NCP-CI-AWS Nutanix Certified Professional - Cloud Integration - AWS (NCP-CI-AWS6.7) Exam Questions and Answers

Upon creation, each node within an AWS NC2 cluster has3 Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)volumes attached.

These volumes are used for different purposes, such as operating system storage, Nutanix services, and user data storage.

The number of EBS volumes is designed to ensure adequate storage performance and capacity for the NC2 cluster's operations and workload demands.

References:Refer to the Nutanix documentation on NC2 cluster setup and AWS EBS volume configurations to confirm the details on the number and purpose of EBS volumes attached to each node.

The alert indicates a potential issue with the VPC/Subnet settings, preventing the cluster nodes from contacting Nutanix services.

To resolve this, the administrator needs to ensure that the subnet 10.0.1.0/24, which is assigned for Bare metal hosts, has an outbound Internet connection.

This connection is necessary for the cluster nodes to communicate with external Nutanix services for updates, license validation, and other essential operations.

Verify that there are appropriate route tables and security group rules allowing outbound traffic to the Internet from the 10.0.1.0/24 subnet.

Ensure that there is either an Internet Gateway (IGW) attached to the VPC or a NAT Gateway configured if using private subnets.

References:Refer to the Nutanix documentation and AWS VPC configuration guides to ensure proper Internet connectivity and routing setups.

When performing a migration from an NC2 environment to a Nutanix on-premises environment, the task should be performed using the NC2 Prism Central. This is because NC2 Prism Central provides a centralized management interface that allows administrators to manage and migrate workloads between cloud and on-premises environments seamlessly.

References:

Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) Documentation

Nutanix Community Guide

The 192.168.5.0/24 range is often reserved for internal cluster communication within Nutanix deployments.

Using this CIDR range for other purposes could lead to network conflicts and connectivity issues, as it might interfere with the internal operations and communication channels of the Nutanix cluster.

Ensuring that the CIDR range is not overlapping with any reserved ranges is crucial for maintaining proper network connectivity and cluster functionality.

References:Refer to the Nutanix documentation on network configuration and best practices for NC2 deployments to confirm reserved IP ranges and their appropriate use.

To SSH into a Controller VM (CVM) in an NC2 on AWS cluster without on-premises connectivity, the administrator needs to ensure that the security settings allow SSH access from the Jump Host. This involves editing the User Management Network Security Group to permit SSH traffic from the Jump Host IP.

Deploy Jump Host:

Ensure the Jump Host is deployed in a public subnet with an Elastic IP (EIP) assigned for external access.

Edit User Management Network Security Group:

Locate the security group associated with the user management network.

Modify the inbound rules to allow SSH (port 22) from the Jump Host's IP address. This ensures that the Jump Host can establish an SSH connection to the CVM.

Steps to Edit Security Group:

Navigate to the EC2 dashboard in the AWS Management Console.

Select "Security Groups" under the "Network & Security" section.

Find and select the appropriate security group.

Edit the inbound rules to add a new rule:

Type: SSH

Protocol: TCP

Port Range: 22

Source: Custom IP (enter the Jump Host's public IP address)

Additional Configuration:

Ensure that the CVM itself allows SSH connections and that no internal firewall rules block the traffic.

References:

Nutanix Cloud Clusters on AWS Administration Guide

AWS Security Group Documentation

Nutanix Best Practices for Secure Access

To add an AWS account to the NC2 console, an AWS IAM user needs to be configured with the appropriate permissions to manage the EC2 resources. The required permission for the IAM user includes full access to manage EC2 instances, volumes, and related resources.

AmazonEC2FullAccess:

This permission grants full access to all EC2 resources, including the ability to create, modify, and delete instances, volumes, security groups, and more.

Essential for NC2 operations to manage the lifecycle of EC2 instances and associated components within the AWS environment.

Why Not Other Permissions:

IAMFullAccess: Grants full access to IAM resources but not specifically needed for EC2 operations.

IAMReadOnlyAccess: Only provides read access to IAM resources, insufficient for managing EC2 instances.

AmazonEC2ReadOnlyAccess: Provides read-only access to EC2 resources, insufficient for creating or modifying instances and other resources.

References:

AWS IAM Policies Documentation

Nutanix Cloud Clusters on AWS Administration Guide

Nutanix Best Practices for IAM User Permissions

The maximum number of nodes supported in an NC2 cluster on AWS is 24 nodes. This limit ensures optimal performance and manageability within the AWS infrastructure while leveraging the benefits of the Nutanix architecture.

References:

Nutanix Clusters on AWS Deployment Guide

Nutanix Support & Insights

To protect workloads on an NC2 cluster on AWS, deploying strategies that ensure high availability and disaster recovery are essential. The two valid options are:

Create a Second NC2 Cluster in a Different Availability Zone:

High Availability: Deploying a second NC2 cluster in a different availability zone ensures that workloads can be quickly recovered in case of an availability zone failure.

Disaster Recovery: This setup enables asynchronous replication between clusters, providing a robust disaster recovery solution.

Use an Existing On-Prem Nutanix Cluster as a Disaster Recovery Target:

Hybrid DR: Leveraging an existing on-premises Nutanix cluster for disaster recovery provides a cost-effective and efficient DR solution.

Replication: Set up replication policies to ensure data is consistently copied from the NC2 cluster on AWS to the on-premises cluster.

Why Not Other Options:

One-node cluster in another availability zone: Not a valid DR solution as a single-node cluster cannot provide the required resilience and high availability.

Deploy a cluster across two availability zones: While this can enhance availability, it is not a typical approach for Nutanix clusters which are designed to operate within a single availability zone for simplicity and performance reasons.

References:

Nutanix Cloud Clusters on AWS Administration Guide

Nutanix Disaster Recovery Best Practices

AWS Availability Zones and Disaster Recovery Documentation

The requirement for two private subnets in the NC2 cluster configuration workflow serves the same purposes:

One subnet is designated for user VMs, ensuring user workloads are separated from management operations.

The other subnet is designated for cluster management, maintaining the integrity and security of management processes and internal communications.

References:

Nutanix Clusters on AWS Deployment Guide

Nutanix Cloud Clusters on AWS Administration

To avoid IP address conflicts and ensure there are no configuration issues when reusing an existing AWS subnet, the administrator should take the following actions:

aCLI > net.add_to_ip_blacklist 10.79.4.200 aCLI > net.add_to_ip_blacklist 10.79.4.201 (Answer A):

This command adds the specified IP addresses to the blacklist, preventing AHV IPAM from assigning these addresses to any VMs. This ensures that the existing EC2 instances with IPs 10.79.4.200 and 10.79.4.201 are not allocated to other VMs in the NC2 cluster.

Configure the AHV IPAM to use DHCP range 10.79.4.2 -10.79.4.253 (Answer D):

By configuring the AHV IPAM to use a specific DHCP range, you ensure that the IP addresses assigned to the EC2 instances (10.79.4.200 and 10.79.4.201) are not included in the DHCP pool. This prevents IP address conflicts within the subnet.

References:

Nutanix aCLI Reference

Nutanix NC2 on AWS Documentation

AWS VPC and Subnet Basics

The Cluster Protect feature, which provides data protection and disaster recovery capabilities for Nutanix clusters, requires either the AOS Ultimate or NCI Ultimate license. These licenses include the necessary features to leverage Cluster Protect for ensuring data resilience and recovery.

References:

Nutanix Documentation - Cluster Protection Features

Nutanix AOS 6.7 New Features

For a new NC2 on AWS deployment where workload VMs have low storage and memory requirements but high CPU frequency (>3.0 GHz) requirements, and the goal is to minimize the number of CPU cores to reduce application licensing costs, thei3.metalinstance type is the most suitable.

i3.metal:

High CPU Frequency: i3.metal instances offer high-frequency Intel Xeon processors (up to 3.1 GHz) which meet the high CPU frequency requirement.

Low Storage and Memory: These instances come with a balanced amount of storage and memory, suitable for workloads with low requirements in these areas.

Minimized CPU Cores: i3.metal instances have fewer CPU cores compared to other high-frequency instances like i4i.metal, making them ideal for minimizing application licensing costs.

Other Instance Types:

z1d.metal: While also offering high CPU frequency, these instances typically come with a higher core count and more memory, which may not be optimal for minimizing licensing costs.

i4i.metal: Designed for I/O intensive applications with higher core counts.

m5d.metal: Balanced instance type but with more cores and not as high CPU frequency as required.

References:

AWS EC2 Instance Types Documentation

Nutanix Cloud Clusters on AWS Administration Guide

Nutanix Best Practices for Instance Selection

When selecting the NC2 subscription plan from the Nutanix Billing portal, the available options include:

Pay-as-you-Go (PayG): A flexible payment option where users are billed based on their actual usage, providing cost efficiency for variable workloads.

Bring your own License (BYOL): Allows users to utilize existing Nutanix licenses they have purchased, offering a cost-effective way to leverage existing investments in Nutanix software.

References:Refer to the Nutanix billing and subscription documentation for detailed descriptions of subscription plans and their benefits.

The administrator has not created the necessary Security Group:

The error message indicates that the creation of network interfaces in a shared subnet requires specifying a security group. This means that the necessary security group has not been created or assigned to the network interfaces.

Creating the appropriate security group and ensuring it is associated with the network interfaces during cluster deployment should resolve this issue.

References:Refer to AWS documentation on security groups and network interface configuration and Nutanix documentation on prerequisites for deploying NC2 clusters in an existing AWS VPC.

To ensure that alert emails are sent properly from Prism Central within an NC2 environment, configuring an SMTP server in the Prism Central settings is required. The SMTP server facilitates the sending of email notifications for alerts and other communications.

SMTP Configuration:

Prism Central requires an SMTP server to send email alerts. This involves specifying the SMTP server address, port, and authentication details if needed.

The configuration must include the email address from which the alerts will be sent and the recipient addresses.

Steps to Configure SMTP Server in Prism Central:

Log in to Prism Central.

Navigate to the "Settings" menu.

Select "Email Server" under the "Alerts" section.

Enter the SMTP server details, including the server address, port, and authentication credentials.

Test the configuration to ensure emails are sent correctly.

References:

Nutanix Prism Central Administration Guide

Nutanix Support Documentation on Email Alert Configuration

Best Practices for Configuring SMTP Servers in Cloud Environments

With the Nutanix AOS Pro licensing, several advanced features and add-on products become available. Specifically, in the AWS cluster deployment wizard, the following add-ons are available:

Files:

Nutanix Files provides a software-defined, scale-out file storage solution that simplifies the management and scaling of unstructured data.

Advanced Replication:

Advanced Replication features in Nutanix include synchronous and asynchronous replication capabilities, allowing for robust disaster recovery and data protection solutions.

DARE (Data-At-Rest Encryption):

DARE ensures that all data stored on Nutanix clusters is encrypted, providing a higher level of security for sensitive information.

These features are included in the AOS Pro licensing tier, offering enhanced data management, protection, and security capabilities.

References:

Nutanix Licensing Guide

Nutanix Cloud Clusters on AWS Administration Guide

Nutanix Best Practices for Advanced Features

When creating an NC2 cluster in AWS, the account used to run the CloudFormation script requires specific permissions to ensure the deployment is successful. The required permissions are:

IAMFullAccess: Provides full access to IAM resources.

AmazonEC2FullAccess: Allows full access to EC2 resources.

AWSCIoudFormationFullAccess: Grants full access to manage AWS CloudFormation stacks.

These permissions are necessary to create, manage, and deploy the required AWS resources for the NC2 cluster.

References:

Nutanix Support & Insights

AWS IAM Documentation

Route tables for cloud subnets contain incorrect route entries:

If the route tables associated with the cloud subnets contain incorrect route entries, the NC2 cluster might not be able to reach the necessary AWS services or endpoints. Correct route entries are crucial for ensuring proper communication between the NC2 cluster and the underlying AWS infrastructure.

IAM roles and policies are incorrectly configured:

Incorrectly configured IAM roles and policies can prevent NC2 from making API calls to AWS services. These roles and policies must be properly set up to allow the necessary permissions for NC2 to interact with AWS resources and perform required operations.

References:Refer to the AWS documentation on route table configuration and IAM roles and policies, and Nutanix documentation on NC2 cloud connectivity and permissions.

To create a cluster in Nutanix Cloud Integration with AWS, the role needed is Cluster Super Admin.

The Cluster Super Admin role provides the highest level of privileges required to perform critical operations such as creating, managing, and deleting clusters.

This role is essential for overseeing the cluster setup and configuration processes, ensuring the user has full control over the cluster lifecycle.

References:Refer to the Nutanix documentation on roles and permissions for NC2 on AWS for further details on the capabilities and required permissions for cluster creation.