the Move appliance and Import the .vmdk into the Image Service. These are two methods that can be used to migrate a VM from VMware ESXi to AHV2. The Move appliance is a tool that automates the migration process by converting the VM disks and configuration to AHV format and transferring them to the Nutanix cluster3. The Image Service is a feature that allows users to upload and manage disk images that can be used to create or clone VMs on AHV4. By importing the .vmdk file of the VMware VM into the Image Service, users can create a new AHV VM from that image.

A GPU (graphics processing unit) is a specialized hardware device that can accelerate graphics rendering and computation for applications that use APIs such as DirectX, OpenGL, CUDA, and OpenCL. A GPU can also offload the CPU from encoding and decoding tasks for remote display protocols such as Frame Remote Desktop Protocol (FRP). A VM can use a GPU either by directly accessing a physical GPU (pGPU) on the host or by using a virtual GPU (vGPU) that shares a pGPU with other VMs. A user running a computer aided design (CAD) application may benefit from using a GPU or a vGPU to improve the performance and responsiveness of the application, especially when moving windows or rendering images. However, if the GPU or vGPU is not properly configured or provisioned, the user may experience slow response time within the VM. Therefore, to diagnose the problem, the administrator should monitor the GPU Usage metric for the VM. The GPU Usage metric shows the percentage of GPU resources that are consumed by the VM over time3. The administrator can use Prism Central to view the GPU Usage metric for each VM in a chart or a widget4. The administrator can also use Prism Central to view other metrics related to GPU performance, such as GPU Memory Usage, GPU Encoder Usage, and GPU Decoder Usage3. By analyzing these metrics, the administrator can determine if the VM is using the GPU efficiently and optimally, or if it needs more or less GPU resources.

According to the web search results, three storage optimizations that should be set on a dedicated storage container for a VDI solution with persistent desktops are compression, deduplication and erasure coding. Compression is a technique that reduces the size of data by removing redundant information. Deduplication is a technique that eliminates duplicate copies of data blocks and stores only unique blocks. Erasure coding is a technique that increases usable capacity by reducing the replication factor of data blocks and using parity information instead7. These three optimizations can improve performance and save storage space for VDI workloads, especially during a node failure event when data needs to be rebuilt from parity information8. The administrator can enable these optimizations by using Prism Element web console or ncli command-line interface9.

According to the Nutanix Prism Central Guide, you can click on any chart in a widget to expand it and view more details about the data elements.

This is because there is no GUI method to unregister a cluster from Prism Central, so the process requires SSH access to the PC VM as well as to a CVM of the cluster2. The unregistration process involves getting the UUID of the cluster from the CVM and then using that to trigger de-registration from PC command line2. The unregistration process also involves cleaning up any associated metadata and configuration on both PC and PE2. Therefore, the administrator needs to use a Host SSH session to perform this task.

One of the NICs needs to be configured on the internal VLAN. This is because the VMs that are isolated need to communicate with the firewall VM through a private network, and the firewall VM needs to communicate with the external network through a public network. The internal VLAN is a logical network that can be created and managed by AHV1. If the firewall VM does not have a NIC on the internal VLAN, it will not be able to route traffic between the isolated VMs and the outside world.

According to the Network File System web search result3, NFS (Network File System) is a distributed file system protocol that allows a user on a client computer to access files over a network in a manner similar to how local storage is accessed. NFS is one of the access protocols supported by Files. According to the [MS-WPO]: File Access Services Protocols web search result4, SMB (Server Message Block) is a Windows file sharing protocol that enables applications to discover, access, and share files that are hosted on or made available by a file server, using a network between them, in a secure and managed environment. SMB is another access protocol supported by Files. Therefore, SMB and NFS are two access protocols supported by Files.

Prism is the central service control used by Nutanix to manage the clusters. It provides a unified view of the entire system, and it is used to control the HTML5 UI, the nCLI, and the REST API. Prism is used to manage the resources of the system, such as the nodes, storage, and networks, as well as to monitor the performance of the system and the applications running on it.

https://www.nutanixbible.com/2f-book-of-basics-cluster-components.html

PrismKey Role: UI and API

·  Prism is the management gateway for components and administrators to configure and monitor the Nutanix cluster.  This includes Ncli, the HTML5 UI, and REST API. 

·  Prism runs on every node in the cluster and uses an elected leader like all components in the cluster. All requests are forwarded to the leader using Linux Iptables. This allows access to PRISM using any CVM Ip address.

·  Prism communicates with Zeus for cluster configuration data and Cassandra for statistics to present to the user. It also communicates with the ESXi hosts for VM status and related information

 

These are only some of the essential services that make up the CVM functionality. For more information on all the services and various Nutanix Cluster components, refer to the portal documentation.

Stargate is the AOS process that handles all I/O operations for the cluster. It is responsible for determining whether an I/O from a user will be written to the OpLog or to the Extent Store, based on the type and size of the I/O. Stargate also performs data tiering, compression, deduplication, and erasure coding1. Stargate runs on every CVM and communicates with other Stargates to ensure data locality and redundancy2.