NCA-6.5 Nutanix Certified Associate (NCA) v6.5 exam Questions and Answers

The Cluster Runway is located in the Prism Element Analysis dashboard. The Cluster Runway provides an overview of the cluster's performance, including CPU, Memory, and Disk usage, and can be used to identify any potential performance issues. Reference: https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Prism-Admin-Guide-v5_6:pr-dashboard-overview-c.html

Pulse should only be disabled under the guidance of Nutanix Support and not for any other reason. Pulse is a feature of the Nutanix cluster that enables the cluster to report back health and performance data to Nutanix for troubleshooting and performance optimization purposes. Disabling Pulse without the guidance of Nutanix Support is not recommended, as it could lead to potential issues with the cluster. Reference: https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Platform-Administrator-Guide-v5_7:pag-pulse-c.html

When uploading images from a local workstation to Prism Central, the destination cluster is determined based on the alphabetical order of the cluster names. Specifically, the first available cluster in alphabetical order is selected as the destination for the image upload.

This behavior is documented in the Prism Central Admin Guide, which states that when you upload an image to Prism Central, "the image is stored in the first cluster that has sufficient space and starts with the letter that appears first in the image name."

Role-based access control (RBAC) allows administrators to configure access control for different users and groups in the Nutanix cluster. This feature is available through Prism Central, where administrators can configure roles and permissions for different users and groups. Reference: https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Platform-Administrator-Guide-v5_7:pag-user-role-c.html

Anti-affinity rules are used to ensure that virtual machines are not running on the same physical host. This can be useful in situations where the administrator wants to ensure that virtual machines are running on different hosts for high availability and to minimize the impact of a host failure. By creating an anti-affinity rule via CLI, the administrator can ensure that the SQL Server VMs are running on different hosts while still leveraging high availability in case of host failure. Reference: https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Web-Console-Guide-Prism-v5_11:wc-affinity-anti-affinity-rules_wc-affinity-anti-affinity-rules.html

Data Obfuscation is a feature in Pulse that helps secure a customer's private information by obfuscating the data before it is sent to Nutanix. This ensures that any data sent to Nutanix is not visible to anyone other than the customer, and helps protect sensitive data from unauthorized access or malicious actors. Reference: https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Platform-Administrator-Guide-v5_7:pag-pulse-c.html

When upgrading AOS in a vSphere-based Nutanix cluster with no automatic live migration, the VMs will continue to run on the same host, providing that the VMs have neither affinity nor anti-affinity rules configured. The upgrade process will put the host into maintenance mode, which will cause the VMs running on that host to be suspended temporarily. Once the AOS upgrade is completed, the host will be taken out of maintenance mode, and the VMs will be resumed, but running on the same host. The AOS upgrade process does not automatically live migrate VMs to other hosts, because the automatic live migration feature is not enabled in the cluster. Reference: https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Web-Console-Guide-Prism-v5_11:wc-upgrading-aos_wc-upgrading-aos.html

When updating the LCM Framework on a dark site web server, the LCM Framework Bundle should be extracted to the "release" directory. This directory is specifically designated for holding the updated LCM Framework files, and the update process will look for the files in this location. Extracting the bundle to a different directory, such as "upgrade", "software" or "install" would not be sufficient as the LCM Framework update process may not be able to find the files. Reference: https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=LCM-Guide-v2_11:lc-updating-the-lcm-framework_lc-updating-the-lcm-framework.html

A vDisk is a file that is stored on storage devices owned by a CVM. A vDisk represents a virtual disk that is attached to a VM or a CVM. A Storage Pool is a logical grouping of physical disks in a cluster. An Extent Group is a collection of data blocks that belong to a vDisk. A Container is a logical grouping of vDisks that share the same storage policies and settings. References: https://www.nutanix.com/content/dam/nutanix/resources/misc/ebg-nca-6-5.pdf (pages 31-32)

In Prism Central, Image Placement Policies can be used to map images to target clusters using categories. An Image Placement Policy is a set of rules that determine where an image should be placed on the Nutanix cluster. These rules are based on categories, such as the image's OS type, the target cluster's hardware type, and other factors. By creating image placement policies, you can ensure that images are placed on the appropriate clusters, and that they are compatible with the hardware and software requirements of those clusters.

For example, you could create a placement policy that specifies that all Windows images should be placed on a specific cluster, and that all Linux images should be placed on another cluster. You can also set image replication policies on image placement policies, to ensure that images are replicated to multiple clusters for disaster recovery purposes.

To compare the performance of multiple VMs on a Nutanix cluster, an administrator can use an Analysis Chart. Analysis Charts allow administrators to view and compare performance metrics for multiple entities, such as VMs, over time. This can help the administrator diagnose performance issues by comparing the performance of the slow and unresponsive VM to other VMs on the cluster

The oplog is a critical component of the Nutanix distributed storage fabric and can be impacted by high CPU Ready time. When the CPU Ready time is high, there can be delays in writing data to the oplog, resulting in slower overall cluster performance. Additionally, high CPU Ready time can also lead to increased write amplification, further reducing I/O performance.

Nutanix's scale-out storage technology, the Distributed Storage Fabric, makes its hyperconverged platform possible. It provides a single, unified layer of storage to multiple nodes in a cluster, allowing data to be stored, accessed, and processed in a distributed, fault-tolerant manner. Reference: https://www.nutanix.com/what-is-nutanix/distributed-storage-fabric/

In order to resolve the issue of not receiving NCC health checks and alerts for newly-added nodes via email, the administrator should configure SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) settings. SMTP is used to send email notifications from the Nutanix cluster, and if it is not configured properly, the health checks and alerts will not be sent via email. The administrator should check the SMTP settings in the Prism web console and ensure that they are correct and that the correct email address is specified for receiving notifications. This will ensure that the health checks and alerts for the newly-added nodes are sent to the correct recipient.

An administrator can create an Entity Chart to view the logical usage for multiple storage containers in one chart. This chart can be created from the Prism Element dashboard, and it provides a visual representation of the logical usage of each container, allowing administrators to easily compare the usage of multiple containers at once.

Nutanix supports high availability (HA) for VMs by automatically restarting them on other nodes in the cluster in case of a node failure. The cluster CPU and memory utilization will increase temporarily until the failed node is recovered, but there will be no user impact. References: https://www.nutanix.com/content/dam/nutanix/resources/misc/ebg-nca-6-5.pdf (page 28)

Enabling Flash Mode will set the storage tier preference to SSD, meaning that data will be stored on the high-performance SSD storage tier. Flash Mode is designed to speed up the performance of applications by ensuring that the most frequently used data is stored on the faster storage tier. Reference: https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Platform-Administrator-Guide-v5_7:pag-flash-mode-c.html

Replication Factor 2 (RF2) refers to the number of copies of data written in the cluster. When RF2 is enabled, the Nutanix Distributed File System (NDFS) will create two copies of the data, resulting in higher levels of data durability and availability. Reference: https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Advanced-Administration-v5_7:aa-ndfs-rf2-c.html

Nutanix Objects is a storage service that can store petabytes of unstructured data and supports S3 APIs. It is a distributed object store that provides an easy-to-use interface for storing and managing objects and data. It also provides advanced features such as versioning, replication, encryption, and access control. Reference: https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Platform-Administrator-Guide-v5_7:pag-objects-c.html