Pass the Nutanix Nutanix Certified Professional (NCP) NCP-CI-AWS Questions and answers with CertsForce

When using the Nutanix Cluster Protect feature to recover a failed NC2 cluster on AWS, and the management Prism Central (PC) instance is hosted on a separate, healthy cluster, a specific orchestration sequence must be followed. The process begins in the NC2 console, where the administrator must manually change the status of the cluster to Failed. This step is critical as it signals the portal to initiate the recovery workflow and release associated cloud resources. Next, the administrator uses the console to redeploy the cluster, which provisions new bare-metal instances and installs the AOS software. Once the infrastructure is ready, Multicloud Snapshot Technology (MST) must be redeployed or re-enabled on the new cluster to re-establish the connection to the Amazon S3 bucket containing the snapshots. Finally, the User VMs (UVMs) are recovered and hydrated from these snapshots. This specific order ensures that the target environment and management links are fully operational before data restoration commences.

Monitoring the health and connectivity of stretched Layer 2 networks is vital for maintaining seamless hybrid cloud operations.

In a Nutanix environment managed via Prism Central, the specific location to verify the operational status of these extensions is underNetwork and Security, specifically within theNetwork Servicessection labeledSubnet Extensions. This dashboard provides visibility into the VTEP (VXLAN Tunnel Endpoint) gateways and the specific subnets that have been extended from the on-premises environment to NC2 on AWS. Administrators can check if the tunnel is " Up " or " Down " and view performance metrics associated with the stretched segment. Ensuring the status is monitored here allows for rapid troubleshooting of connectivity issues that might prevent virtual machines from communicating across the hybrid link.

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.

Nutanix Lifecycle Manager (LCM) Documentation

Nutanix AHV Upgrade Guide

Nutanix BIOS Upgrade 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.

Nutanix Clusters on AWS Deployment Guide

Nutanix Cloud Clusters on AWS Administration

Successful onboarding of an AWS environment into the Nutanix Cloud Clusters ecosystem requires a precise set of administrative permissions to be present on the account used for initial configuration. Specifically, the AWS user must haveCreateRoleFullAccessto allow the automated scripts to generate the necessary service-linked roles. Additionally, the user must possessIAMFullAccessto manage identity policies andAWSCloudFormationFullAccessto execute the deployment templates. This specific combination ensures that the NC2 portal can correctly configure the " Cross-Account Role " which serves as the primary communication bridge between the Nutanix management plane and the AWS infrastructure APIs. Failing to provide any of these three core permissions will result in an " Insufficient Permissions " alert during the cloud account registration process.

Nutanix offers two flexible paths for provisioning the underlying AWS networking infrastructure required for an NC2 cluster. The first option is toallow the NC2 portal to automatically deploy the required AWS resources. In this guided workflow, the portal uses predefined CloudFormation templates to create the VPC, subnets, NAT gateways, and routing tables based on the administrator ' s input. The second option is the " Bring Your Own " (BYO) manual workflow, where the administrator uses their own existing AWS networking resources. This is often preferred by large organizations with strict security requirements or pre-existing VPC architectures. Both methods are fully supported, allowing organizations to choose between the speed of automated deployment or the granular control of a manual networking setup.

When a node is marked as " Condemned, " it indicates that the system has determined that the node is no longer reliable for operations. As part of the automated recovery and protection process, the following action is typically taken:

The node has a power reset sent to it (Answer A):

In most cases, a condemned node undergoes a power reset as an initial recovery attempt. This action attempts to reboot the node to bring it back to a healthy state. If the reset fails, further manual or automated steps may be required to address the hardware or software issue.

Nutanix Cluster Management Documentation

Nutanix Support Knowledge Base

Enable IGMP snooping on the AHV hosts:

IGMP (Internet Group Management Protocol) snooping is a feature that listens to IGMP traffic between hosts and routers. By enabling IGMP snooping on the AHV (Acropolis Hypervisor) hosts, the switch can intelligently forward multicast traffic only to the ports that have requested it.

This reduces unnecessary multicast traffic on the network and prevents congestion by ensuring that multicast packets are only delivered to the appropriate endpoints.

Refer to the Nutanix documentation on network configuration and best practices for managing multicast traffic.

When planning to leverage NC2 on AWS for an elastic DR scenario where the initial cluster is using 13en.metal, the following additional node types are supported for cluster expansion:

I3.metal: These instances provide high IOPS and low latency with NVMe SSDs, making them suitable for storage-intensive applications.

i4i.metal: These instances offer higher performance with AWS Nitro SSDs, improved network bandwidth, and better compute performance compared to the I3.metal instances.

Nutanix Cloud Clusters on AWS Documentation

Amazon EC2 I4i Instances – AWS

Amazon EC2 I3 Instances – AWS

When a catastrophic failure occurs, such as an entire AWS Availability Zone (AZ) becoming unavailable, the Cluster Protect feature provides a cloud-native orchestrated recovery path. The critical first step for an administrator to trigger the recovery workflow is to manually set the cluster to the " Failed " state within the NC2 console. Marking the cluster as failed signals the NC2 portal that the original infrastructure is non-functional and initiates the logic required to redeploy the cluster in a healthy, alternative AZ. Without this manual confirmation, the portal may continue attempting to reach the original nodes. Once the " Failed " state is confirmed, the portal provides the subsequent options to provision new bare-metal hardware and re-hydrate data from the Amazon S3 snapshots.