Free Nutanix NCP-EUC Practice Exam with Questions & Answers | Set: 3

To achieve logical traffic separation while minimizing physical ports (using the same physical uplinks for multiple traffic types), Nutanix AHV networking best practices recommend the use of 802.1Q VLAN tagging.

The standard validated design is to:

Place the CVM and AHV Host management/storage interfaces on the Native VLAN (untagged) or a specific management VLAN.

Place User VM (Guest) traffic on Tagged VLANs.

This configuration allows storage replication traffic (CVM) and user traffic (VMs) to share the same physical cables (minimizing port usage) while remaining logically isolated at the switch level. Options like separate virtual switches (Option B) often require dedicated physical uplinks, which violates the requirement to minimize ports.

To meet the requirements of minimizing operational overhead and optimizing hardware resources while ensuring N+1 availability, Option B is the optimal design.

Operational Overhead: Managing two clusters (Option B) creates significantly less administrative burden (upgrades, lifecycle management, failure domains) than managing four clusters (Options C and D).

Resource Optimization & Availability:

Total Load: 64TB of RAM (4,000 VMs * 16GB).

Option B (Correct): 2 Clusters × 32 Nodes = 64 Total Nodes.

Per Cluster: 32 nodes × 1.5TB = 48TB Total RAM.

Required RAM per cluster (2,000 VMs): 32TB.

N+1 Check: If 1 node fails, available RAM is 46.5TB. (46.5TB > 32TB required). This validates redundancy with fewer physical nodes (64) compared to Option D (72 nodes).

Option A: Fails N+1. (32 nodes × 1TB = 32TB. If 1 node fails, 31TB available < 32TB required).

Option D: Uses 72 nodes (higher hardware count/cost) and 4 clusters (higher overhead), making it less optimal than B.

In a Nutanix-hosted Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops environment, proper network port configuration is essential for component communication. The Citrix License Server is a critical infrastructure component that manages product licensing.

According to Nutanix Validated Designs and Citrix reference architectures for traffic flow, TCP port 27000 is the default port required for inbound communication to the License Server. This port is used by the License Server Manager (lmadmin or lmgrd) to receive communication from Citrix products (such as the Delivery Controller) requesting licenses.

The specific port breakdown for the License Server is:

Port 27000 (TCP): The License Server Manager port (Inbound communication). This is the primary entry point.

Port 7279 (TCP): The Vendor Daemon port.

Port 8082/8083 (TCP): The Administration Console web port (used for management, not licensing requests).

Therefore, to ensure successful inbound communication for licensing operations within the Nutanix infrastructure, the firewall must allow traffic on Port 27000.

In Nutanix storage architecture, Capacity Reservation (also known as "Reserved Capacity") is the feature designed to guarantee space at the container level.

Nutanix documentation states: "To ensure that there is space available for a storage container, you can enable capacity reservation. Capacity reservation ensures that a storage container has a minimum allocated capacity, preventing other storage containers from using that reserved space."

This effectively isolates the required storage amount from the shared Storage Pool, ensuring the specific workload housed in that container always has the physical capacity it requires, regardless of the consumption by other containers in the pool.

Microsegmentation is the specific functional capability within Nutanix Flow Network Security designed to control and restrict east-west traffic between virtual machines.

While traditional firewalls protect the perimeter (North-South), Microsegmentation applies stateful firewall policies directly to the vNIC of each VM. This allows an administrator to define granular rules that explicitly allow or deny traffic between individual VMs or groups of VMs (e.g., preventing a compromised VDI desktop from accessing a database server on the same subnet). This feature is the primary mechanism used to prevent lateral movement within the environment.

Nutanix Prism defines alert severity levels as follows:

Critical: An issue that requires immediate attention; the system or service is likely down or data is at risk.

Warning: An actionable issue has been detected. The system is currently functioning, but user intervention is required to prevent the issue from escalating. As the prompt states, "a more serious issue may develop if this is not resolved soon."

Info: System events that are for tracking purposes only (e.g., power on/off).

Therefore, the scenario describes a Warning level alert.

To ensure high availability for distributed applications such as load-balanced web servers, Nutanix AHV allows administrators to configure Anti-Affinity rules.

An Anti-Affinity rule specifies that a group of virtual machines should never run on the same AHV host simultaneously. By applying an Anti-Affinity rule to the three web server VMs, the Acropolis Scheduler ensures they are distributed across different physical nodes in the cluster.

In the scenario described, the web servers likely resided on the same host (or the failing host held the only active instance). If Anti-Affinity rules had been configured, the other web server VMs would have been running on healthy hosts, ensuring continued user access to the VDI environment despite the single node failure.

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

According to Nutanix Flow Network Security Guide:

Policy States: Security policies in Nutanix Flow have two primary operating modes: Monitor and Enforce.

Monitor Mode: In Monitor Mode (Option A), the policy rules are evaluated, and traffic that would have been blocked is logged, but the traffic is allowed to pass.

Use Case: This is explicitly designed for the scenario described: "testing the impact... before enforcing." It allows the administrator to visualize the flow logs (via the Visualizer) to ensure no legitimate traffic would be dropped, before switching the toggle to Enforce Mode (Option B) which actually blocks the traffic.

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.

Citrix Workspace includes several components that can replace or integrate with the traditional Citrix infrastructure components, such as:

Citrix Cloud Services, which provide management and orchestration capabilities for Citrix Workspace, such as Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service, Citrix Gateway service, Citrix Endpoint Management service, etc.

Citrix Workspace app, which is a client software that enables users to access their apps and desktops from any device.

Citrix Cloud Connectors, which are software agents that establish a secure connection between Citrix Cloud Services and the on-premises or cloud-based resources, such as Active Directory, hypervisors, VDAs, etc.

According to Citrix documentation2, an administrator who chooses to move all of the backend Citrix infrastructure to be managed as a service by Citrix can use the following components:

Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service, which replaces the Citrix Delivery Controllers and provides centralized management and delivery of virtual apps and desktops.

Citrix Studio, which is still available as a web-based console for configuring and managing the virtual apps and desktops environment.

Citrix Gateway service, which replaces the Citrix NetScaler and provides secure remote access to virtual apps and desktops through a single URL.

Citrix StoreFront, which is still available as an optional component for providing users with self-service access to their apps and desktops through a web portal or native receiver.