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

Replication Factor is configured on a Container entity. Containers group together virtual disks and files, and allow administrators to set policies on a group level. This allows for increased flexibility in managing storage resources and allows administrators to easily set policies across multiple virtual disks and files.

Replication Factor is configured on Containers. A container is a logical grouping of one or more storage pools and defines the storage resources available to virtual machines. The replication factor is a setting that determines the number of copies of data that are stored across the cluster. By configuring the replication factor on a container, you are setting the number of copies of data that will be stored for all virtual machines that are associated with that container.

For example, if you have a container with a replication factor of 3, it means that three copies of data will be stored across the cluster, and two copies are required to reconstruct the data in case of a failure.

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

Data Protection is a feature that ensures that data stored on a VM is protected against data loss in the event of hardware failure, data corruption, or other unexpected events. It typically includes features such as snapshots, replication, and backup, which enable administrators to create multiple copies of data and store them in different locations to provide redundancy and ensure availability.

Replication Factor is a related concept, but it is not a VM-level feature in and of itself. Replication Factor is a setting that can be configured at the storage level to determine how many copies of data are stored on different nodes in a distributed storage system. Data Locality and Deduplication are also related concepts, but they do not directly ensure continuous availability of data.

Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) is a NIC-teaming configuration that balances network traffic based on source/destination IP addresses and TCP/UDP ports. LACP allows the administrator to configure multiple NICs as a single logical NIC, known as a Link Aggregation Group (LAG), which can increase the available bandwidth and provide redundancy. LACP uses a hashing algorithm to distribute traffic across the NICs in the LAG, based on the source and destination IP addresses and TCP/UDP ports. This ensures that traffic is evenly distributed across the NICs, which helps to improve overall network performance and availability. Reference: https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Web-Console-Guide-Prism-v5_11:wc-network-configuring-uplink-ports_wc-network-configuring-uplink-ports.html

HTTP is the only option available for an administrator to upload a remote disk file to Image Configuration. FTP, SCP, and SFTP are not supported by Nutanix. References: https://www.nutanix.com/content/dam/nutanix/resources/misc/ebg-nca-6-5.pdf (page 24)

The Redfish Protocol and Lifecycle Manager (LCM) provide the biggest benefit of allowing BMC and BIOS updates to be done twice as quickly as before. This is because Redfish and LCM allow for updates to be done in parallel, rather than serially, which reduces the amount of time it takes for an update to be completed. Reference: https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Platform-Administrator-Guide-v5_7:pag-redfish-lcm-c.html

The type of relationship that a VM Affinity policy defines is VM to Host. A VM Affinity policy is used to specify which host a virtual machine should be placed on. This can be used to ensure that certain VMs are always running on the same host for performance or availability reasons. Additionally, VM Affinity policies can also be used to ensure that VMs are spread across multiple hosts for better load balancing.

Erasure coding is a data efficiency mechanism in Nutanix that replaces the traditional replication factor for suitable data. Erasure coding uses a technique known as "forward error correction" to spread data across multiple drives in a cluster, such that if some drives fail, the data can still be reconstructed. This allows for a much higher storage density and a more efficient use of disk space as compared to traditional replication, where multiple copies of the same data are stored across multiple drives. Deduplication and Compression are also data efficiency mechanisms in Nutanix which help to reduce the storage overhead by eliminating the redundant data. Intelligent Cloning is a Nutanix feature which helps to create multiple instant, space-efficient clones of a VM. Reference: https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Data-Services-Guide-v2_11:ds-erasure-coding-overview_ds-erasure-coding-overview.html

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

To configure Replication Factor 1 (RF1), the cluster must have at least three nodes. In RF1, data is replicated to two other nodes within the cluster, so having at least three nodes is necessary to ensure that the data is replicated. Moreover, when you configure RF1, the cluster must have a minimum of three nodes to ensure that the data is accessible even if one of the nodes goes down. Reference: https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Prism-Admin-Guide-v5_6:pr-data-protection-replication-factor-c.html

LCM (Lifecycle Manager) is a tool provided by Nutanix to automate software and firmware upgrades for Nutanix clusters. However, LCM is unable to perform firmware upgrades against a (D) Single-node cluster configuration.

This is because a single-node cluster does not have any redundancy, so there is no way to perform an upgrade without taking the entire cluster offline. In contrast, multi-node clusters can typically be upgraded in a rolling fashion, with one or more nodes being upgraded at a time while the rest of the cluster remains online.

LCM is capable of performing firmware upgrades against two-node, three-node, and five-node cluster configurations, as long as they meet the other requirements for LCM support (such as being on a supported AOS release and having the appropriate network connectivity).

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

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.

Nutanix Volumes uses a Filesystem Whitelist to control which external hosts can access the iSCSI block devices allocated to them. If the external host IP address is not in the Filesystem Whitelist, it will not be able to discover or connect to the Nutanix-hosted iSCSI block device. Jumbo frames, external client access, and network segmentation are not required for Nutanix Volumes to work. References: https://www.nutanix.com/content/dam/nutanix/resources/datasheets/ds-nutanix-acropolis-block-services.pdf (page 4) https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/solutions/details?targetId=BP-2049-Nutanix-Volumes:BP-2049-Nutanix-Volumes (page 7)

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 manage-ovs command can be used to find the correct VLAN ID from the CVM, as it allows the administrator to view and configure network settings for Open vSwitch (OVS). The ifconfig command can be used to view network interfaces and IP addresses, but not VLAN IDs. The acli command can be used to manage Acropolis services and objects, but not network settings. The ovs-vsctl command can be used to view and configure OVS settings, but it is not available on the CVM. References: https://www.nutanix.com/content/dam/nutanix/resources/misc/ebg-nca-6-5.pdf (page 38)

When an SSD fails within a node, the CVM on that node will reboot to maintain the health of the cluster. The CVM is responsible for managing the storage and virtualization components of the cluster, and a reboot is necessary to ensure that the cluster continues to function properly. The VMs running on that host will not be affected and continue to run, but the CVM will be unavailable for a short period of time until the reboot is completed. The Cluster continues to operate in a healthy state and doesn't go in read-only mode or cause any host to go down. Reference: https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Web-Console-Guide-Prism-v5_11:wc-monitoring-cluster-health_wc-monitoring-cluster-health.html

The Data Services IP address is the address that allows external connections to Nutanix storage presented by the Volumes feature. This address is used to access the storage from external sources and is used for replication and external snapshotting. Reference: https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Prism-Admin-Guide-v5_6:pr-storage-storage-networks-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