Free Nutanix NCSE-Core Practice Exam with Questions & Answers

When using the Sizer in Automatic mode, it can provide various configurations based on the specified workload and capacity requirements. The following configurations are possible:

6x NX-8055-G7:

Each node has 2 x 7.68TB SSDs and 10x 6TB HDDs.

This configuration balances high-performance SSDs with large-capacity HDDs, suitable for mixed workload environments.

4x NX-1075S-G7 + 4x NX-8035-G7:

NX-1075S-G7 nodes have 4x 3.85TB SSDs each.

NX-8035-G7 nodes have 6x 3.84TB SSDs each.

This combination provides high SSD storage capacity across different node types, optimized for performance-intensive workloads.

References:

Nutanix Sizer Documentation: Details on how the Sizer tool calculates and recommends configurations.

Nutanix Hardware Specifications: Specifications for different node models and their storage capabilities.

B. Beam:

Nutanix Beam is a multi-cloud cost optimization and governance tool that provides deep visibility into cloud usage and spending. It helps organizations understand and manage their cloud costs on a per-application basis.

Beam enables detailed auditing and reporting of where applications reside across both public and private clouds. This addresses the customer’s difficulty in auditing applications and understanding cloud costs.

Key features of Beam include cost visibility, budget management, compliance, and security monitoring, making it an ideal solution for the customer’s needs.

To enable prospective customers to gain hands-on experience with Nutanix without the need for support from a systems engineer or Nutanix, the following resources are available:

Test Drive:

Nutanix Test Drive provides a hands-on, guided tour of Nutanix solutions in a live environment. It allows customers to explore and interact with Nutanix features and functionalities, simulating real-world scenarios and workflows.

Community Edition (CE):

Nutanix Community Edition is a free version of Nutanix AOS that customers can deploy on their own hardware. It allows users to test and evaluate Nutanix software in a non-production environment, providing full access to Nutanix features and capabilities for learning and experimentation.

References:

Nutanix Community Edition Getting Started Guide

Within RVtools, the "vDisk" tab provides actual utilization information on thick provisioned disks. This tab displays detailed information about the virtual disks, including their size, provisioning type, and utilization metrics. Administrators can use this information to analyze disk usage and plan capacity accordingly.

References:

Nutanix Community Edition Getting Started Guide​

Understanding FIPS 140-2 Level 2 Requirements:

FIPS 140-2 is a U.S. government standard that specifies security requirements for cryptographic modules. Level 2 adds requirements for tamper-evidence and role-based authentication.

Required Items for FIPS 140-2 Level 2 Compliance:

Self-Encrypting Drives (SEDs):

Explanation: SEDs automatically encrypt data at rest, meeting the encryption standards required by FIPS 140-2 Level 2.

CVM (Controller VM) Autopathing allows workloads to continue running on the host during an AOS (Acropolis Operating System) upgrade. This feature ensures that the I/O operations are redirected to other healthy CVMs in the cluster if the local CVM is temporarily unavailable during the upgrade process. This seamless redirection ensures that there is no disruption to the workloads, maintaining continuous operations and high availability during upgrades.

References:

Nutanix Bible​

Calculate Daily Change Rate Data:

Each VM has 100GB of data.

Daily change rate is 5%.

For 50 VMs: 50×100×0.05=25050 \times 100 \times 0.05 = 25050×100×0.05=250 GB of daily changed data.

Calculate Snapshot Data:

Daily snapshots for retention of 2 weeks (14 days).

Total snapshot data for 14 days: 250×14=3500250 \times 14 = 3500250×14=3500 GB or 3.5 TB.

Calculate Full Data Storage:

Each VM has 100GB.

For 50 VMs: 50×100=500050 \times 100 = 500050×100=5000 GB or 5 TB.

Total Storage Required:

Sum of snapshot data and full data storage: 3.5 TB+5 TB=8.5 TB3.5 \text{ TB} + 5 \text{ TB} = 8.5 \text{ TB}3.5 TB+5 TB=8.5 TB.

Additional Factors and Overhead:

Typically, an overhead of approximately 60-70% of the used space is recommended to accommodate additional requirements such as metadata, system usage, and unexpected data growth.

Adding overhead: 8.5 TB×1.6=13.6 TB8.5 \text{ TB} \times 1.6 = 13.6 \text{ TB}8.5 TB×1.6=13.6 TB.

Thus, the minimum amount of storage capacity for the remote cluster to meet the customer's data retention is approximately 14TB to 15TB.

References:

Nutanix documentation and data protection practices​​.

Considerations for overhead and additional storage needs as per standard data management best practices​​.

The Automatic sizing option in Nutanix Sizer provides a solution that meets the provided requirements and includes a default 25% growth capacity. This ensures that the initial configuration can handle current workloads and accommodate future growth without immediate additional investments​​.

During a 1-click, non-disruptive upgrade on a 3-node Nutanix cluster, if a VM on Node A overwrites an existing block of data while the CVM on Node A is rebooting, Nutanix AOS ensures data integrity by writing two copies of the data across the remaining nodes. This approach maintains data resiliency by ensuring that multiple copies of the data are available even when one of the nodes is temporarily unavailable​​​​.

To size a new project that requires offsite backup using Veeam with an RPO of 24 hours and the ability to restore from the past 7 days of backups, while considering the data change rate of 1%, the SE should configure the Nutanix Sizer with the following parameters:

Backup Frequency: Since the required RPO is 24 hours, a daily backup schedule should be set.

Retention Policy: The retention policy should be set to retain daily backups for 7 days. This means that each backup is kept for a week before it is overwritten.

Data Change Rate: The data change rate is 1%. This information is crucial for sizing the backup storage. A 1% daily change rate indicates that each daily backup will be approximately 1% of the total data size.

Backup Target: Veeam should be configured to send backups to an offsite location. This can be an external storage repository or a cloud target.

Storage Calculation: Calculate the total backup storage requirement. If the total data size is D, then the daily backup size will be 0.01D. Over 7 days, the storage requirement will be approximately 0.07D.

The SE should enter these details into the Nutanix Sizer to ensure the configuration aligns with the prospect's requirements.

References:

Nutanix documentation on configuring backup policies and retention in Veeam.

Standard practices for backup retention and RPO configurations in data protection solutions.