NCP-MCI-6.5 Exam Dumps - Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud Infrastructure (NCP-MCI) v6.5 exam

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 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.

Answer: D. Load the Virtual SCSI pass-through controller.

The error message shown in the image indicates that Windows 10 setup cannot find any drives to install the OS. This is because the Nutanix AHV hypervisor uses a virtual SCSI pass-through controller to present disks to the VMs, and Windows 10 does not have a built-in driver for this device. Therefore, the administrator needs to load the Nutanix VirtIO driver for the virtual SCSI pass-through controller during the OS installation process. The Nutanix VirtIO driver package contains various drivers that are specifically used by Windows VMs hosted in the Nutanix environment to enhance their stability and performance1. The administrator can download the latest Nutanix VirtIO driver package from the VirtIO downloads page of the Nutanix support portal. The administrator can then follow these steps to load the driver and install the OS2:

• On the Windows 10 setup screen, click Load driver.
• Insert a USB drive or mount an ISO image that contains the Nutanix VirtIO driver package.
• Browse to the location of the driver package and select the folder that matches the OS architecture (32-bit or 64-bit).
• Select the vioscsi.inf file and click Next.
• Wait for the driver to load and then click Refresh.
• Select the disk where you want to install Windows 10 and click Next.

References: 1: VirtIO Driver Versions for Windows 2: Installing Windows on AHV

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.

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 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

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.

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.

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.

 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.

Curator is the process that runs on every node in a Nutanix cluster and is responsible for data management tasks such as deduplication, compression, erasure coding, and replication factor compliance. Curator also handles disk failure recovery by scanning Cassandra to find all data previously hosted on the failed disk, and all disks in that node. Curator then rebuilds the data on other nodes in the cluster using the distributed storage fabric1.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Explanation/Reference:

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

The metrics that are relevant for this analysis are:

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

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.

First Preference:

• Policy is applied to a specific entity

2nd Preference:

• Policy is applied to an entity type in a category

3rd Preference:

• Policy is applied to an entity type in a cluster

4th Preference:

• Policy is applied to all entities of an entity type

Comprehensive Detailed Explanation with References:In Nutanix Prism, when multiple alert policies are created and applied to the same entities, the policies are evaluated based on their specificity. The order of precedence from highest to lowest is as follows:

• Policy is applied to a specific entity: Custom alert policies that are applied to specific entities take precedence over those applied to broader categories. This is because the more specific policy is usually created with a particular context or requirement in mind for that entity.
• Policy is applied to an entity type in a category: The next level of precedence is given to policies that are applied to all entities of a certain type within a specific category. Categories allow grouping of entities based on certain criteria, and policies applied here are more specific than to an entire cluster or entity type.
• Policy is applied to an entity type in a cluster: This refers to policies that are applied to all entities of a certain type within a specific cluster. This is more general than the above two but still targets a specific cluster environment.
• Policy is applied to all entities of an entity type: The lowest precedence is given to policies that are broadly applied to all entities of a particular type across the entire Nutanix environment.

This order ensures that the most specifically targeted policies are given priority, which allows for fine-tuned control and customization of alert policies. The details of alert policy precedence are typically covered in the Nutanix Prism Central Guide and the documentation related to Prism Central's alerting and policies.

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

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

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.

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 to fix this issue is to increase the amount of memory assigned to the VM from the Prism web console. This option allows the administrator to modify the VM configuration without accessing the CVM or shutting down the VM. The Prism web console provides a simple and intuitive interface for managing Nutanix clusters and VMs1. To change the memory allocation for a VM, the administrator can follow these steps2:

• Go to the VM dashboard
• Select the VM from the VMs list
• Choose Update
• Adjust the amount of memory assigned to the VM
• Click Save

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

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

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

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

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

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

Prism Element and NCC are two ways to run all NCC checks manually on a Nutanix cluster. Prism Element is the web console that provides management and monitoring capabilities for a single Nutanix cluster. Prism Element has a Health dashboard that shows the status of various components and services in the cluster, such as disks, nodes, CVMs, NCC, and alerts. The Health dashboard also allows the administrator to run NCC checks manually by using the Actions drop-down menu on the right side of the screen. The administrator can choose to run all NCC checks or specific checks based on the category or severity. The NCC checks will run in the background and generate a report that can be viewed or downloaded from the Summary tab. This method is easier and faster than running NCC from the command line on the CVM.

NCC stands for Nutanix Cluster Check, which is a framework of scripts that performs system checks and validations on Nutanix clusters. NCC can detect issues related to hardware, software, configuration, hypervisor, networking, and more. NCC can be run from the command line interface (CLI) of any CVM in the cluster by using the ncc command. To run all NCC checks manually, the administrator can use the command ncc health_checks run_all, which will execute all available checks and display the results on the screen. This method is more comprehensive and detailed than running NCC from Prism Element.

References: : [Health Dashboard - Prism Element Guide] : [Nutanix Cluster Check (NCC) - Nutanix Support & Insights] : [Running NCC Checks - Nutanix Support & Insights]

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

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.

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

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

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

A. This statement is incorrect because there is no static threshold set to trigger a critical alert at 6000 MB. The graph shows a peak that goes above 6000 MB, but the alert configuration below does not specify a static threshold at this value.

B. This is the correct statement. The configuration under "Behavioral Anomaly" is set to alert every time there is an anomaly, with a critical level alert set to trigger when the I/O working set size is between 0 MB and 4000 MB. The graph illustrates that the anomalies (highlighted in pink) occur when the working set size exceeds the normal range (blue band). Therefore, any anomaly detected above 4000 MB would trigger a critical alert.

C. This statement is incorrect because there is no indication that a warning alert is configured to trigger after 3 anomalies. The exhibit does not show any configuration that specifies an alert based on the number of anomalies.

D. This statement is incorrect as there's no indication that a warning alert will be triggered based on the I/O working set size exceeding the blue band. The alert settings are configured to ignore anomalies below 4000 MB and to trigger a critical alert for anomalies above this threshold.

The settings displayed in the exhibit are typically part of Nutanix's Prism infrastructure management platform, which can set various thresholds for performance metrics and trigger alerts based on those thresholds. The behavior is defined in the Prism documentation where the alert configuration is outlined.

A managed network is a type of network that can be created on an AHV cluster and allows VMs to automatically be assigned an IP address at creation time. A managed network uses the Nutanix IP Address Management (IPAM) service, which provides DHCP and DNS functionality for the VMs on the network. A managed network can be configured with a subnet range, a default gateway, and DNS servers. The IPAM service will allocate IP addresses from the subnet range to the VMs and register their hostnames in the DNS servers. The IPAM service will also release the IP addresses when the VMs are deleted or moved to another network1.

To create a managed network on an AHV cluster, the administrator can use Prism Element or Prism Central. The steps are as follows2:

• In Prism Element, go to the Network Configuration page and click Create Network.
• In Prism Central, go to the Networks page and click Create.
• Enter a name and description for the network.
• Select Managed as the network type.
• Enter the subnet range, default gateway, and DNS servers for the network.
• Optionally, enable VLAN tagging and enter a VLAN ID for the network.
• Click Save.

https://next.nutanix.com/installation-configuration-23/nutanix-vlan-34170

According to the web search results, one possible cause of inter-VM communication failure between hosts is that the switch is not configured to allow VLAN 15 traffic. VLAN 15 is the default VLAN ID used by AHV for internal communication between CVMs and hosts. If the switch blocks or drops VLAN 15 packets, it will prevent inter-VM communication across hosts4. To enable full inter-VM communication, the administrator should update the switch to specifically allow VLAN 15 traffic on the ports connected to the AHV hosts.

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