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

Users may expect some level of personalization and consistency across their virtual desktop sessions, even if they do not save any changes1. To customize this user experience, administrators can use different solutions that manage user profiles and settings1.

A cloud-based DR service that allows customers to protect their Nutanix workloads in a Nutanix-owned cloud platform6. Xi Leap eliminates the need for multiple products and provides end-to-end security, automation, and SLA compliance6.

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

According to Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops architecture documentation utilized in Nutanix EUC designs:

VDA Functionality: The Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA) is the essential software component that must be installed on every machine (virtual or physical) that delivers applications or desktops.

FMA Role: The VDA registers with the Delivery Controller (Broker) and manages the FMA (FlexCast Management Architecture) connection between the machine and the user device. It establishes and manages the HDX connection, allowing the Citrix Workspace app (on the client side) to connect directly to the desktop session.

Distinction:

Citrix Workspace app is installed on the client device (endpoint), not the virtual desktop.

VirtIO drivers are lower-level drivers for disk/network I/O virtualization on AHV, not FMA connection brokers.

NGT provides Nutanix-specific fabric features (SSR, FLR), not Citrix session connectivity.

According to Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops Service) architecture on Nutanix, a Resource Location is defined by the presence of Cloud Connectors.2 These connectors serve as the communication proxy between the Nutanix AHV infrastructure and the Citrix Cloud control plane.

For Disaster Recovery (DR) planning, the DR site functions as a distinct Resource Location. To ensure the DR site is available and manageable by the Citrix Cloud service during an event, an administrator must deploy at least one Cloud Connector in every resource location (though two are recommended for high availability). Keeping connectors offline (Option A) is unsupported because they require continuous connectivity to receive automatic updates; if they are offline for too long (tombstone life), they become invalid. Recovering connectors during an event (Option D) increases RTO unnecessarily. Therefore, establishing the DR site as a valid resource location with active Cloud Connectors is the correct planning step.

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

According to Nutanix Storage Best Practices for Full Clone VDI:

Full Clone Characteristics: Full Clones are independent copies of the virtual machine, meaning they contain 100% duplicate data (OS, binaries, applications) across every VM in the pool.

Deduplication Benefit: Because the data is identical across all clones, enabling Deduplication (specifically Capacity Tier Deduplication) provides massive space savings by eliminating these redundant blocks. Nutanix documentation explicitly recommends Deduplication for "Full Clones" and "Persistent Desktops".

Compression Synergy: Compression (Inline) is recommended for all workloads. Combining Deduplication (to remove duplicate blocks) with Compression (to shrink the unique blocks) yields the "most efficient space savings" possible for this specific workload type.

Contrast: For Linked Clones (which already share a base disk), Deduplication is turned off (Answer C), but for Full Clones, Answer A is the standard best practice.

The CPU usage percentage indicates how much of the allocated CPU resources the virtual desktop is consuming.

A high CPU usage percentage means that the virtual desktop is using a lot of CPU resources, which can affect the performance of other virtual desktops on the same host or cluster.

According to Nutanix best practices, the recommended CPU usage percentage for virtual desktops is less than 80%.

VM-0001 (99%)

VM-0002 (98%)

VM-0003 (97%)

VM-0004 (96%)

VM-0005 (95%)

VM-0010 (85%)

VM-0016 (81%)

These virtual desktops are likely contributing to the performance issue by consuming too much CPU resources and starving other virtual desktops from performing adequately.

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

According to Nutanix storage best practices for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), the optimal configuration for Linked Clones is Compression Only.

Linked Clones and Data Efficiency: In a Linked Clone environment, the Virtual Machines (VMs) already share a common base image (replica disk) at the hypervisor level. Because the identical operating system data is already shared via the cloning technology, the Nutanix Distributed Storage Fabric (DSF) manages this duplicate data efficiently without needing the Deduplication feature enabled on the container.

Redundancy of Deduplication: Nutanix technical documentation explicitly states that for Linked Clones or Nutanix VAAI clones, deduplication provides no additional benefit because the data is already single-instanced. Enabling deduplication in this scenario would introduce unnecessary metadata overhead without delivering significant capacity savings.

Role of Compression: Inline Compression is recommended for almost all workloads, including VDI. It effectively reduces the size of the unique data written to the delta disks (user data, temp files, and logs) associated with non-persistent desktops, maximizing storage efficiency without the performance cost of deduplication.

Shadow Clones: For the read-heavy workload of 2000 desktops accessing the same base image, Nutanix utilizes Shadow Clones (enabled by default) to cache the "hot" replica disk locally on every node, ensuring high performance during boot storms, rendering the need for "performance tier deduplication" redundant for linked clones.

Summary of Best Practice:

Full Clones / Persistent Desktops: Compression + Deduplication.

Linked Clones / Non-Persistent Desktops: Compression Only.

Writable AppVolumes are a feature of VMware App Volumes that provides users with a dedicated virtual disk for storing user profile data and user-installed applications1. Writable AppVolumes are stored as VMDK files on a datastore2.

To protect Writable AppVolumes during a disaster in a Nutanix environment, one possible solution is to use asynchronous DR between two sites. Asynchronous DR allows you to replicate VMs and their associated data from one site to another at regular intervals using protection domains and remote sites3.

https://www.nutanix.com/blog/vmware-app-volumes-on-nutanix

The performance statistics indicate that the SSD Cache tier is 85% full, which is the primary bottleneck. In a Nutanix cluster, the SSD tier serves as the high-performance "Hot Tier" (Extent Store and Oplog) for active data. When the SSD tier utilization exceeds recommended thresholds (typically above 75-80%), the system must aggressively destage data to the slower HDD Capacity tier to free up space for incoming writes.

This destaging process and the lack of available SSD space for the active working set (WS) force read and write operations to be served from the slower Capacity tier (HDD), resulting in significantly higher latency and "sluggish" desktop performance. The vCPU ratio (4:1) and Host CPU (< 40%) are well within healthy limits, ruling out CPU contention.

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

According to Nutanix Move and Citrix/VDI Master Image Preparation guides:

The Process: When Nutanix Move migrates a VM from ESXi to AHV, it installs Nutanix Guest Tools (NGT) (including VirtIO drivers) on the target VM to ensure it boots and functions correctly on the AHV hypervisor.

The Issue: If this migrated VM is intended to be a Base Image (Gold Image) for a non-persistent pool (MCS/PVS), the NGT instance installed by Move contains specific identity information (VM UUIDs/communication certificates) unique to that single VM.

The Requirement: If you clone this image without cleaning up, every clone will attempt to use the same NGT identity, causing communication conflicts with the cluster.

The Solution: The administrator must Remove NGT (or run the NGT cleanup interaction) after the conversion (once the VM is on AHV) and before reprovisioning (before sealing the image and creating clones). This ensures the clones can register as unique entities.