Free Practice Questions for Nutanix NCP-MCI-6.5 Exam

A native VLAN is a VLAN that is assigned to untagged traffic on a trunk port of a switch. A trunk port can carry traffic from multiple VLANs, but it needs to have a native VLAN to handle traffic that does not have a VLAN tag. The native VLAN is usually VLAN 1 by default on most switches, but it can be changed to any other VLAN number2. When creating a network profile on Nutanix, the administrator needs to specify the VLAN ID that matches the VLAN configuration on the physical switch. However, if the network profile uses the same VLAN ID as the native VLAN on the switch, it will cause network connectivity issues for the VMs connected to that network profile. This is because Nutanix AHV uses 802.1Q tagging for all network traffic, including traffic in the native VLAN. The switch will expect untagged traffic in the native VLAN and will drop any tagged traffic in that VLAN3. To fix this issue, the administrator needs to change the VLAN field from vlan. 1 to vlan. 0 in the network profile on Nutanix. This will tell Nutanix AHV to send untagged traffic for that network profile and match the native VLAN configuration on the switch4.

A bond is a logical interface that combines two or more physical interfaces on an AHV host. A bond provides high availability and load balancing for the network traffic of the host and its VMs. A bond can have different modes that determine how the traffic is distributed and how the bond handles failures of the physical interfaces. The most common bond modes are active-backup, active-active, and LACP1.

Nutanix recommends including at least two physical interfaces in every bond to ensure high availability and redundancy. If one of the physical interfaces fails or is disconnected, the other interface can take over the traffic without affecting the connectivity of the host or its VMs. Having at least two physical interfaces in a bond also allows for maintenance operations such as firmware upgrades or cable replacements without downtime2.

Nutanix does not recommend including NIC models from different vendors in the same bond, as this may cause compatibility issues or performance degradation. Nutanix also does not recommend using only one physical interface in a bond, as this provides no redundancy or load balancing benefits3.

Enable Memory Overcommit on the over-provisioned VMs is the most efficient resolution to enable additional VMs to be created. Memory overcommit allows VMs to use more memory than physically available on a host by compressing and swapping memory pages to storage1. This can improve memory utilization and increase VM density on a cluster1. However, memory overcommit is not supported when HA is configured to use reserved hosts, so you may need to disable HA reservation on the cluster before enabling memory overcommit1.

According to the Network File System web search result3, NFS (Network File System) is a distributed file system protocol that allows a user on a client computer to access files over a network in a manner similar to how local storage is accessed. NFS is one of the access protocols supported by Files. According to the [MS-WPO]: File Access Services Protocols web search result4, SMB (Server Message Block) is a Windows file sharing protocol that enables applications to discover, access, and share files that are hosted on or made available by a file server, using a network between them, in a secure and managed environment. SMB is another access protocol supported by Files. Therefore, SMB and NFS are two access protocols supported by Files.

According to the web search results, one of the best practices for Nutanix AHV networking is to create a second bridge on each host and assign the 1GbE interfaces to it3. This way, the customer can use both 10GbE and 1GbE interfaces for VM traffic, and also benefit from network isolation and redundancy. 

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.

One node hosts two VMs while the node being upgraded is in maintenance mode. This is because Nutanix supports a feature called Rolling Upgrade that allows upgrading AHV on a cluster without any downtime or impact to the VMs. The Rolling Upgrade feature performs the upgrade one node at a time, by putting the node in maintenance mode, evacuating the VMs to other nodes, upgrading AHV, and then bringing the node back online. The VM-VM anti-affinity policy ensures that the four VMs are not placed on the same node during the evacuation process, so one node will host two VMs temporarily while the other node is being upgraded.

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

Data locality is the capability of storing VM data on the node where the VM is running and ensuring that the read I/O does not have to traverse the network. Data locality is a unique feature of Nutanix that provides high performance and low latency for VMs by minimizing network traffic and crosstalk. Data locality works by writing one copy of the data local to the VM and the other copy (or copies) on other nodes. When a VM migrates to another node, Nutanix also moves its data to the new node and serves all I/O requests locally. Data locality also adapts to changing workloads and access patterns by dynamically moving data to where it is needed most1.

According to the Nutanix Support & Insights web search result2, VM NICs on AHV can operate in two modes: Access and Trunked. Access NICs are the default, and allow one VLAN on the NIC. Trunked NICs allow multiple VLANs on a single NIC for VMs that are VLAN aware. If you must use trunked NICs, follow the steps described in the web search result2. Therefore, the most efficient way to have a VM on an AHV cluster with access to multiple VLANs is to update a vNIC on the VM to operate in trunked mode for all desired VLANs.