Nutanix NCA-6.5 Nutanix Certified Associate (NCA) v6.5 exam Exam Practice Test

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:

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: 

A virtual network with IPAM (IP Address Management) supports automatically assigning IP addresses to VMs. This eliminates the need for manual configuration of IP addresses for each VM, and makes it easy to manage and track IP address usage. Reference: 

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:

Discoveries within the Nutanix Support Portal are used to identify clusters that are affected by known issues. This can help Nutanix Support quickly identify and address any potential problems that may be caused by a specific issue. Reference: 

Administrators can use recovery plans to specify groups of virtual machines and assign them to a destination for disaster recovery using Leap. Reference: Nutanix Certified Associate 6.5 Exam Study Guide, page 56

To upgrade the LCM framework to the latest version, the administrator must go to the Settings page of the Prism Central UI, and then select the Upgrade Software option. This will show the available versions of the LCM framework, and allow the administrator to select the desired version and upgrade. Reference: 

Compression is a Nutanix storage efficiency feature that is suitable for nearly every workload, as it reduces the amount of data stored on disk without impacting performance. Erasure Coding, Deduplication, and Thick Provisioning are other storage efficiency features, but they have different trade-offs and use cases. References: (page 30)

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

In a Nutanix environment, the product or feature most suitable for deploying a Microsoft SQL cluster is Nutanix Objects. Nutanix Objects is a S3-compatible object storage solution that provides a highly scalable and durable storage for unstructured data. It is built on top of the Nutanix Distributed File System (NDFS) and provides a high-performance, scalable, and highly available storage solution.

One of the key features of Nutanix Objects is its ability to support Microsoft SQL Server Always On Availability Groups (AAG) on S3 object storage. This allows you to deploy a highly available SQL cluster on Nutanix, with the ability to failover SQL services to a different node in the event of a failure, and provide high availability and disaster recovery for SQL databases.

Categories enable Image Placement Policies to be mapped to target clusters by defining a set of key-value pairs that can be applied to clusters, hosts, or VMs. Categories can be used to control where images are replicated and stored. References: (page 23)

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: (pages 31-32)

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: 

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: (page 38)

To send weekly performance reviews to several line of business managers about VMs they are managing, the administrator should use Prism Central Reports with a schedule. Prism Central Reports is a tool that allows the administrator to create custom reports, which can include information such as CPU usage, memory usage, and disk I/O for specific VMs. The administrator can schedule the reports to be generated and sent out on a regular basis, such as weekly. This will allow the line of business managers to review the performance of the VMs they are responsible for on a regular basis, and take appropriate actions if necessary. Reference:

In the case of a single host in a four-node AHV-based cluster experiencing a complete network failure, the user VMs running on that host will stay up, but will be unreachable until connectivity is restored. This is because if more than enough resources exist in the cluster to tolerate a node failure, the VMs will continue to run, but will be unable to communicate with other nodes in the cluster due to the network failure. This is stated in the official Nutanix Certified Associate (NCA) v6.5 study guide on page 49, under the heading “Virtual Machine Availability in the Event of Node Failure”.

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: 

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:

In Active-backup mode, one network interface is active while the other is in standby mode. If the active interface fails, the standby interface takes over, providing seamless failover without any disruption to user VMs. In this case, since the cluster has two 10 GbE ports on each node, and only one link has failed, the user VMs will continue to operate normally using the second link.