NCP-EUC Nutanix Certified Professional - End User Computing (NCP-EUC) v6 Exam Questions and Answers

Storage Efficiency features that will provide better storage efficiency and performance improvement for a mix of full clones and non-persistent desktops deployed via Citrix MCS on a three-node cluster are Compression and Deduplication. Compression is a technology that reduces the size of data blocks by removing redundant information. Deduplication is a technology that eliminates duplicate blocks of data and reduces storage consumption. Both Compression and Deduplication can be enabled on a per-container basis and can provide significant savings for Citrix virtual desktop deployments that use cloning technologies such as MCS2.

According to the certification details1, one of the objectives is to “Configure and manage security features such as role-based access control (RBAC), SSL certificates, encryption at rest, and data protection.”

This answer seems to align with the security team’s feedback and the objective of managing security features using Nutanix technologies.

In Nutanix Prism Central, the Capacity Runway scenario provides details on the available capacity for the next 12 months based on the current usage pattern. This feature can help the administrator to plan and prepare the budget for the next fiscal year. The administrator can use this information to decide whether more resources need to be added to the Nutanix cluster or if the existing resources are sufficient.

https://www.nutanix.com/products/prism/prism-central

Prism Central planning tools can help you estimate the capacity runway of your cluster by considering the storage, CPU, and memory capacity. However, you need to have at least 21 days of data from a cluster to calculate the baseline runway estimates4.

The schedule has two rows: one for Weekdays and one for Tuesday and Thursday.

Each row has a column for Instances, which indicates how many instances should be running during that time range.

Each row also has a column for Time Range, which indicates the start and end time for running the instances.

The time range is expressed in 24-hour format, where 00:00 means midnight and 24:00 means midnight of the next day.

According to the exhibit, the schedule Dev has the following settings:

• On Weekdays (Monday to Friday), five instances are running from 09:00 am till 05:00 pm.
• On Tuesday and Thursday, five instances are running from 00:00 am till 24:00 pm.

The Citrix Optimizer tool is used to prepare Windows operating system images for use in a virtual desktop environment. Some of the actions that it takes to improve the gold image creation process include:

• Optimizes user environments for better performance: The tool removes unnecessary or redundant services, features, and applications from the image, which can improve performance and reduce resource usage.
• Uses built-in templates to perform optimizations: The tool comes with pre-configured templates that are optimized for specific environments, such as virtualdesktops or server workloads. These templates can be customized based on the specific needs of the organization.

https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX224676/citrix-optimizer-tool

https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/workspace-environment-management/service/using-environment-management/system-optimization/citrix-optimizer.html

Shadow Clones are a unique feature of the AOS storage that enables distributed caching of virtual disks (vDisks) used by virtual machines1. Shadow Clones provide effective caching optimization in distributed multireader scenarios, such as large VDI and cloud deployments2.

The warning message you see indicates that Shadow Clones are disabled on your Nutanix cluster. This may affect the performance of your Instant Clone desktop pool, as it will not benefit from the caching optimization provided by Shadow Clones.

https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/solutions/details?targetId=TN-2100-Performance-Analysis-Nutanix-Shadow-Clones:TN-2100-Performance-Analysis-Nutanix-Shadow-Clones

A snapshot is a point-in-time copy of a virtual machine that can be used as a template for creating new machines. A Citrix optimized Windows 10 image is a Windows 10 image that has been configured with best practices and optimizations for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops.

Using a snapshot of a Citrix optimized Windows 10 image can ensure that the persistent desktops have consistent performance, security, and user experience. It can also simplify the image management process by allowing you to update the snapshot with new patches or applications using Calm.

Calm is a tool that automates application lifecycle management across different environments. Calm can integrate with Citrix MCS to create, update, and delete virtual machines based on blueprints that define the configuration and dependencies of an application.

https://www.nutanix.com/support-services/training-certification/certifications/certification-details-nutanix-certified-professional-ncp-euc-v6

Frame is a cloud-based desktop-as-a-service platform that allows users to access Windows applications and desktops from any device1. A license server is a server that hosts a network licensing manager for software that requires licenses to run2. Frame supports using a utility server as a license server for Frame desktops1. A utility server is a stand-alone, general purpose Windows server that can be configured and managed from the Frame dashboard1.

https://docs.frame.nutanix.com/platform/admin/utility-servers/

According to Nutanix documentation, to use more than two monitors with Frame, you need to deploy the Frame App. The Frame App provides multi-monitor support, whereas using Frame through web browsers is currently limited to two monitors.

Frame App is a native application that provides a better user experience for accessing Frame desktops and applications than a web browser1. Frame App supports the Frame multi-monitor feature automatically. If an end user has more than one monitor attached to their device, Frame App prompts the user if they want to use all of their monitors1. Frame Administrators do not have to enable explicitly multi-monitor support for Frame App users1.

There are two types of Launchpads that exist in Frame: Application Launchpad and Desktop Launchpad2.

• An Application Launchpad is a representation of the applications that are available for streaming. Users can launch any application they have access to from this Launchpad. An example of an Application Launchpad is shown below:

• A Desktop Launchpad is a representation of the desktops that are available for streaming. Users can launch any desktop they have access to from this Launchpad. An example of a Desktop Launchpad is shown below:

https://www.nutanix.com/blog/work-from-home-anywhere-in-five-easy-steps

Nutanix Files is a software-defined, scale-out file storage solution that provides a repository for unstructured data, such as home directories, user profiles, departmental shares, applicationlogs, backups, and archives1. Nutanix Files also provides high availability and a unified single namespace for easy management2.

Nutanix's Shadow Clones feature is used to create linked clones or snapshots of base VMs, which can improve VM provisioning time and storage efficiency by reducing the amount of duplicated data.

If an administrator disables Shadow Clones within a company's VDI environment, it is likely that deployment times would increase as the number of deployed desktops increases. This is because linked clones or snapshots would no longer be used, so each new desktop deployment would require creating a full copy of the base VM.

Nutanix Shadow Clones allow for distributed caching of a particular disk or VM data, which are in a ‘multi-reader’ scenario. This can help in scenarios such as VDI or private clone boot storms, where VMs on multiple nodes read from the same set of base disks12

non-persistent VDI machines are deleted when they are rebooted, logged off, or shut down. Therefore, Windows Update policy should be configured to prevent automatic updates that may trigger a restart on these machines1.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-defender-for-endpoint/onboarding-and-servicing-non-persistent-vdi-machines-with/ba-p/1360721

ECC (Error Correcting Code) mode is a feature of some NVIDIA GPUs that provides error detection and correction for memory errors. However, ECC mode can interfere with vGPU functionality and prevent vGPU-enabled VMs from being created or started1. Therefore, two correct steps to resolve this issue are B (Disable ECC by running nvdia-smi -e 0) and D (Check if ECC Mode is turned on by running nvdia-smi -q | grep “ECC Mode” -A2).

https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/kbs/details?targetId=kA00e000000LKjOCAW

alert policies are rules that define the conditions for generating alerts on Nutanix clusters1. You can create custom alert policies based on your specific needs and preferences2Playbooks are automated workflows that perform actions based on triggers such as alerts3. You can create playbooks using predefined alerts or alerts matching criteria3.

To ensure that the vice president of IT infrastructure has the best possible experience and to be notified if any CPU resource constraints on the virtual desktop, one possible solution is to create a new alert policy to alert if the CPU on the virtual desktop is over a certain threshold (for example, 80%) and configure a playbook to send a notification (forexample, via email or Slack) to the administrator23. This way, the administrator can monitor the performance of the virtual desktop and take appropriate actions if needed.

https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Prism-Central-Guide-vpc_2022_6:mul-alert-policies-customize-system-pc-t.html

an action that the administrator should take to identify the virtual desktops in the environment that are using the most resources and causing resource contention is Filter the virtual desktops by Constrained: High. Constrained is a metric that indicates how often a virtual machine is unable to get its requested CPU resources. A high value means that the virtual machine is frequently starved for CPU and may experience performance degradation. By filtering the virtual desktops by Constrained: High, the administrator can see which ones are suffering from resource contention and take appropriate actions such as migrating them to less loaded hosts or increasing their CPU allocation.

https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Prism-Central-Guide-Prism-v6_0:mul-tasks-view-page-pc-r.html

Nutanix AHV Plug-In for Citrix Director provides more information on Citrix generated desktops running on Nutanix AHV. Some of the metrics that are available in customized reports are:

• VM CPU Usage
• VM Memory Usage
• VM Disk IOPS
• VM Disk Bandwidth

an action that the administrator should take to enable Shadow Clones for a VMWare Horizon Solution on AHV is Connect to Prism Central and execute the cluster enable –cluster_cluster_uuid 0xxx – show_clones=true command. Shadow Clones are a feature that helps decrease read latency by creating local copies of frequently accessed data blocks on each host2. To enable Shadow Clones, the administrator needs to connect to Prism Central and run a cluster command with the appropriate parameters1.

This is because having too many snapshots can cause serialization or deserialization errors when using the JSON serializer5

https://next.nutanix.com/product-updates/ahv-plug-in-for-citrix-director-1-1-4-0-released-39682