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

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

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.

According to section 5 of the exam blueprint guide1, one of the topics covered is live migration. Live migration is the process of moving a running VM from one host to another without any downtime or interruption of service. To perform live migration, there are some prerequisites that must be met, such as:

• All AHV hosts have IP addresses in the same subnet
• All VMs are configured for the same VLAN
• The source and destination hosts have enough resources to accommodate the VM
• The VM does not have any PCI devices attached

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Explanation/Reference:

According to the Nutanix Support & Insights web search result2, VM NICs on AHV can operate in two modes: Access and Trunked. Access NICs are the default, and allow one VLAN on the NIC. Trunked NICs allow multiple VLANs on a single NIC for VMs that are VLAN aware. If you must use trunked NICs, follow the steps described in the web search result2. Therefore, the most efficient way to have a VM on an AHV cluster with access to multiple VLANs is to update a vNIC on the VM to operate in trunked mode for all desired VLANs.

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.

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 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.

The correct answer is C. Network latency.

The diagram shows a solution that uses synchronous replication between two remote protection domains, cluster site A and cluster site B. Synchronous replication is a feature that allows near-zero RPO (recovery point objective) by replicating data to the remote site before acknowledging writes to the local site. However, synchronous replication has some requirements and limitations that must be met for it to work properly. One of these requirements is that the network latency between the two sites must be less than or equal to 5 ms1. If the network latency is higher than 5 ms, the synchronous replication will fail and the protection policy will be suspended2.

Therefore, based on the diagram, the most likely cause of the issue is that the network latency between cluster site A and cluster site B is higher than 5 ms, which prevents the synchronous replication from working. To verify this, the administrator can use the “ncli cluster ping” command to measure the network latency between the two sites3. If the network latency is indeed higher than 5 ms, the administrator can either improve the network performance or switch to a different replication mode, such as near-synchronous or asynchronous.

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.

Categories are key-value pairs that can be used to tag entities such as VMs, images, networks, and projects in Prism Central. Categories can be used to create dynamic groups of entities based on their attributes, and assign roles and permissions to those groups3. In this case, a category such as OS=Linux can be used to group all Linux VMs and grant access rights to the Linux administration team.

This is because Nutanix uses a distributed storage fabric (DSF) that replicates data across multiple nodes and drives to ensure data resiliency. When a drive fails, the cluster detects the failure and initiates a data rebuild process to restore the replication factor (RF) of the affected containers. The data rebuild process does not affect the availability or performance of the VMs, as they can still access their data from other replicas on other nodes or drives. Therefore, there is no need to wait for 60 minutes, use a shared volume group, or trigger an HA event.

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

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.

One node hosts two VMs while the node being upgraded is in maintenance mode. This is because Nutanix supports a feature called Rolling Upgrade that allows upgrading AHV on a cluster without any downtime or impact to the VMs. The Rolling Upgrade feature performs the upgrade one node at a time, by putting the node in maintenance mode, evacuating the VMs to other nodes, upgrading AHV, and then bringing the node back online. The VM-VM anti-affinity policy ensures that the four VMs are not placed on the same node during the evacuation process, so one node will host two VMs temporarily while the other node is being upgraded.

Fault tolerance (FT) is the ability of a cluster to withstand node failures and maintain data availability. FT is determined by the replication factor (RF) of the data, which is the number of copies of each data block stored on different nodes. FT = RF - 1, meaning that the cluster can tolerate as many node failures as one less than the RF. Block awareness is a feature that enhances fault tolerance by ensuring that data copies are distributed across different blocks, which are groups of nodes that share a power source and network switch. Block awareness requires a minimum of three blocks and a minimum of six nodes in the cluster.

In this scenario, the administrator has been asked to enable block awareness and increase the fault tolerance to FT2 on a Nutanix AHV cluster with the following configuration: Four blocks, One node per block. The administrator will not be able to accomplish these tasks because:

• To enable block awareness, the cluster needs at least six nodes, but it only has four nodes.
• To increase the fault tolerance to FT2, the cluster needs at least five nodes per RF3 or seven nodes per RF4, but it only has four nodes.

Therefore, the administrator will need to add more nodes to the cluster before enabling block awareness and increasing the fault tolerance to FT2.

The storage policy value that can be inherited from a cluster is Compression. In the Nutanix Multicloud Infrastructure (NCP-MCI) 6.5, compression is a storage optimization feature that can be configured at the cluster level and inherited by all the entities within the cluster. This feature helps in reducing the storage footprint by compressing the data before writing it to the disk. The other options like IO performance, Storage Container, and QoS are not inherited from the cluster. They are configured and managed separately for each entity as per the requirements.

According to the Migration to a different processor web search result2, live migration of VMs depends on the source and destination hosts having the same CPU functions (CPU flags). Live migration requires the source and destination hosts to have CPUs from the same manufacturer, and only CPU functions which both hosts support are provided (same CPU generation, or by using VMware Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC)). If the administrator adds a node with older generation processors to an existing AHV cluster with newer generation processors, then live migration of VMs is prevented between newer and older processors, unless EVC is enabled.

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

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

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

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.

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 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.