Nutanix NCP-CI-AWS Nutanix Certified Professional - Cloud Integration - AWS (NCP-CI-AWS6.7) Exam Exam Practice Test

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 ensure that the newly created NC2 organization named Finance can only deploy clusters into certain cloud regions, the administrator should specify the allowed regions during the cloud account configuration.

This action restricts the regions available for cluster deployment, ensuring compliance with organizational policies or regulatory requirements.

The allowed regions can be set in the cloud account settings associated with the Finance NC2 organization, defining the geographical scope of operations.

References:Refer to the Nutanix documentation on NC2 cloud account configuration and region restrictions.

Cluster Protect in an NC2 environment can protect and recover the following services and their associated metadata:

VM Templates: Ensures that templates used for creating virtual machines are backed up and recoverable.

Files: Protects data stored in Nutanix Files, ensuring that file services are backed up and can be restored as needed.

References:

Nutanix Support & Insights

Nutanix Cloud Clusters on AWS Administration

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

To deploy an NC2 cluster using an existing AWS network, the NAT Gateway should be placed in a public subnet. A public subnet is one that has a route to an Internet Gateway, allowing the NAT Gateway to provide outbound internet access for resources in private subnets. The NAT Gateway is used to enable instances in private subnets to access the internet while keeping them secure by not exposing them directly to the public internet.

References:

Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) on AWS Documentation

To ensure that NC2 VMs can access AWS resources without traversing the internet, the administrator can use AWS VPC Peering and Interface Endpoints. Both methods ensure that traffic stays within the AWS network, maintaining security and efficiency.

Interface Endpoint:

Interface Endpoints allow you to privately connect your VPC to supported AWS services. They use AWS PrivateLink to route traffic directly to services within the AWS network, bypassing the public internet.

Steps:

Create an interface endpoint for the required service in the AWS VPC console.

Ensure the security groups and route tables are configured to allow traffic to the interface endpoint.

VPC Peering:

VPC Peering allows the routing of traffic between VPCs using private IP addresses, without the need for internet gateways, NAT devices, or VPN connections.

Steps:

Create a VPC peering connection between the VPCs.

Update the route tables to direct traffic between the peered VPCs.

Ensure security group rules allow the necessary traffic between VPCs.

References:

AWS VPC Peering Documentation

AWS Interface Endpoint Documentation

Nutanix Cloud Clusters on AWS Administration Guide

When creating a new NC2 cluster using an existing AWS VPC infrastructure, two private subnets are needed. These subnets are used as follows:

One private subnet for user VMs, which houses the virtual machines that users interact with.

Another private subnet for cluster management, which is used for internal cluster operations and management tasks, ensuring that management traffic is isolated from user traffic for security and performance reasons.

References:

Nutanix Support & Insights

Nutanix Cloud Clusters on AWS Administration

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 role of "Customer Administrator" in Nutanix Cloud Integration with AWS (NC2) is designed to meet the requirements of creating and managing multiple organizations and clusters, as well as managing user access for the entire company.

Roles and Permissions:

Customer Administrator: This role has the broadest set of permissions, allowing the user to create and manage organizations, clusters, and user access across the entire company. It encompasses administrative control over multiple aspects of the NC2 environment.

Capabilities:

Organization Management: Ability to create and manage multiple organizations.

Cluster Management: Full control over creating, configuring, and managing clusters.

User Access Management: Manage user roles and permissions, ensuring that the right individuals have access to the necessary resources.

Why Not Other Roles:

Organization Administrator: Limited to managing organizations but not clusters and user access at the company level.

Customer Security Administrator: Focuses on security aspects, lacking broader administrative capabilities.

Cluster Administrator: Limited to managing clusters without the ability to manage organizations and user access comprehensively.

References:

Nutanix Cloud Clusters on AWS Administration Guide

Nutanix Role-Based Access Control Documentation

In the NC2 console, an organization is used to segregate clusters based on specific requirements. This segregation allows administrators to manage clusters more effectively by grouping them according to business units, projects, or other criteria. This organizational structure helps in maintaining clear boundaries and applying specific policies or permissions to different clusters within the same NC2 environment.

References:

Nutanix Cloud Clusters on AWS Administration

Nutanix Certified Professional - Cloud Integration - AWS

To support Nutanix's native Local Key Manager (LKM) for data encryption in a cost-effective manner, a minimum of three nodes is required. This ensures that there is enough redundancy and reliability for the encryption services to function properly, complying with best practices for distributed key management.

References:

Nutanix Support & Insights

Nutanix Cloud Clusters on AWS Administration

For issues related to cloud hardware support such as EC2 instances, VPC, etc., the public cloud vendor (AWS in this case) should be contacted. AWS provides support and documentation for their infrastructure and services, ensuring that users can get assistance for any hardware or cloud-specific queries.

References:

Nutanix Support & Insights

For VDI workloads that require GPU acceleration, the g4dn.metal nodes are the appropriate choice. These instances are equipped with NVIDIA T4 GPUs, which are well-suited forgraphics-intensive applications such as VDI workloads that need GPU acceleration. Other node types like AN36P, m6g.metal, or AN36 do not provide the necessary GPU capabilities.

References:

Nutanix Support & Insights - GPU support in AWS

AHV (Answer A):

AHV (Acropolis Hypervisor) can be upgraded using Lifecycle Manager (LCM). LCM simplifies the upgrade process and ensures that all components are updated in a coordinated manner.

BIOS (Answer C):

BIOS upgrades can also be performed using LCM. This helps in maintaining hardware compatibility and performance by ensuring that the latest firmware is installed.

References:

Nutanix Lifecycle Manager (LCM) Documentation

Nutanix AHV Upgrade Guide

Nutanix BIOS Upgrade Documentation

To manually hibernate an NC2 on AWS cluster, the administrator can use the following methods:

Select the cluster under NC2 console and Select Hibernate/Resume on the cluster sur page: Navigate to the specific cluster in the NC2 console and use the provided Hibernate/Resume option.

Log into NC2 console, find the cluster name and select Hibernate/Resume from the ellipses: Access the NC2 console, locate the cluster name, and select the Hibernate/Resume option from the ellipses (three dots) menu.

These options allow for the manual control of the cluster's hibernation state directly within the NC2 console interface.

References:

Nutanix Cloud Clusters on AWS Administration

Nutanix Support & Insights

When creating user VM subnets for multiple NC2 clusters in AWS, the best approach is to create guest-VM subnets for each cluster. This ensures that each cluster has its own dedicated subnets, which simplifies network management and avoids potential IP conflicts.

Advantages of Dedicated Subnets:

Isolation: Each cluster operates in its own subnet, providing better isolation and security.

Management: Easier to manage and troubleshoot network issues when each cluster has its own subnets.

Scalability: More scalable as each subnet can be managed and expanded independently.

Steps to Create Guest-VM Subnets:

Identify the IP range for each subnet.

In the AWS VPC console, create a new subnet for each cluster using the identified IP ranges.

Associate the new subnets with the respective clusters during or after the cluster deployment process.

Why Not Shared Subnets:

Shared subnetscould lead to IP conflicts and make network management more complex, especially as the number of clusters grows.

References:

Nutanix Cloud Clusters on AWS Administration Guide

AWS VPC Subnet Creation Documentation

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

The Nutanix Create Cluster wizard may not support selecting subnets that have both IPv4 and IPv6 CIDR blocks due to compatibility or configuration constraints.

When a subnet with both CIDR blocks is present, it can cause issues in the selection process during cluster creation, as the system might not be able to properly handle or recognize the dual-stack configuration.

Ensuring that the management subnet has only an IPv4 CIDR block, without an IPv6 CIDR block, could resolve this issue and allow for successful selection in the cluster creation wizard.

References:Refer to the Nutanix and AWS documentation on subnet configuration and requirements for NC2 cluster deployments, specifically addressing IPv4 and IPv6 compatibility and constraints.

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

To ensure that only application servers from the source subnet 10.79.1.0/24 can access the SQL databases running on the NC2 cluster in the subnet 10.78.1.0/24, the administrator can take the following actions:

Option A: Create a custom Security Group with the following rules:

Key = tag:nutanix:clusters

Key = tag:nutanix:clusters:external

and value = the clusters' UUID

Key = tag:nutanix:clusters:external

and value = 10.78.1.0/24

Option D: Create a custom Security Group with the following:

Key = nutanix:clusters

Key = nutanix:clusters:external

and value = the clusters' UUID

Key = nutanix:clusters:external

and value = 10.79.1.0/24

These actions help create security rules that restrict access to the databases only from the specified source subnet, ensuring secure and controlled access.

References:

Nutanix Cloud Clusters on AWS Administration

AWS Security Groups Documentation

When deploying a new NC2 cluster, the AWS Directory Service must be able to resolve the addressgateway-external-api.cloud.nutanix.com.

This external API gateway is critical for the NC2 cluster to communicate with Nutanix services for operations such as management, updates, and licensing.

Ensuring that this address can be resolved allows the cluster to interact properly with the Nutanix cloud infrastructure and services.

References:Refer to the Nutanix documentation on network and DNS requirements for NC2 deployments, specifically the addresses that need to be resolvable for proper functionality.

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