Free Nutanix NCP-CI-AWS Practice Exam with Questions & Answers | Set: 2

Synchronous replication in Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) on AWS requires extremely low latency, typically less than 5ms round-trip time (RTT). To achieve this, clusters must be located within the same AWS region, often within different Availability Zones or the same VPC.

Supported networking configurations for this high-speed data exchange include using standard native AWS networking on both clusters to ensure direct, low-latency communication. Additionally, a hybrid setup where one cluster utilizes native networking and the remote cluster uses Flow Virtual Networking (FVN) is supported, provided the underlying network infrastructure satisfies the latency requirements for synchronous operations. This ensures that data is written to both clusters simultaneously before an acknowledgment is sent to the application, providing zero recovery point objective (RPO).

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.

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

When reserving licenses for Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2), administrators must understand the inclusion of add-ons within different tiers. For organizations requiring multi-protocol storage, the Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) add-on is flexible and can be associated with either the NCI Pro or NCI Ultimate licensing tiers. Furthermore, the NCI Ultimate tier is designed to be comprehensive; it automatically includes high-value features such as Advanced Replication and Security (Microsegmentation) by default. This simplifies the licensing process because these features do not require separate manual applications once the Ultimate tier is selected. While NCI Ultimate is feature-rich, it does not include the NUS add-on by default, which remains a capacity-based selection that must be specifically managed alongside the base license tier.

Within an NC2 environment, the Cluster Protect feature can ensure the protection of:

Nutanix Files: This provides file services within the Nutanix ecosystem, and Cluster Protect can safeguard the data stored in Nutanix Files.

Virtual Machine Disks: This ensures that the data stored on virtual machine disks is protected, providing backup and recovery options for the virtual machines running within the cluster.

Nutanix Cloud Clusters on AWS Administration

Nutanix AOS 6.7 Documentation

Flow Virtual Networking (FVN)introduces a software-defined overlay that requires significant management overhead for handling VPC transit, encapsulation, and complex routing tables. Due to the resource-intensive nature of managing these advanced networking services, Nutanix restricts the supported Prism Central (PC) instance sizes for FVN deployments. OnlyLarge and Extra LargePrism Central instances are supported to ensure there is adequate CPU and memory available to run the virtual routing and gateway components effectively. Smaller PC instances (Small or Medium) lack the necessary performance headroom and may experience latency or management failures when trying to process the continuous network synchronization required by the FVN overlay in a production cloud environment.

While NC2 on AWS runs on bare-metal EC2 instances, hardware-level events or maintenance notifications are initially generated by the AWS infrastructure. To provide a streamlined management experience, Nutanix integrates these AWS-specific events directly into theNC2 console ' s notification center. This allows administrators to monitor for issues such as scheduled reboots, hardware degradations, or instance status checks without constantly switching between the Nutanix and AWS management portals. While Prism Central and Prism Element provide software-level alerts for the Nutanix OS, the NC2 portal is the primary location for alerts related to the underlying cloud lifecycle and infrastructure events that may impact cluster health.

Nutanix Cloud Clusters on AWS requires bare-metal EC2 instances to run the Nutanix AHV hypervisor and the Controller VMs (CVMs).

Nutanix supports specific " metal " instance types that provide the necessary hardware access for the hypervisor to manage resources efficiently. The primary supported instance types include thei3.metal, which is optimized for high I/O workloads; thei3en.metal, which offers more storage capacity and higher network bandwidth; and thei4i.metal, which utilizes the latest Intel Ice Lake processors for superior compute and storage performance. Other instance types listed, such as virtualized " xlarge " or " micro " instances, do not provide the bare-metal access required to run the Nutanix software stack in an NC2 environment.

In an NC2 environment using Flow Virtual Networking (FVN), the External Routable Prefix (ERP) is used to identify the address space that can reach external networks. If the ERP is correctly configured in both the Transit and User VPCs but outbound communication still fails, the issue typically lies within the virtual routing table. A static route (such as 0.0.0.0/0) must be manually added to the User VPC routing table with the next hop set to the overlay-external-subnet. Without this explicit static route, the virtual router within the User VPC does not know how to direct traffic toward the Transit VPC for outbound delivery, even if the address ranges are theoretically compatible. Verifying this routing path is a standard step in ensuring overlay workloads can reach on-premises or internet resources.

In Nutanix Cloud Integration with AWS, specifically version 6.7, the role that allows full access to clusters created within an organization is the Organization Administrator.

The Organization Administrator role has the highest level of privileges within an organization, enabling the user to manage all aspects of the clusters, including creation, modification, and deletion.

This role is designed to oversee and control the entire organization ' s resources, ensuring comprehensive management capabilities over all clusters and associated resources.

Refer to the Nutanix documentation on roles and permissions for NC2 on AWS for further details.

Bare-metal EC2 instances are a specialized resource in AWS, and their availability can sometimes be limited within a specific region or Availability Zone. If an administrator attempts to expand an NC2 cluster and the requested instance types are out of stock at the AWS level, the NC2 console will attempt to provision the nodes but will eventually reach aretry limit and fail. The portal does not indefinitely hold the cluster in maintenance mode. Instead, the administrator is responsible for verifying node availability through the AWS Service Health Dashboard or AWS support. If the desired instance type (e.g., i3.metal) is unavailable, the administrator may need to consider expanding into a different Availability Zone or choosing a different supported instance type to satisfy the expansion requirement.