Manage Clusters within a Nutanix Multicloud Environment

NCP-MCI-7.5 · 75 questions

• You are preparing a four-node AHV cluster for an AOS upgrade using Lifecycle Manager. The LCM pre-upgrade health check reports a warning but allows you to proceed. Before clicking 'Upgrade', what is the most appropriate action to ensure cluster stability?
• A Nutanix administrator initiates a cluster upgrade via Life Cycle Manager (LCM). The pre-upgrade checks fail, citing that one Controller VM (CVM) is reporting high memory usage and is currently inaccessible for SSH. The administrator needs to proceed with the upgrade to patch a critical security vulnerability. What is the appropriate next step?
• You are performing a rolling upgrade of AOS and AHV on a four-node Nutanix cluster hosting production VMs. The cluster is healthy, and you have confirmed sufficient redundancy for a rolling reboot. During the upgrade, what is the expected behavior for the running virtual machines?
• After completing a planned AOS and AHV upgrade window, you notice that newly released software inventory items are not appearing in the LCM Inventory list on Prism Element. The upgrade completed successfully, and the cluster is healthy. What should you do first to make the new software versions visible in LCM?
• An administrator adds a single new node to an existing 3-node AHV cluster. The cluster uses a default storage container with a Replication Factor (RF) of 2. The new node contributes 10 TB of raw flash capacity. The administrator expects the total usable capacity of the cluster to increase by 10 TB. However, the capacity dashboard shows only a 5 TB increase in usable capacity. What is the primary reason for this discrepancy?
• You are adding four new nodes to an existing AHV cluster. Prism Element rejects the expansion with a 'Hardware Compatibility Not Confirmed' error. What is the most likely cause?
• A physical node in a four-node Nutanix AHV cluster has failed and requires hardware replacement. The administrator needs to remove the failed node from the cluster inventory and insert the new node, ensuring that no data is lost and cluster redundancy is maintained throughout the process. Which sequence of actions should the administrator perform first?
• An LCM precheck for an AOS upgrade stops with a warning that a component's state is stale, while hardware health and CVM services are normal. What should you do before retrying the upgrade?
• An administrator needs to upgrade both AOS and AHV on a 4-node Nutanix cluster to the latest stable release. The environment requires minimal downtime and consistent versioning across all nodes. Which method should the engineer use to perform this upgrade?
• You are planning a LCM upgrade for a 4-node AHV cluster. The LCM pre-check reports a single disk in a failed state. The customer insists on proceeding to meet a change window deadline. What is the required action before initiating the upgrade?
• An LCM-managed 4-node AHV cluster needs upgrades to LCM framework, AOS, and AHV. The admin wants minimal disruption and correct dependency handling. Which upgrade sequence should you use?
• You have just completed a Prism-based LCM upgrade of a four-node AHV cluster. The LCM progress bar reaches 100% and the status shows 'Completed'. Before declaring the maintenance window closed, what is the single most critical validation step to ensure the environment is stable?
• You add two nodes to a four-node AHV cluster. An hour later, Prism shows the original nodes with high disk usage and the new nodes with low usage. The cluster is healthy and workloads are running. What should you expect?
• You have just completed the initial configuration of a new Nutanix cluster running AOS and AHV. The cluster is currently managed solely by its local Prism Element interface. Your organization requires centralized management, unified monitoring, and policy enforcement across this new cluster and several existing sites using Prism Central. Which action must you perform to achieve this centralized management?
• A Nutanix administrator initiates a rolling upgrade using LCM on a four-node AHV cluster. The upgrade process pauses briefly on the first node to drain workloads. What is the expected behavior for the virtual machines currently running on that specific node during this drain phase?
• During a planned LCM upgrade to AOS 6.5, the process halts at 40% on one CVM due to a transient network timeout. The cluster remains fully operational, serving production VMs without interruption. The upgrade job shows a 'Failed' status for that node, but the other nodes completed successfully. What is the correct next step?
• An administrator renames a production cluster from 'Prod-01' to 'Prod-Core' via Prism Element to align with a new naming convention. Several hours later, Prism Central stops reporting metrics for this cluster, and LCM cannot push updates to it. The cluster nodes are healthy, and SSH access to the CVMs works. What is the most likely cause of this management-plane disruption?
• Your team plans to expand an AHV cluster using nodes that run a different AOS and hypervisor version than the existing cluster. Before adding the nodes, what should the engineer do?
• You are preparing for a scheduled maintenance window to upgrade AOS on a four-node Nutanix cluster hosting critical production VMs on AHV. The window is tight, and downtime is strictly prohibited. You initiate the upgrade via Prism Element. How does the upgrade process handle the running VMs to meet the zero-downtime requirement?
• You are provisioning a new storage container for a production database on a Nutanix cluster. The application requires that data remains accessible and writable even if two nodes fail simultaneously. You have sufficient raw capacity available on the cluster. Which replication factor should you configure for this container to meet the availability requirement without over-provisioning?
• A production container is configured with Replication Factor 2. During maintenance, one AHV node fails and is powered off. The administrator must confirm the container can continue serving VMs without data loss. Which failure domain does RF2 provide?
• You are provisioning a new container for a critical SQL Server workload on a 5-node AHV cluster. The CISO mandates that the storage layer must tolerate the simultaneous failure of two nodes without data loss or service interruption. You must choose between configuring the container for Replication Factor 2 (RF2) or Replication Factor 3 (RF3). Which configuration meets the resilience requirement, and what is the primary trade-off?
• You change the Replication Factor (RF) from 3 to 2 on an existing storage container named 'Gold' that currently hosts several running VMs. No data migration is initiated. What is the immediate effect on the existing VM data stored on this container?
• An administrator enables inline compression on a high-write, low-read AHV container to save capacity. After the feature activates, Prism reports a significant drop in logical data footprint, but application teams report intermittent write latency spikes during peak business hours. What is the most likely cause of this performance degradation?
• An administrator is evaluating deduplication for a Prism container that holds many identical Windows desktop images. What should be confirmed before enabling it?
• A container hosts mixed production VMs. Both compression and deduplication are enabled. During data-reduction jobs, node CPU and memory use rises, and capacity savings are modest for some VMs. Which condition best justifies keeping both features enabled on this container?
• A Nutanix administrator is reviewing capacity efficiency on an AHV cluster using RF2 containers. Management proposes enabling EC-X instead of keeping full replication for selected workloads. Which statement best describes the trade-off?
• A latency-sensitive OLTP VM on AHV is moved from an RF2 container to an EC-X container, and write latency rises. Which storage efficiency placement should an administrator choose to meet the low-latency requirement?
• In Prism Element, a storage container reports provisioned capacity far above physical usable capacity, while physical used capacity is only 30%. All attached VM disks are thin-provisioned. What should the engineer do?
• On an AHV cluster, a storage container has thin provisioning enabled for VM disks. VMs continue writing new data, and Prism Central eventually reports insufficient container space even though allocated capacity seemed available. Which risk does thin provisioning introduce?
• An administrator configures a storage container with 10 TiB of raw capacity on a four-node AHV cluster. The container uses RF 2, with compression, deduplication, and EC-X disabled. Assuming no metadata or operational reserve overhead, what is the approximate maximum usable capacity?
• A hybrid Nutanix cluster contains both SSD and HDD nodes. An admin creates a container for latency-sensitive database VMs and another for archive VMs, both with similar data reduction settings. Which statement best describes how AOS handles storage tier behavior for these workloads?
• In a hybrid Nutanix cluster, an application experiences sporadic latency spikes. Analysis shows that a small subset of frequently accessed blocks resides on HDDs while less frequently accessed data occupies SSDs. You need to ensure that hot data automatically migrates to the SSD tier without manual intervention or application changes. Which AOS storage feature provides this behavior?
• An administrator notices that post-process compression and EC-X conversion are not completing on a container after recent writes. Which Nutanix AOS component should be checked because it performs these background storage optimization and data-reduction tasks?
• During a Nutanix performance review, an AHV VM sees high storage latency, and you need to confirm which AOS service handles the primary data path for VM disk I/O. Which service should you examine?
• A Nutanix administrator is tuning storage efficiency on a container that hosts both a random-write-heavy database and a sequential-write-heavy backup target. Which placement best matches Nutanix storage efficiency behavior to these I/O patterns?
• An administrator enables deduplication and compression on an AOS container that stores guest-encrypted, already compressed database backups. What reduction should be expected?
• During a planned power-down of one AHV node in an EC-X-enabled cluster, Prism shows data reconstruction in progress. What impact should the administrator expect while EC-X rebuilds data on the surviving nodes?
• An engineer creates a new AHV VM that needs ordinary LAN connectivity through the cluster’s default data path. Which bridge should the VM NIC use?
• An administrator must isolate application traffic from management traffic on an AHV cluster. Existing management VMs use the default management network. Which action provides the required network isolation?
• An administrator configures an AHV host bond in active-backup mode to provide link redundancy. If the active NIC loses its physical link, what behavior should be expected?
• An administrator configures an AHV host bond for active-active link aggregation across two 10 Gb NICs, but the upstream switch ports remain separate access ports. What must be configured on the switches so the aggregated link behaves as one logical connection?
• An AHV node bond is set to 802.3ad for LACP, but the node shows degraded network redundancy. The physical switch ports are configured as independent access ports. What must be done first to make the bond operate correctly?
• An AHV cluster needs two application VLANs, 100 and 200, to reach VMs over the same physical NIC. What should the administrator do so both VLANs can traverse that interface?
• An administrator creates an AHV network in Prism with no VLAN ID and connects a VM to it. The host uplink is configured as a trunk on the physical switch with native VLAN 10 and allowed VLANs 10 and 20. What is the expected behavior of that VM's traffic?
• An administrator is preparing AHV nodes and must keep IPMI/BMC access separate from workload data traffic. Which action creates true out-of-band management isolation?
• An engineer is configuring AHV networking for a new three-node Nutanix cluster. The cluster must be managed by Prism Element and Prism Central, and CVMs must communicate for cluster services. Which networking requirement must be met for the CVM IP addresses?
• An administrator must enforce firewall-like rules between application tiers on AHV VMs managed by Prism Central. Which capability provides this policy enforcement at the hypervisor network layer?
• Your Nutanix AHV cluster hosts web, application, and database VMs on separate VLANs. You need microsegmentation so web talks only to application, application only to database, and all other east-west traffic is denied. Which Nutanix capability should you use?
• A VM with a Flow security policy moves from one AHV host to another in the same Prism Central-managed cluster. What happens to the policy enforcement?
• A Nutanix AHV administrator needs to keep Finance and Production VM traffic in separate broadcast domains. The administrator asks whether creating another bridge is equivalent to assigning another VLAN. Which action provides VLAN segmentation instead of merely creating another bridge domain?
• During a maintenance window, one physical uplink in an AHV Linux bond operating in active-backup mode fails while VMs are running. What should the administrator expect?
• A Nutanix AHV cluster is configured with a bridge using jumbo frames and an MTU of 9000. The physical switch ports connecting the cluster remain at the default MTU of 1500. Large storage I/O from VMs attached to the bridge intermittently fails. Which requirement explains this behavior?
• After an AHV VLAN and bond change, Prism Central reports that cluster services cannot resolve hostnames. Other LCM and health checks pass, and VMs on the new network can ping IP addresses. Which action should the administrator perform first to isolate the issue?
• After segmenting management and storage networks on an AHV cluster, Prism reports time skew on CVMs and AHV hosts. NTP servers are reachable from a workstation but not from the cluster. What should the administrator do first to resolve the health warning?
• Two AHV VMs in the same Prism Central cluster cannot communicate with each other. Each VM is connected to a different VLAN, and both VLANs have gateways. The engineer needs to identify why traffic fails. What should be verified first?
• After modifying an AHV bond and management bridge on a Nutanix cluster, one CVM becomes unreachable from Prism Element, while VMs on other VLANs remain reachable. Which action best isolates the management-plane connectivity problem?
• A Nutanix administrator must configure storage containers, network bridges, and local alerts on a single AHV cluster without using a centralized console. Which interface should be used for these cluster-local tasks?
• Your organization operates three separate Nutanix clusters across two geographic sites. You need a single management console to monitor cluster health, manage VMs, and apply consistent policies across all three. Which Nutanix component should you deploy to achieve this unified view?
• An administrator registers a new AHV cluster to Prism Central. What capability does this registration primarily provide?
• A team member must power on and shut down AHV VMs in a Nutanix environment managed by Prism Central, but must not modify storage containers. Which RBAC approach follows least privilege?
• In Prism Central, a support team needs to create, power-cycle, and delete VMs, but must not change networking, storage policies, or cluster settings. Which approach best enforces least privilege?
• An administrator must allow Prism Central users to authenticate against a corporate directory instead of creating local accounts. Which configuration provides centralized authentication and role assignment for Prism Central?
• A user signs in to Prism Central successfully, but when they try to create a new VM, the action is denied. The directory server reports a valid login. What should the administrator verify first?
• A self-service team must power on and off VMs, open consoles, and create VM snapshots in one project. They must not change cluster settings, storage, or networking. Which Prism Central access configuration meets this need?
• A Prism Central administrator must let an engineer change VLANs and IP address pools on AHV, but must not allow changes to storage containers. Which built-in role should be assigned?
• Your audit team says every Prism Central configuration change must be attributable to one person. Which design meets this requirement?
• Prism Central reports a health issue for a Nutanix cluster, but Prism Element shows the cluster healthy and VMs are running normally. Which condition best explains this discrepancy?
• An automation team needs Prism Central API access to manage VMs only in the Finance project, without cluster-wide rights. How should you enforce least privilege?
• An operations team needs email alerts from a production AHV cluster that is registered to Prism Central. The administrator wants centralized alert routing without configuring each cluster separately. Which action should be taken?
• After a successful LCM upgrade of a Nutanix cluster running AHV, an administrator notices Prism Central did not change version but continues to manage the cluster. What compatibility consideration should be verified before declaring the change complete?
• A storage administrator at a Nutanix AHV site must create, resize, and attach storage containers for workloads, but must not create users, reset passwords, or manage Prism Central accounts. You must grant the least privilege using Prism RBAC. Which action should you take?
• Your team wants Prism Central administrators to sign in with corporate credentials instead of local accounts. You must enable centralized identity for Prism administration while preserving role-based access. What should you configure?
• An engineer manages several AHV clusters from Prism Central. During a planned power event, the host running the Prism Central VM may go offline. Before the event, which management-plane resilience consideration should be verified?
• A new AHV cluster is registered in Prism Central. An existing administrator group can manage other clusters but cannot see this cluster. What should you configure so the group can administer it?