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

Terminology

• Availability Zone – it is represented by all resources (Nutanix Clusters) connected to Prism Central or Xi Leap Availability zone. Depends on the architecture, Availability zone can represent geographic territory, datacenter or server room in the datacenter. Protection policies – in protection policies you set up (RPO, Retention), rules to auto-apply policies to virtual machines

https://vmware mine.com/2019/02/08/nutanix-leap-runbooks-part-1/#sthash.VwrzSzhQ.dpbs

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

According to the web search results, the two impacts on the cluster that will result from increasing the vCPU count on all of the VDI VMs are:

• Increase CPU utilization%: CPU utilization is the percentage of time that a CPU is busy executing instructions5. By increasing the vCPU count on all of the VDI VMs, the administrator will increase the demand for CPU resources on the cluster, which will increase the CPU utilization percentage6.
• Increase CPU ready%: CPU ready is the percentage of time that a vCPU is ready to run but is waiting for a physical CPU to become available5. By increasing the vCPU count on all of the VDI VMs, the administrator will increase the contention for physical CPU resources on the cluster, which will increase the CPU ready percentage6. A high CPU ready percentage can indicate performance issues such as latency or slowdowns5.

According to the Nutanix Volumes - Recommendations And Best Practices web search result3, two actions that the administrator should take when designing the Volume Group are:

• Distribute workload across multiple virtual disks: Use multiple disks rather than a single large disk for an application. Consider using a minimum of one disk per Nutanix node to distribute the workload across all nodes in a cluster. Multiple disks per Nutanix node may also improve an application’s performance. For performance-intensive environments, we recommend using between four and eight disks per CVM for a given workload.
• Enable RSS (Receive Side Scaling): Receive-side scaling (RSS) allows the system to use multiple CPUs for network activity. With RSS enabled, multiple CPU cores process network traffic, preventing a single CPU core from becoming a bottleneck. Enabling RSS within hosts can be beneficial for heavy iSCSI workloads. For VMs running in ESXi environments, RSS requires VMXNET3 VNICs. For Hyper-V environments, enable VMQ to take full advantage of Virtual RSS.

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.

The critical alerts listed are indicating that the default passwords are still in use for IPMI, the host, and the Controller Virtual Machine (CVM). This suggests that the passwords for these components were not changed from the default during the initial cluster configuration and deployment process, which is a critical security practice.

A. CVM password changes: The alert for the CVM using the default password indicates that the CVM password has not been changed. It is a standard security measure to change default passwords to prevent unauthorized access.

C. Host password changes: Similarly, the alert for the host using the default password indicates that the default password for the host has not been updated. This applies to the passwords used to access the hypervisor host directly.

Changing default passwords is a critical step in securing the Nutanix environment. This is highlighted in Nutanix's best practices and security guidelines, which recommend changing default passwords as part of the initial configuration to ensure that the environment is not left vulnerable to unauthorized access due to known default credentials. This process is typically part of the initial setup procedures outlined in the Nutanix documentation for cluster deployment and security configuration.

The IPMI alert also points to the need for changing default passwords, but since IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) is not specifically mentioned in the provided options, it falls under the broader category of host-level password changes, which would be covered by option C.

BIOS password changes (Option B) and Password policy changes (Option D) are also important but were not directly flagged by the alerts mentioned. BIOS password changes are usually a separate task and not indicated by the alerts given, while password policy changes are related to the policies governing password complexity and rotation rather than the initial password setup.

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

The only option that requires iSCSI initiator configuration in the guest OS to use Volumes is Microsoft Windows Failover Cluster. Volumes is an enterprise-class, software-defined block storage solution that exposes storage resources directly to virtualized guest operating systems or physical hosts using the iSCSI protocol7. To use Volumes, customers need to configure iSCSI initiators on their hosts or guest OSes. However, some applications or services can use native storage adapters instead of iSCSI initiators when running on AHV VMs. These include:

• SQL Server Always On Availability Group: This is a high availability and disaster recovery solution for SQL Server databases that uses Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) and Availability Groups (AGs) as its core components. When running on AHV VMs, SQL Server Always On Availability Group can use native storage adapters instead of iSCSI initiators.
• Oracle RAC: This is a clustered database system that provides high availability and scalability for Oracle databases. When running on AHV VMs, Oracle RAC can use native storage adapters instead of iSCSI initiators.
• Exchange DAG: This is a group of up to 16 mailbox servers that hosts a set of databases and provides automatic database-level recovery from failures that affect individual servers or databases. When running on AHV VMs, Exchange DAG can use native storage adapters instead of iSCSI initiators.

An Application Security Policy is a security feature in Nutanix AHV that can be used to restrict network communication between virtual servers based on a variety of criteria, such as IP address, port, and protocol. By creating a policy that restricts communication to authorized hosts and applying it to the servers in enforce mode, the administrator can prevent unauthorized communication between virtual servers.

https://www.nutanix.com/products/ahv

According to the web search results, Distributed Storage Fabric (DSF) is the scale-out storage technology that makes HCI and cloud possible45. DSF pools the storage devices that are directly attached to a cluster of servers and presents them to applications across a variety of storage protocols4. DSF also manages and protects data by a fine-grained, distributed metadata system that ensures uniform distribution of data throughout the cluster to eliminate hot spots and speed up rebuilds

According to the Nutanix Support & Insights web search result3, shadow clones are vDisk copies that are created by the cluster when a vDisk is read by multiple VMs. Shadow clones are immutable copies of a vDisk that are stored in different nodes in the cluster, and are used to improve read performance and reduce network traffic. Shadow clones are automatically created and deleted by the cluster, based on the demand and availability of resources.

Nutanix supports two types of deduplication: post-process and inline. Post-process deduplication runs periodically on a schedule and can be enabled on any cluster. Inline deduplication runs in real time before data is written to disk and can be enabled only on all-flash clusters.

Therefore, by checking the type of storage and the type of deduplication, you can determine if you can enable inline deduplication on a storage container or not.

 Nutanix inline deduplication is a feature that reduces the stored size and avoids duplicate data on a storage container1. It is recommended only on some specific scenarios, such as when using Nutanix Files or virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) workloads12.

A Compute Only node is a node that does not have any local storage devices and only provides compute resources to the cluster2. A Compute Only node does not run a CVM, but instead relies on the CVMs of other nodes to access the distributed storage fabric2

 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 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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Nutanix clusters are resilient to a drive, node, block, and rack failures because they use redundancy factor 2 by default, allowing Nutanix clusters to self-heal2. Failure scenarios can be thought of in terms of fault domains, which are the physical or logical parts of a computing environment or location that are adversely affected when a device or service experiences an issue or outage3. There are four fault domains in a Nutanix cluster: Disk, Node, Block, and Rack4. Block and Rack are two options that are available for expanding the failure domain level of a cluster. Block fault tolerance is enabled by default and ensures that data is replicated across different blocks in a cluster5. Rack fault tolerance has to be configured manually and ensures that data is replicated across different racks in a cluster4.

References: 1: Behavioral Learning Tools - Prism Central Resource Management - Nutanix 2: How Nutanix Handles Failures | Node Failure 3: Failure Domain Considerations - Nutanix Support & Insights 4: [Understanding Fault Domains and Rack Awareness - Nutanix] 5: [Nutanix Cluster Architecture Overview - Nutanix Bible]

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.

"Playbook allows you to define a trigger that results in the execution of an action or a series of actions. A trigger may be an event that occurs in the system, such as an alert or a request made by you. The resultant actions that you configure can be VM actions, communication actions, alert actions, or report actions." https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Intelligent-Operations-Guide-vpc_2023_3:ssp-report-management-ssp-pc-c.html#:~:text=The%20environment%20summary%20report%20provides,is%20registered%20to%20Prism%20Central.

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

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.

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.

Prism Element is a graphical user interface that allows you to manage Nutanix clusters1. You can use Prism Element charts to understand Nutanix cluster workloads and troubleshoot performance related issues2.

memory optimized virtual machine sizes offer the best performance for SQL Server workloads on Azure VMs. Adding more RAM to the user VM can help reduce paging and improve query execution times.

SQL Server performance can be affected by disk latency and throughput. By creating separate virtual disks for data and logs, you can spread activity across multiple spindles and reduce disk contention.

https://next.nutanix.com/how-it-works-22/differences-between-prism-element-prism-central-and-prism-pro-37137

Virtual NIC receive packet dropped is the most useful VM metric for isolating the cause of users being disconnected from remote desktop sessions to a specific VM. This metric shows the number of packets that are dropped by the virtual NIC of the VM due to insufficient buffer space or other reasons. Packet drops can indicate network congestion, misconfiguration, or performance issues that can affect the quality and availability of remote desktop sessions. Packet drops can also cause retransmissions, delays, and errors in TCP-based protocols such as RDP2. To view this metric in Prism, go to Entities > Compute & Storage > VMs > Summary View and select a VM. Then, in the Details View, go to Metrics > Performance and select Virtual NIC receive packet dropped from the drop-down menu3.

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

According to the Nutanix Support & Insights web search result1, erasure coding is a data savings technique that utilizes stripes and parity calculation in a Nutanix cluster. Erasure coding increases the usable capacity on a cluster by reducing the replication factor of data blocks. Instead of replicating data, erasure coding uses parity information to rebuild data in the event of a disk or node failure. Erasure coding can save up to 50% of storage space compared to replication factor 2, and up to 75% compared to replication factor 32.

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.

A bully VM is a VM that consumes too many resources and causes other VMs to starve. A bully VM can affect the performance and availability of other VMs on the same host or cluster by hogging CPU, memory, disk, or network resources. A bully VM can be identified by using the VM Profile feature in Prism Central2. 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 follows3:

• 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.

To identify a bully 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.

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.

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.

The correct answer is D. VM Storage Controller Bandwidth.

VM Storage Controller Bandwidth is a metric that measures the amount of data that a VM is reading and writing to the storage fabric. The storage fabric is the network of storage controllers (CVMs) that provide distributed and fault-tolerant storage services to the VMs on the Nutanix cluster. The VM Storage Controller Bandwidth metric shows the read and write bandwidth in megabytes per second (MBps) for each VM. The higher the bandwidth, the more data the VM is transferring to and from the storage fabric1.

The administrator can use Prism Central to view the VM Storage Controller Bandwidth metric for each VM in a chart or a widget. The administrator can also use Prism Central to view other metrics related to the VM’s storage performance, such as VM Storage Controller IOPS, VM Storage Controller Latency, and VM Disk Usage2.

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.

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.

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'.

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.

The correct answer is B. The existing and the expansion node are on different VLANs.

The output shows that the new node has a br0-up bond with four interfaces: eth0, eth1, eth2, and eth3. The bond is configured with LACP active and LACP fallback set to false. This means that the bond will only work if the upstream switch supports LACP and is configured to form an LACP group with the four interfaces. However, the output also shows that the bond has no IP address assigned to it, which indicates that the bond is not operational. One possible reason for this is that the existing and the expansion node are on different VLANs, and the upstream switch is not configured to allow the VLAN traffic on the LACP group. This would prevent the new node from communicating with the cluster and being discovered by the Expand Cluster function in Prism.

To verify this, the administrator can check the VLAN configuration on the upstream switch and compare it with the existing nodes. Alternatively, the administrator can use the “manage_ovs show_uplinks” command on an existing node and compare the output with the new node. If there is a VLAN mismatch, the administrator can either change the VLAN configuration on the switch or on the new node to match the existing nodes.

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.