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

According to the Nutanix Support & Insights web search result1, if the owner Controller VM becomes unavailable, the address moves to another Controller VM, ensuring that it is always available. This IP address is also used as a cluster-wide address by clients configured as part of Nutanix Files and other products. Therefore, the host will automatically redirect I/O and VMs will continue running without any interruption.

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.

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

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.

Zombie VMs and overprovisioned VMs are two types of inefficient VMs that can waste resources and increase costs in a Nutanix environment. Zombie VMs are VMs that are powered on but have no activity or utilization for a long period of time. Overprovisioned VMs are VMs that have more resources allocated than they actually need or use. Both types of VMs can be identified by adding predefined views to a report in Prism Central.

A predefined view is a template that defines what data is displayed and how that data is represented in a report. Prism Central provides several predefined views for different purposes, such as capacity planning, performance analysis, anomaly detection, and efficiency optimization. To add a predefined view to a report, go to Operations > Reports > New Report and select the desired view from the list1.

The Zombie VMs List view shows the list of zombie VMs in the environment based on the CPU usage, memory usage, disk IOPS, and network throughput metrics. The view also shows the amount of resources wasted by these VMs and the potential savings that can be achieved by deleting or resizing them2.

The Overprovisioned VMs List view shows the list of overprovisioned VMs in the environment based on the CPU usage, memory usage, disk IOPS, and network throughput metrics. The view also shows the amount of resources wasted by these VMs and the potential savings that can be achieved by resizing them3.

By adding these two views to a report, an administrator can identify inefficient VMs and take appropriate actions to optimize resource utilization and reduce costs.

References: 1: Reports Management - Prism Central Guide 2: Zombie VMs List - Prism Central Guide 3: Overprovisioned VMs List - Prism Central Guide

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

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.

"An administrator has been tasked with increasing security on Nutanix cluster by disabling password authentication when accessing the CVM and AHV hosts and instead moving to key-based SSH, What is the easiest way for the administrator to meet these needs? Enable Cluster Lockdown and provide an RSA key."

 Cluster Lockdown mode disables password authentication when accessing the CVM and AHV hosts and instead requires key-based SSH. To enable Cluster Lockdown mode, you need to provide an RSA key.

Therefore, by enabling Cluster Lockdown mode and providing an RSA key, you can increase security on Nutanix cluster by disabling password authentication when accessing the CVM and AHV hosts and instead moving to key-based SSH with minimal effort.

https://next.nutanix.com/how-it-works-22/streamlined-login-and-increase-security-key-based-ssh-login-37397

"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.

An agent VM is a special type of VM that is used for running services or applications that are not affected by high availability (HA) events or host maintenance. An agent VM is never migrated to any other host in the cluster. If an HA event occurs or the host is put in maintenance mode, agent VMs are powered off and are powered on on the same host once that host returns to a normal state. This behavior is different from regular VMs, which are migrated to another host in the cluster if possible, or restarted on the same host if not possible1.

Therefore, during an AHV upgrade, an administrator may find that a critical VM was powered off rather than migrated to another host if the VM was marked as an agent VM. This can be done either from the Prism web console by selecting the Use this VM as an agent VM option in the Update VM dialog box, or from the aCLI by using the vm.create or vm.update commands with the agent_vm=true parameter2. To avoid this situation, the administrator should ensure that any critical VMs are not marked as agent VMs before starting the AHV upgrade.

Step 1 ---> Login into Prism Element.

Step 2 ---> Select the Gear Icon at top right of the page.

Step 3 ---> Click Upgrade Software.

Step 4 ---> Select the component to upgrade.

Step 5 ---> Click download.

Step 6 ---> Once the download completes, select upgrade.

Invalid:-

1 - Select Prism Central.

2 - Select user login.

3 - On left select upgrade Prism Central.

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 Nutanix Support & Insights web search result1, route injection is used to maintain I/O operations in the cluster when the Stargate service becomes unavailable on a single CVM on an AHV node. Route injection is a mechanism that allows the CVMs to communicate with each other and redirect the I/O requests to another healthy CVM in the cluster. Route injection uses the Linux kernel routing table to add or delete routes dynamically, based on the availability of the Stargate service on each CVM.

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.

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

The issue described pertains to the inability to ping the IPMI IPs after moving the IPMI network links to the actual switches with specific VLAN configurations. The two changes that the administrator needs to make are:

A. SSH to AHV and set the VLAN ID using IPMI Tool: Since all VLANs are tagged in the new network configuration, the IPMI network interface needs to be aware of the VLAN it’s supposed to communicate on. This can be achieved by setting the VLAN ID using the IPMI Tool on the AHV.

C. SSH to AHV and change the IP address using IPMI tool: If the IPMI IP addresses were initially set in a different subnet that is not routable in the new network configuration, the administrator would need to change the IPMI IP addresses to match the new network configuration. This can be done by SSHing to the AHV and using the IPMI Tool to change the IP address.

A constrained VM is one that does not have enough resources for the demand and can lead to performance bottlenecks. A VM is considered constrained when it exhibits one or more of the following baseline values, based on the past 21 days: CPU usage > 90% (moderate), 95% (severe) CPU ready time > 5%, 10% Memory usage > 90%, 95% Memory swap rate > 0 Kbps1. To provide adequate host resources, resize (increase) the constrained VMs1.

According to the web search results, Prism Central is a multi-cluster manager that provides a single, centralized management interface for Nutanix environments12. One of the features of Prism Central is multi-cluster Single Sign On (SSO), which allows users to log in once and access multiple clusters without re-entering credentials3.

According to the Nutanix Prism Element Guide, Prism Element uses a single SSL certificate on a Nutanix cluster. The certificate is used to secure the communication between the web browser and the Prism web console. The certificate is also used to authenticate the cluster to external services, such as Active Directory, SMTP, and SNMP. The certificate can be either self-signed or signed by a trusted certificate authority (CA). The certificate can be replaced or renewed through the Prism web console or the ncli command-line interface.

Nutanix Move is a tool that allows you to migrate VMs from different sources to Nutanix AHV with minimal downtime and complexity. Nutanix Move supports migration from Hyper-V to AHV, including VMs configured for UEFI-boot. UEFI stands for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, which is a standard for the software interface between the operating system and the firmware. UEFI-boot is a mode of booting that uses UEFI instead of BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) to load the operating system. UEFI-boot offers some advantages over BIOS-boot, such as faster boot time, larger disk support, and better security features1.

To migrate a VM configured for UEFI-boot from a Nutanix Hyper-V cluster to AHV, you need to use Nutanix Move and follow these steps2:

• Download and deploy the Nutanix Move appliance on the AHV cluster.
• Log in to the Nutanix Move web console and add the source Hyper-V environment and the target AHV environment.
• Create a migration plan and select the VMs that you want to migrate. You can choose either automatic or manual preparation mode for the migration.
• Start the migration plan and monitor the progress. The migration plan will perform data seeding, which is the process of copying the VM data from the source to the target in the background.
• When the data seeding is complete, perform a cutover, which is the process of shutting down the source VMs and powering on the target VMs. The cutover will also configure the boot device for the UEFI-boot VMs on AHV.
• Verify that the migrated VMs are working as expected on AHV.

References: 1: UEFI Boot - Nutanix Support & Insights 2: Hyper-V to AHV and Hyper-V to Nutanix Clusters on AWS VM Migration - Nutanix Support & Insights

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

Enable Memory Overcommit on the over-provisioned VMs is the most efficient resolution to enable additional VMs to be created. Memory overcommit allows VMs to use more memory than physically available on a host by compressing and swapping memory pages to storage1. This can improve memory utilization and increase VM density on a cluster1. However, memory overcommit is not supported when HA is configured to use reserved hosts, so you may need to disable HA reservation on the cluster before enabling memory overcommit1.

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.

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.

According to the image description, the exhibit shows a screenshot of a computer screen with a table of data. The table has 6 columns and 4 rows. The columns are labeled “Date”, “Time”, “Status”, “Details”, “Configuration”, and “Duration”. The rows contain information about different configurations and their statuses. The background is a light blue color. There is a pop-up message on the bottom right corner of the screen that reads “This question has been answered. Click here to enable the edit button.”

Based on the table data, it seems that the screenshot is taken from the Prism Central web console, showing the results of a cluster health check report. The report shows that there are four failed checks: Host Password Policy, CVM Password Policy, NTP Configuration, and Cluster Time Skew2. These checks indicate that some initial cluster configuration tasks were missed during the deployment process.

The Host Password Policy check verifies that the host passwords are not set to default values and are compliant with the password policy defined in Prism Central3. The CVM Password Policy check verifies that the CVM passwords are not set to default values and are compliant with the password policy defined in Prism Central4. These checks are important for ensuring the security and compliance of the cluster. Therefore, changing the host and CVM passwords from their default values and following the password policy guidelines are two initial cluster configuration tasks that were missed.

References: 1: VM Details View - Nutanix Support & Insights 2: Cluster Health - Nutanix Support & Insights 3: Host Password Policy - Nutanix Support & Insights 4: CVM Password Policy - Nutanix Support & Insights

According to the Troubleshooting hosted disk I/O performance problems (1008885), when using VMware hosted products, consider that both the virtual machines and host operating system often share the same disk resources and hardware. If a hard disk fails, the virtual machines that have data on the failed device will experience an HA event, causing them to restart on a node that contains the replica data.

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.

Nutanix provides two types of granular RBAC for AHV hosts: category based and cluster based3. Category based RBAC allows administrators to assign roles to users or groups based on categories, which are key-value pairs that can be applied to various entities in Prism Central, such as clusters, hosts, VMs, images, and networks. Categories can be used to group entities by different criteria, such as department, project, environment, or location. For example, an administrator can create a category key named Department and assign different values to it, such as Finance, Marketing, or Engineering. Then, the administrator can apply this category to different clusters or hosts and assign roles to users or groups based on this category. This way, users or groups can have different levels of access to different clusters or hosts depending on their department4.

Cluster based RBAC allows administrators to assign roles to users or groups based on specific clusters registered in Prism Central. For example, an administrator can create a role named Cluster Admin and assign it to a user or group for a particular cluster. This way, the user or group can have full access to that cluster and its hosts and VMs, but not to other clusters5.

According to the web search results, one of the requirements for cross-hypervisor disaster recovery (CHDR) is to install and configure Nutanix Guest Tools (NGT) on all the VMs2. NGT configures the VM with all the required drivers for VM portability. Without NGT, the VMs may fail to boot after being migrated to a different hypervisor type. 

The best way for the administrator to configure Prism to send encrypted messages to a set of recipients is to set the SMTP Security Mode to STARTTLS. This will ensure that all messages sent over SMTP are encrypted and secure. Additionally, the administrator should consider installing SSL certificates on Prism Central to ensure that the messages are being sent securely. Finally, the administrator should consider configuring Prism Central to use Cluster Lockdown, which will help ensure that the messages are only sent to the intended recipients.

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

According to the web search results, a consistency group is a group of related applications or services that must be recovered together in order to work properly, and this means more than being recovered at the same time67. They also typically need to be recovered to the same point in time6. Therefore, to meet the requirement of protecting all VMs of a multi-tier application at the same time, the administrator must create a consistency group for the application and place all VMs in it8. This way, the administrator can apply data protection policies and schedules to the entire consistency group as a single unit8.

Nutanix leverages a method for determining the bands called ‘Generalized Extreme Studentized Deviate Test’. A simple way to think about this is similar to a confidence interval where the values are between the lower and upper limits established by the algorithm.

Another web source3 shows an example of how anomaly detection works in Nutanix Prism Central. In the video, you can see that when the observed value of a metric deviates significantly from the predicted value based on historical data, an anomaly event is triggered and displayed on a chart.

Therefore, by comparing the observed values with the predicted values based on historical data, Nutanix anomaly detection can identify abnormal behavior and alert you accordingly.

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.

inline compression is a technique that compresses all incoming write I/O operations over 4 KB inline in the persistent write buffer (oplog)23. This approach enables you to use oplog capacity more efficiently and helps drive sustained performance2. From AOS 5.18 onward, inline compression (compression delay=0) is enabled by default for all new containers24.

https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/solutions/details?targetId=TN-2032-Data-Efficiency:TN-2032-Data-Efficiency

This will allow the administrator to quickly identify VMs that are overprovisioned or underutilized based on their performance metrics.

https://www.nutanix.com/support-services/training-certification/certifications/certification-details-nutanix-certified-professional-multicloud-infrastructure-6_5

The node is automatically re-imaged using the software currently running in the cluster. This is because Nutanix supports a feature called Auto Re-Image that allows adding nodes with different AOS versions to an existing cluster without manual intervention. The Auto Re-Image feature detects the AOS version mismatch and automatically downloads and installs the same AOS version as the cluster on the new node. This ensures that the cluster remains in a consistent state and avoids any compatibility issues.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.