NCP-MCI-6.5 Practice Exam Questions with Answers Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud Infrastructure (NCP-MCI) v6.5 exam Certification

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.

According to the Nutanix Support & Insights web search result1, the administrator can change the frequency of checks and alerts for the System Non-Root Partition Usage in Prism Element by going to the Health Dashboard > Manage Checks > Schedule. The administrator can select the check name, such as disk_usage_check, and click on Edit Schedule. The administrator can then choose the desired frequency, such as every 15 minutes, every hour, or every day, and click on Save. This will change how often the check runs and alerts are generated.

One of the possible reasons for a cluster to transition out of NearSync is insufficient network bandwidth between the source and target clusters. NearSync requires a minimum network bandwidth of 10 Mbps per VM for replication3. If the network bandwidth is lower than the required amount, the replication of recovery points may take longer than the configured RPO, resulting in an Out of NearSync condition. To address this issue, you can increase the network bandwidth between the clusters or reduce the number of VMs protected by NearSync4.

References: 1: Stargate - Nutanix Bible 2: Nutanix Cluster Architecture Overview - Nutanix Bible 3: NearSync Disaster Recovery (RPO <= 15 minutes) - Nutanix Support & Insights 4: Transitioning in and out of NearSync - Nutanix Support & Insights

The best way for the administrator to limit the amount of storage space that data stored in a single container can consume is to set an advertised capacity for the container. This will ensure that the data stored in the container doesn't exceed the set limit, and it will also help prevent any potential performance issues due to resource contention. Additionally, the administrator should consider thick provisioning the container, which will pre-allocate the amount of storage space that can be used by the container. This will help ensure that the data stored in the container doesn't exceed the advertised capacity.

The number of Prism Central instances required to deploy Leap is one per customer environment. Prism Central is a multi-cluster manager that provides a single, centralized management interface for Nutanix environments3. Leap is a native cloud extension that provides disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) for Nutanix environments4. To use Leap, customers need to have one Prism Central instance deployed in their primary site, and register it with their Xi Cloud Services account5. This Prism Central instance can manage multiple Nutanix clusters across different physical sites or availability zones6.

According to the Red Hat Customer Portal, to use RELP with Rsyslog, you need to install the rsyslog-relp package on both the server and the client. If the remote server does not have rsyslog-relp installed, RELP logging will not work as expected.

https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Prism-Central-Guide-vpc_2023_3:mul-cluster-storage-policy-pc-c.html

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.

According to section 4 of the exam blueprint guide1, one of the topics covered is AHV networking components and configuration settings. One of these components is Open vSwitch (OVS), which is a software switch that provides network connectivity between VMs and physical networks. OVS has two types of ports:

• Uplink ports: These are physical ports that connect to external networks or switches.
• Internal ports: These are virtual ports that connect to VMs or other internal networks.

To view the uplink state of all AHV nodes in the cluster, an administrator can use the manage_ovs command with the show_uplinks option. This command displays information such as port name, link state, speed, duplex mode, MTU size, bond mode, and bond status. However, this command only works on a single node. To run the command on all nodes in the cluster, an administrator can use the allssh command, which executes a command on all CVMs in parallel. Therefore, the correct command is:

allssh manage_ovs show_uplinks

To periodically send information about cluster efficiency via email to a set of users, the administrator can follow these steps:

• Create a report in Prism Central that contains the relevant information about cluster efficiency.
• Add a schedule to the report to generate and send the report via email to the set of users at a specified frequency.

This will ensure that the users receive regular updates about the cluster efficiency without the need for manual intervention.

In this case, the administrator wants to investigate the performance of a core banking system that consists of application servers and database servers. The application servers have high CPU utilization during business hours, which may indicate a bottleneck or a resource contention issue. The administrator needs to review multiple metrics in Prism Analysis Graphs to identify the root cause and determine if there is a problem with the app servers only, or with other components as well.

The metrics that are relevant for this analysis are:

• Cluster IO: This metric shows the input/output operations per second (IOPS) and throughput (MBps) of the cluster. It can help to understand if there is a high demand for disk IO from the VMs or if there is any latency or congestion in the storage layer.
• Cluster CPU: This metric shows the CPU utilization (%) and load average of the cluster. It can help to understand if there is enough CPU capacity in the cluster to handle the workload or if there is any imbalance or contention among hosts.
• Cluster Memory: This metric shows the memory utilization (%) and available memory (GB) of the cluster. It can help to understand if there is enough memory capacity in the cluster to support the VMs or if there is any pressure or swapping in the memory layer.
• Network: This metric shows the network throughput (MBps) and packets per second (pps) of the cluster. It can help to understand if there is enough network bandwidth in the cluster to transfer data between hosts and VMs or if there is any congestion or packet loss in the network layer.
• App Server CPU: This metric shows the CPU utilization (%) and load average of each application server VM. It can help to understand if there is any variation or anomaly in the performance of each app server or if there is any correlation with other metrics.
• Database Server CPU: This metric shows the CPU utilization (%) and load average of each database server VM. It can help to understand if there is any variation or anomaly in the performance of each database server or if there is any correlation with other metrics.

A native VLAN is a VLAN that is assigned to untagged traffic on a trunk port of a switch. A trunk port can carry traffic from multiple VLANs, but it needs to have a native VLAN to handle traffic that does not have a VLAN tag. The native VLAN is usually VLAN 1 by default on most switches, but it can be changed to any other VLAN number2. When creating a network profile on Nutanix, the administrator needs to specify the VLAN ID that matches the VLAN configuration on the physical switch. However, if the network profile uses the same VLAN ID as the native VLAN on the switch, it will cause network connectivity issues for the VMs connected to that network profile. This is because Nutanix AHV uses 802.1Q tagging for all network traffic, including traffic in the native VLAN. The switch will expect untagged traffic in the native VLAN and will drop any tagged traffic in that VLAN3. To fix this issue, the administrator needs to change the VLAN field from vlan. 1 to vlan. 0 in the network profile on Nutanix. This will tell Nutanix AHV to send untagged traffic for that network profile and match the native VLAN configuration on the switch4.

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

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

Prism Central is a multi-cluster manager that provides a single, centralized management interface for Nutanix environments1. Prism Central can be deployed in different configuration scenarios, depending on the network and security requirements of the environment. Some of the valid scenarios are:

• Environments use Network Address Translation (NAT): NAT is a method of mapping one IP address space to another by modifying network address information in IP datagram packet headers while they are in transit across a traffic routing device2. NAT can be used to enable communication between Prism Central and Prism Elements that are in different networks or subnets3. For example, Prism Central can be deployed in a public cloud and use NAT to access Prism Elements that are in a private data center3.
• Prism Elements and Prism Central are in different subnets: A subnet is a logical subdivision of an IP network that allows multiple networks to share a single physical network4. Prism Elements and Prism Central can be in different subnets as long as they can communicate with each other through routing or NAT3. For example, Prism Central can be deployed in a management subnet and access Prism Elements that are in different application subnets3.
• Environments do not have Internet access: Internet access is not required for the deployment of Prism Central, as long as the environment meets the prerequisites and considerations for installing or upgrading Prism Central. For example, Prism Central can be deployed in a dark site, which is an environment that does not have Internet access or has restricted Internet access. In this case, the administrator needs to manually enable microservices infrastructure and download the required software packages from another source.

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.

when you create a custom alert policy, you can choose between two types of thresholds: Static Threshold and Behavioral Anomaly. Static Threshold allows you to set a fixed value for the metric that triggers the alert. Behavioral Anomaly allows you to use machine learning to detect abnormal behavior based on historical data.

If you select Behavioral Anomaly as the threshold type, you cannot set a warning level for the alert. You can only set a critical level that indicates how much deviation from normal behavior is considered an anomaly3. Therefore, the Alert warning if field is greyed out when you select Behavioral Anomaly.

 According to the Nutanix Support & Insights web search result1, the name of the internal bridge used by AHV nodes and CVMs is br0. The internal bridge is an Open vSwitch (OVS) bridge that connects the AHV host management interface, the CVM interface, and the VM vNICs. The internal bridge also acts as a gateway for the CVM and VM traffic to reach the external network through the host physical NICs.

According to the web search results, one of the best practices for Nutanix AHV networking is to create a second bridge on each host and assign the 1GbE interfaces to it3. This way, the customer can use both 10GbE and 1GbE interfaces for VM traffic, and also benefit from network isolation and redundancy. 

According to the Nutanix Prism Central Guide, Prism Central allows you to apply storage policies on a per VM basis using Category, so that the VM uses the storage configuration defined in the storage policy. Using a storage policy, you can manage parameters of VMs, such as encryption, type of or lack of data compression, and IOPS or Throughput throttling values to be applied to the entities.

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.

network segmentation on Nutanix clusters refers to creating a separate network for service-specific communication and isolating different types of traffic over selected VLANs or physical interfaces.

https://next.nutanix.com/ncm-intelligent-operations-formerly-prism-pro-ultimate-26/network-segmentation-isolating-service-specific-traffic-39463

https://next.nutanix.com/how-it-works-22/network-segmentation-basics-38414

The correct answer is D. Fewer than 30 I/Os and less than 1000 bytes per day of network traffic for the past 21 days.

A zombie VM is a type of inactive VM that is powered on but does very little activity. A zombie VM wastes host resources such as CPU, memory, disk, and network that could be used by other VMs. A zombie VM can be identified by using the VM Profile feature in Prism Central. The VM Profile feature analyzes the resource utilization of each VM and assigns it a profile based on its efficiency and impact on other VMs. The profiles are as follows1:

• Efficient: The VM is well-provisioned and has optimal resource utilization.
• Over-provisioned: The VM has more resources than it needs and has low resource utilization.
• Constrained: The VM has less resources than it needs and has high resource utilization.
• Inactive: The VM has no resource utilization and is idle or powered off.
• Bully: The VM has high resource utilization and causes contention for other VMs.

A zombie VM is a subtype of an inactive VM that meets the following criteria2:

• The VM is powered on for the past 21 days.
• The VM does fewer than 30 read or write I/Os (total) per day for the past 21 days.
• The VM receives or transfers fewer than 1000 bytes per day of network traffic for the past 21 days.

To identify a zombie VM, the administrator can use Prism Central to view the VM Profile dashboard and filter by profile type. The dashboard shows the number of VMs in each profile type, as well as their resource consumption and efficiency score. The administrator can also drill down into each VM to see its detailed metrics and recommendations for optimization.

The best way to configure the VM for optimal performance is to set it up with 2 vNUMA nodes. This will ensure that the VM is configured to take advantage of the CPU and memory resources available in each node, and it will also ensure that all of the cores are utilized for the best performance. Additionally, the administrator should ensure that the VM has an affinity policy set up so that the vCPUs are evenly distributed across the four nodes. Finally, Flash Mode should be enabled in order to take advantage of the high-performance SSDs that are available in the cluster

According to the Nutanix Support & Insights website1, you can configure alert emails through Prism Central by enabling or disabling customer email notification for each alert. You can also modify or create custom alert policies for different entities and clusters23.

According to the How to use the cvm_shutdown script web search result3, the cvm_shutdown script signals HA when shutting down the CVM (Controller VM) to forward the storage traffic to another healthy CVM. Instead of using sudo shutdown or sudo reboot commands, this script should be used to minimize I/O hits in user VMs running on the present hypervisor host. The cvm_shutdown -P now command will initiate the shutdown process on the CVM immediately. Therefore, if the administrator needs to perform an orderly shutdown of the CVM, they should execute this command from the CVM.

switch ports are configured with different VLANs could be the cause of this error. If the switch ports are not configured with the same VLANs as the network interfaces on each node, then there could be a mismatch in network connectivity when one interface is disconnected1. This could affect the guest VMs that are using a different VLAN than the hypervisor.

According to the web search results, the cluster redundancy factor (RF) determines how many copies of the cluster metadata and configuration data are stored on different nodes. By default, the cluster RF is 2, which means that there are three copies of the Zookeeper and Cassandra data on the cluster. If the cluster RF is increased to 3, then there will be five copies of the Zookeeper and Cassandra data on the cluster12. This means that the Zookeeper component can tolerate two failures, as it can still operate with a quorum of three nodes out of five3.

However, the container replication factor (RF) determines how many copies of the VM data and oplog are stored on different nodes. The container RF can be set independently for each container, and it can be different from the cluster RF. For example, a container can have RF 2 even if the cluster has RF 34. In this case, the container will only have two copies of the VM data and oplog on the cluster, regardless of the cluster RF. This means that the Extent Groups component can only tolerate one failure, as it needs at least one copy of the VM data and oplog to be available5.

Therefore, if the administrator increases the cluster RF to 3, but does not modify the containers, then the new values in the data resiliency dashboard will be Zookeeper = 2 and Extent Groups = 1.

https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details/?targetId=Web_Console_Guide-Prism_v4_7:lic_licensing_managing_c.html

Reclaiming Licenses (Including License Renewal)

You can reclaim and optionally re-apply licenses for nodes in your clusters:

• You must reclaim licenses when you plan to destroy a cluster. First reclaim the licenses, then destroy the cluster. You do not need to reclaim Starter licenses. These licenses are automatically applied whenever you create a cluster, including after you have destroyed a cluster.
• Return licenses to your inventory when you remove one or more nodes from a cluster. Also, if you move nodes from one cluster to another, first reclaim the licenses, move the nodes, then re-apply the licenses.
• You can reclaim licenses for nodes in your clusters in cases where you want to make modifications or downgrade licenses. For example, applying an Ultimate license to all nodes in a cluster where some nodes are currently licensed as Pro and some nodes are licensed as Ultimate. You might also want to transition nodes from Ultimate to Pro licensing.
• You must reclaim licenses when you renew licenses. First reclaim the expired licenses, then apply new licenses.

Answer: A. VM-VM anti-Affinity policy

A VM-VM anti-Affinity policy is a rule that ensures that two or more VMs don’t run on the same AHV host. It’s useful when an application provides HA and an AHV host can’t be an application’s single point of failure1. In this case, the SQL cluster VMs should have a VM-VM anti-Affinity policy configured to prevent them from running on the same host and causing an outage if that host fails. A VM-VM anti-Affinity policy can be created using the aCLI commands2. The other options are not relevant for this scenario.

References: 1: Affinity Policies - Nutanix Support & Insights 2: Affinity Policies Help | Nutanix Community

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.

https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details/?targetId=Web-Console-Guide-Prism-v50:wc-bl ock-services-enabling-t.html

Provision storage on the Nutanix cluster by creating a volume group. Create a client whitelist to enable access to the volume group by using the IP addresses or client initiator IQNs in a whitelist (as part of the volume group configuration). Create a secret for the volume group if you are using CHAP authentication.

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]

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.

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 Prism Central Guide, to configure a syslog server in Prism Central, you need to specify the transport protocol (TCP or UDP) and the IP address/port of the syslog server.

According to the Dell Unity: Data Reduction Technical White Paper1, snapshots and clones on Dell Unity use the Copy-on-Write (CoW) algorithm to maximize efficiency and effectiveness. CoW is a technique that defers the copying of data until it is modified. This means that snapshots and clones only consume space when changes are made to the source or the clone, respectively. CoW also preserves the original data in case of a rollback or recovery operation.

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

Active-Active is a bond mode that allows all uplinks in the bond to be used simultaneously for traffic transmission and reception. This bond mode provides load balancing and increased bandwidth for the AHV host and its VMs. Active-Active bond mode uses a hashing algorithm based on source MAC addresses to distribute traffic across different uplinks in the bond. Each individual VM NIC uses only a single bond member interface at a time, but multiple VM NICs are spread across different bond member interfaces. As a result, it is possible for a Nutanix AHV node with two 10 Gb interfaces to use up to 20 Gbps of network throughput, while individual VMs have a maximum throughput of 10 Gbps6.

Therefore, if an administrator needs to optimize for maximum single VM throughput, they should select Active-Active bond mode for their AHV cluster. This bond mode can be configured using Prism Element UI or manage-ovs commands on each AHV host7. No additional configuration is required on the upstream switch side, as long as the switches are interconnected physically or virtually and both uplinks trunk the same VLANs8.