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

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract of Nutanix End User Computing documents:

According to Nutanix AHV Best Practices for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI):

Power Management: The most critical "optimal" configuration for latency-sensitive EUC workloads is to ensure the host power management policy is set to High Performance. This prevents the CPU from entering power-saving states (C-states/P-states) which can introduce latency during user interaction.

Memory Configuration: While Nutanix AHV typically disables memory overcommit by default (or does not use it in the same way as other hypervisors for VDI), the active configuration step required by an administrator to guarantee optimal performance is the Power Management setting. Memory reservation should generally be 100% (not 50%) to avoid swapping, and CPU/Memory shares are usually left at default unless there is specific contention, but Power Management is the baseline requirement for EUC optimization.

Why not D? While memory overcommit should be disabled for VDI, in many AHV versions this is the default behavior or inherent architecture. "High performance power management" represents the specific tuning parameter that administrators must validate or configure (often in the BIOS or via AHV command) to ensure the environment is "optimized" for desktop workloads.

In virtualization performance troubleshooting, CPU Ready % is a critical metric that indicates the percentage of time a virtual machine was ready to execute a thread but had to wait for the hypervisor to schedule it on a physical CPU core.

According to standard Nutanix and AHV performance guidelines, a CPU Ready value above 5% per vCPU is considered a leading indicator of CPU contention (oversubscription) and performance degradation. While the overall host CPU Usage appears low (18%), the high CPU Ready (6.5%) suggests that specific VMs are fighting for scheduling slots, causing the latency ("tasks taking longer") reported by the users. The other metrics (IOPS, Storage Usage) are well within normal operating parameters.

persistent virtual desktops are virtual desktops that retain their state and configuration across sessions.

This means that users can customize their virtual desktops with their own applications, settings, and data, and have them available every time they log on.

Persistent virtual desktops are suitable for users who need a consistent and personalized experience, such as developers.

According to Nutanix best practices2, one of the recommended migration paths for persistent virtual desktops is to convert the physical computers to virtual desktops.

This can be done by using a tool such as VMware Converter or Microsoft Disk2vhd to create a virtual disk image of the physical computer’s hard drive.

Then, this image can be imported into Nutanix Cloud Platform and used as a base image for creating persistent virtual desktops.

This migration path can preserve the existing applications, settings, and data of the physical computers and minimize the disruption for the users.

This issue is caused by the NVIDIA vGPU scheduling policy. On many NVIDIA GRID/vGPU architectures (prior to latest MIG capabilities), you cannot mix different vGPU profile sizes (e.g., 2Q and 4Q) on the same physical GPU.

Current State (Breadth Mode): The scheduler is likely distributing the "2Q" VMs evenly across all available GPUs. This means every physical GPU has at least one "2Q" profile active, "tainting" the GPU so it can only accept other "2Q" VMs.

The Fix (Depth Mode): By changing the allocation policy to Depth-First, the scheduler will fill up the first physical GPU with "2Q" VMs until it is full before moving to the next. This consolidates the "2Q" workloads onto fewer cards, leaving other physical GPUs completely empty. These empty GPUs can then accept the "4Q" profile type, allowing both profiles to co-exist on the same host (though on different physical cards).

This is because having too many snapshots can cause serialization or deserialization errors when using the JSON serializer5

https://next.nutanix.com/product-updates/ahv-plug-in-for-citrix-director-1-1-4-0-released-39682

Nutanix Prism Central includes Behavioral Learning and Efficiency reporting tools designed to identify inefficient resource usage.7

To verify if VMs are "using less than their configured memory" (wasted resources), the administrator should view the Over-provisioned VMs list within the Efficiency widget. Nutanix defines an "Over-provisioned VM" as one that is sized with more resources (CPU/Memory) than it actually consumes based on historical performance data.8 This list explicitly identifies these VMs, allowing the administrator to right-size them and reclaim cluster resources, whereas Task Manager (Option A) is manual/individual, and Capacity Runway (Option D) focuses on global cluster storage/resource exhaustion time rather than individual VM efficiency.

Blast Extreme is the proprietary display protocol developed by Omnissa (formerly VMware) for Horizon.

A key feature of Blast Extreme is its use of Adaptive Transport. This technology allows the protocol to dynamically switch between UDP (for high performance and lossy networks) and TCP (as a fallback for reliability) based on real-time network conditions. This adaptability ensures the best possible user experience regardless of bandwidth or latency constraints. (PCoIP primarily relies on UDP, and RDP is traditionally TCP-heavy, while HDX is a Citrix protocol).

For Virtual Machine operations involving vGPUs (NVIDIA GRID) on Nutanix AHV, it is a strict requirement that all GPU nodes must run the same version of the host driver.

To support VM mobility, live migration, and High Availability (HA) within the cluster, the source and destination hosts must have compatible GPU profiles and identical driver versions. If drivers are mismatched between nodes, the GPU state cannot be successfully transferred or re-initialized, preventing migration and potentially causing VM power-on failures. While a cluster can contain a subset of nodes with GPUs (heterogeneous cluster), the nodes that do have GPUs must be uniform in their driver configuration.

For a Citrix VDA (Virtual Delivery Agent) to successfully register with the Delivery Controller, it must establish a secure communication channel which relies heavily on Kerberos authentication.

A common cause for registration failure on startup, particularly in new deployments or non-persistent environments, is that the Time is off on the machines. If the system clock of the virtual desktop drifts more than 5 minutes from the domain controller or the Delivery Controller, Kerberos ticket generation fails. This prevents the VDA from authenticating with the Broker Service, resulting in a "Unregistered" state in Citrix Studio. While Windows 11 has strict hardware requirements (Option A), failing to meet those usually prevents the OS from booting or installing entirely; if the OS boots but fails to register, time synchronization is the most probable infrastructure cause.

For non-persistent VDI environments where speed and personalization are required, Container-based profiles (such as FSLogix Profile Containers or Citrix Profile Management containers) are the industry standard and Nutanix recommended solution.

Unlike Roaming Profiles (Option D), which must copy thousands of files over the network at login (causing slow logins and "bloat"), Container-based profiles encapsulate the entire user profile into a single virtual disk (VHD/VHDX). This disk is mounted instantly over the network when the user logs in. This provides the user with their personalized settings immediately—mimicking a local profile—without the performance penalty of file copying, ensuring the fast and consistent sign-in experience requested by management.