Free Nutanix NCP-MCA Practice Exam with Questions & Answers

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation

Nutanix Self-Service requires aTunnel VMto establish communication between Prism Central and VPC-isolated workloads.

Documentation states that:

TheTunnel VM must be able to reach Prism Centralover a routable external network.

Anexternal subnetmust exist so the Tunnel VM can initiate outbound connectivity to PC.

Thus, the correct configuration is:

Create an external subnet to allow the Tunnel VM to reach Prism Central.

Therefore,Option Bis correct.

The most efficient and scalable method for managing user access in Nutanix Self-Service Projects is leveraging existing Identity Providers (such as Active Directory).

Add an Active Directory group to a role:When adding users to a Project, the administrator can select an entireDirectory Group(AD Group) and assign a specific Project Role (e.g., Developer, Consumer, Operator) to that group.

Result:All users currently in that AD group, and any users added to that AD group in the future, automatically inherit the assigned Project Role. This eliminates the need to manually manage individual user accounts (Option D) or maintain separate local groups (Option A) within Prism Central.

To efficiently identify the source Blueprint for every VM created during a test, the administrator should utilize the built-inBlueprint Name Macrowithin a Multi-VM structure.

Macro Usage:The macro @@{calm_blueprint_name}@@ automatically resolves to the name of the blueprint being deployed (e.g., "Test_BP_Version_A").

Efficiency:By using aMulti-VM blueprint(which creates all four VMs in one deployment action) and configuring theVM Namefield in the service definition to include this macro (e.g., VM-@@{calm_blueprint_name}@@-@@{calm_array_index}@@), the administrator ensures that every resulting VM is automatically tagged with its source blueprint name in the hypervisor (Prism Element/Central) list.

Why not others:

Option Ainvolves "Single VM Blueprint" and "cloning," which is a manual or secondary process that is less efficient than a native Multi-VM definition.

Option Cuses @@{calm_application_name}@@, which identifies the specificinstance(e.g., "App-1"), not theblueprint design(e.g., "Web-Server-v2") that is being tested.

According to theSelf-Service Administration and Operations Guide(specifically the section on System Limits and Maintenance), the retention policy for soft-deleted entities is explicitly defined:

Retention Period:"Data related to deleted apps and blueprints is cleaned up after3 months."

This mechanism is part of the internal database maintenance ("garbage collection") to manage resource usage on the Prism Central/Self-Service VM while allowing for audit trails or recovery within a reasonable window.

In a Nutanix Self-Service Blueprint, actions that affect theentire application lifecycleor its structural configuration are defined asProfile Actions.

Application Profile Actions:These are operations that run at the level of the Application Profile.

Custom Profile Actions:To enable capabilities likeScale Out(adding more replicas),Scale In(removing replicas), orUpgrade(updating the application software across the deployment), the developer createsCustom Profile Actions.

These actions are distinct from "Service Actions" (which apply to a single VM/Service, like "Restart Apache").

Once defined, these Custom Profile Actions appear as buttons on the "Manage" tab of the deployed application, allowing the application admin to trigger the scaling or upgrade workflows defined by the developer.

To utilize aVM-Host Affinity Policy(which pins VMs to specific Hosts) in the context of a Self-Service Blueprint, the administrator must leverageCategories.

The Mechanism:

Infrastructure Level:The administrator creates a Category (e.g., License:Oracle) and assigns it to the specific Hosts in Prism Central. They then create an Affinity Policy that enforces "VMs with Category App:Oracle must run on Hosts with Category License:Oracle."

Blueprint Level (The Answer):In the Blueprint editor, the administrator cannot "select hosts" directly. Instead, theyassign the specific Prism Central Category(e.g., App:Oracle) to the Service (VM) definition.

Execution:When the blueprint is deployed, the VM is provisioned with that Category tag. The AHV scheduler immediately recognizes the tag and enforces the pre-existing Affinity Policy, ensuring the VM lands on the correct hosts.

Option A describes a non-existent workflow (Policies are typically global or environment-mapped, not "associated to a policy within a project" in this context). Options C and D refer to "Tags," but Nutanix uses the term "Categories" for policy enforcement.

In the Nutanix Cloud Platform,Categoriesare the fundamental metadata structure used to group and tag resources (such as VMs, Hosts, and Blueprints) for management purposes.

Functionality:Categories are key-value pairs (e.g., CostCenter:Marketing or Environment:Production) that provide a logical abstraction layer above the physical infrastructure.

Usage:

Cost Allocation:Nutanix Cost Governance (formerly Beam) uses categories to map resource consumption to specific business units or budgets.

Reporting:Prism Central uses categories to filter and group entities in reports.

Compliance/Security:Flow Network Security policies rely on categories to define traffic rules (e.g., "Allow traffic from App:Web to App:DB").

Protection:Disaster Recovery policies assign replication schedules based on categories.

Differentiation:"Labels" is a term often used in Kubernetes or public cloud (AWS/Azure tags), but "Categories" is the specific terminology and feature implementation within Nutanix Prism Central.

Nutanix Playbooks allowevent-driven automation.

Documentation states that Playbooks can:

Trigger onVM Powered Offevents

Filter targets usingcategories(e.g., OSType: Linux, Environment: Dev)

Perform actions such asVM Reduce CPU,VM Resize, etc.

To automatically and immediately update CPU count when the VM powers off, the proper method is:

✔Use aPlaybook

✔Trigger:VM Powered Off

✔Target VMs using categories

✔Action:VM Reduce CPU

Self-Service Runbooks (Option D) are manually executed; they do not automatically trigger on events.

Therefore,Option Cis correct.

The placement of applications in Nutanix Self-Service is dictated by the intersection of theProjectconfiguration and theBlueprintdefinition.

Project Construct:The Project defines which infrastructure accounts (Providers) are available for use (e.g., AHV, AWS, Azure). If the Project is configured to allow access tobothAWS and another provider (like on-prem AHV or Azure), the potential exists for deployment to those targets.

Blueprints:The Blueprint (or the specific Environment selected at launch) dictates where the workload actually goes. If the administrator intended "Only AWS," but the Project allows multiple providers and the Blueprints (or the users launching them) are configured to use a non-AWS environment, the application will be deployed there.

Therefore, the cause is that theProject construct(allowing multiple clouds) and theBlueprints(utilizing those available clouds) are configured to allow this distribution. To restrict it, the administrator should remove the unintended providers from the Project's "Infrastructure" or "Environment" settings.

To configure a Playbook to run with the permissions of a specific user rather than the default system context, the creator uses theExecute on behalf offeature.

Context:By default, Playbooks in Intelligent Operations (X-Play) may run with system-level privileges. However, for audit compliance or specific access control requirements (e.g., when an action involves an API call that requires specific user credentials or a ticket creation that needs a specific "Requester"), the administrator can configure the execution context.

Configuration:In the Playbook settings menu, the"Execute on behalf of"option allows the administrator to select a specific Prism Central user. When the Playbook is triggered, all actions within it are executed and logged as if that specific user had performed them manually.