Free Nutanix NCP-MCA Practice Exam with Questions & Answers

Categories in Self-Service (formerly Calm) are metadata labels that are assigned to cloud resources. These categories help organize and manage resources by tagging them with specific attributes, making it easier to apply policies and manage the infrastructure.

References:

Nutanix Calm documentation on Using Categories.

Nutanix Best Practices for Category Management.

A Brownfield Application is a type of application that allows you to import and manage existing VMs that were not deployed by Calm. You can use a Brownfield Application to perform actions such as start, stop, restart, delete, or execute scripts on the imported VMs. You can also add services, credentials, variables, and policies to the Brownfield Application blueprint. To create a Brownfield Application, you need to select a multi-VM blueprint and then choose the VMs that you want to include in the application from the drop down list. You can also filter the VMs by name, cluster, or power state.

A Greenfield Application is a type of application that allows you to deploy new VMs from scratch using Calm. You can use a Greenfield Application to provision and configure VMs on different cloud platforms, such as Nutanix AHV, VMware ESXi, AWS, Azure, or GCP. You can also add services, credentials, variables, and policies to the Greenfield Application blueprint. To create a Greenfield Application, you need to select a single-VM or a multi-VM blueprint and then specify the VM properties, such as name, image, flavor, network, storage, etc.

References:

Nutanix Calm DSL – Brownfield Apps the Easy Way

Nutanix Support & Insights

Getting started with Nutanix Calm

 The best way to automate the entire database and application deployments is to use a combination of Nutanix Calm and Nutanix Era. Nutanix Calm is a multicloud automation platform that allows you to create blueprints to deploy and manage infrastructure and applications across different cloud environments. Nutanix Era is a database management platform that allows you to provision, clone, patch, refresh, and restore databases in a simplified and automated way. By creating a Calm blueprint that deploys applications and calls Era APIs to automate database deployments, you can achieve faster and consistent releases, as well as reduce the manual effort and complexity involved in the process. You can also leverage the features of Calm and Era, such as self-service, governance, showback, backup, and recovery, to enhance the efficiency and security of your deployments. References: 

https://www.nutanix.com/support-services/training-certification/certifications/certification-details-nutanix-certified-professional-multicloud-automation-v6-5

https://www.nutanix.com/content/dam/nutanix/resources/support/ds-ncp-mca.pdf

The administrator should use a trigger based on an event when creating a playbook to automate the scaling of the VDI solution. An event trigger is a type of trigger that executes a playbook when a specific event occurs in the Nutanix environment or in a third-party system. An event trigger can be configured to listen to events from various sources, such as Prism alerts, Calm actions, or external webhooks. In this scenario, the administrator can use an event trigger to listen to the webhook from the third-party monitoring tool and execute a playbook that creates additional resources and adds them to the VDI solution.

A trigger based on a REST API is not the best option, because it requires the administrator to manually invoke the playbook using an API call. This is not as efficient or reliable as using an event trigger that automatically executes the playbook when the capacity threshold is reached.

A trigger based on an email is also not the best option, because it requires the administrator to configure an email server and a mailbox to receive the notification from the third-party tool. This adds complexity and overhead to the automation process and may not be as secure or timely as using an event trigger.

A trigger based on an alert is a valid option, but it depends on the availability and compatibility of the Prism alert system with the third-party tool. If the third-party tool can send alerts to Prism, then the administrator can use an alert trigger to execute the playbook. However, if the third-party tool does not integrate with Prism, then the administrator cannot use an alert trigger and has to use an event trigger instead.

References:

Nutanix Calm User Guide: Chapter 8: X-Play

Nutanix Calm DSL User Guide: Chapter 5: Playbooks

Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud Automation (NCP-MCA) Exam Blueprint Guide: Section 1: Describe and Differentiate Automation Concepts and Principles

Scaling VM replica settings allow you to specify the minimum, maximum, and default number of VMs that can be created from a blueprint service. The minimum and default values must be equal to or greater than the number of VMs needed at any time and at time of deployment, which is 2 in this case. The maximum value must be equal to or less than the project quota divided by the VM resources, which is 100/12 = 8 for vCPUs and 300/24 = 12 for memory. The lowest of these two values is the limit for the maximum value, which is 8. Therefore, the only option that meets all the requirements is B. MIN: 2, MAX: 7, Default: 2.

References:

Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud Automation (NCP-MCA) Exam Blueprint Guide, page 10, Objective 3.1: Given a scenario, create a blueprint to deploy infrastructure and applications using Self-Service

Nutanix Multicloud Automation Administration (NMCAA), Module 5: Self-Service, Lesson 5.2: Blueprint Design, slide 23: Scaling VM Replica Settings

Nutanix Certified Professional Multicloud Automation (NCP-MCA) 6 Exam, page 10, Objective 3.1: Given a scenario, create a blueprint to deploy infrastructure and applications using Self-Service

The error message in the exhibit indicates a mismatch between the number of network settings and the number of NICs on the VM. This is a common validation error when saving Calm Blueprints for VMware, where it is essential to ensure that these configurations match to avoid issues with VM deployment and operation1. References: 1: Nutanix NCP-MCA Certification Exam Sample Questions2

A Developer permission level grants access to create, update, delete, and duplicate blueprints in Nutanix Calm12. A Developer can also launch, manage, and delete applications from blueprints, as well as create, update, delete, and duplicate runbooks2. A Consumer can only launch and manage applications from blueprints, but cannot modify them2. An Operator can launch, manage, and delete applications from blueprints, as well as run and manage runbooks, but cannot create or modify them2. A Domain Admin can perform all the actions of a Developer and an Operator, as well as manage projects, categories, and endpoints2. References:

Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud Automation (NCP-MCA) v6.5

Nutanix Multicloud Automation Administration (NMCAA)

The most optimal way to correct the failed deployment is to retry the failed deployment. This option allows the administrator to resume the deployment from the point of failure, without having to redeploy the entire application or create a new runbook. Retrying the failed deployment also preserves the application state and configuration, and avoids creating duplicate resources or conflicts.

Redeploying the application is not the best option, because it requires the administrator to delete the existing application and launch a new one from scratch. This option wastes time and resources, and may result in data loss or inconsistency.

Creating a runbook to retry is also not the best option, because it requires the administrator to write a custom script or workflow to handle the retry logic. This option adds complexity and overhead to the automation process, and may not be compatible with the original blueprint or application.

Rewriting the blueprint to have error handling is a valid option, but it is not the most optimal one. This option requires the administrator to modify the blueprint code and add logic to handle different types of errors and exceptions. This option improves the robustness and reliability of the blueprint, but it does not correct the failed deployment itself. The administrator still has to redeploy the application or retry the failed deployment after rewriting the blueprint.

References:

Nutanix Calm User Guide: Chapter 6: Managing Applications

Nutanix Calm DSL User Guide: Chapter 4: Blueprints

Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud Automation (NCP-MCA) Exam Blueprint Guide: Section 3: Validate Blueprints, Runbooks, Playbooks, and Automation Settings

The administrator should modify the alert by adding the correct category and assign the category Environment:Development to development VMs. By doing this, they can filter out alerts for development VMs that are expected to have memory constrained alerts and focus on those that are critical, such as production VMs. This is based on the general practices in managing alerts in a multicloud environment, as well as the specific features and requirements of Nutanix Calm and Prism Central. References:

How to create custom alert policies | Prism central | Nutanix Community

Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud Automation (NCP-MCA) v6.5 Exam Blueprint Guide, Section 3: Validate Blueprints, Runbooks, Playbooks, and Automation Settings, Objective 3.1: Determine the causes of a Blueprint or Runbook deployment failure

Nutanix Multicloud Automation Administration (NMCAA) course, Module 4: Nutanix Calm Governance, Lesson 1: Nutanix Calm Governance

In the Guest Customization section of a blueprint for an AHV Linux service, you can apply a Cloud-init script. Cloud-init is a widely used method for customizing cloud instances during boot time, allowing for automated configuration of the virtual machine's operating system.

References:

Nutanix Calm documentation on Guest Customization.

Nutanix Best Practices for Using Cloud-init.