The Nutanix Certified Professional - Cloud Native (NCP-CN-6.10) (NCP-CN)

The NKPA course explains that NKP provides a role-based access control (RBAC) system to manage permissions within its platform, in addition to Kubernetes-native RBAC. For a development team needing limited permissions to perform specific tasks (deploying applications, scaling deployments, viewing logs and metrics) within a specific namespace, the appropriate access type in the NKP GUI is an NKP Role .

NKP Roles are predefined or custom roles within the NKP platform that map to Kubernetes RBAC permissions but are managed through the NKP UI for ease of use. They allow granular control over actions within a workspace or namespace, ensuring the team can perform their tasks (e.g., deploy, scale, get logs) without having access to other environments or cluster-wide resources. For example, an NKP Role like “Developer” or a custom role can be configured to grant edit permissions in the team’s namespace while restricting access elsewhere. The Nutanix Cloud Native (NCP-CN) 6.10 Study Guide states: “In the NKP GUI, configure an NKP Role to grant limited permissions to a development team, allowing actions like deploying applications and viewing logs within their namespace while preventing unauthorized changes in other environments.”

Incorrect Options :

B. Cluster Role : A Kubernetes Cluster Role grants permissions across all namespaces, which is too broad for the team’s limited access requirement.

C. Cluster Admin : This grants full administrative access to the entire cluster, far exceeding the team’s needs and violating the principle of least privilege.

D. Kommander Role : Kommander is a management component in NKP, but “Kommander Role” is not a specific access type in the NKP GUI for this purpose.

As per the NKPA 6.10 documentation under “NKP Insights Prerequisites”, one of the essential requirements for deploying NKP Insights is that cert-manager is installed and properly configured in the target workload cluster. Cert-manager provides the necessary certificates for secure communication and observability between the cluster components and the NKP Insights platform.

The documentation specifies:

“NKP Insights requires cert-manager to be installed on the target workload cluster. If cert-manager is not enabled, the cluster will be shown as unavailable (grayed out) for NKP Insights deployment.”

Without cert-manager, the Insights operator cannot validate or securely deploy its components, resulting in the cluster being unavailable for selection during the Insights enablement process.

The Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) integrates Velero , an open-source tool, for backup and restore operations as part of its Day 2 operations. The NKPA course explains that after configuring a Backup Storage Location (e.g., an AWS S3 bucket) and creating a backup, administrators can view details of the backup using the Velero CLI. The correct command to view the details of a backup named testbackup is velero backup describe testbackup . This command provides a detailed description of the backup, including its status, resources included, and storage location.

The Nutanix Cloud Native (NCP-CN) 6.10 Study Guide states: “To inspect a Velero backup in NKP, use the velero backup describe < backup-name > command to display detailed information about the backup, such as its creation time, expiration, and included resources.” The backup name (testbackup) is specified as created by the team, and no prefix like aws-velero- is indicated in the question, making option C the correct choice.

Incorrect Options :

A. kubectl get backupstoragelocations -n ${testbackup} -o yaml : This command retrieves Backup Storage Location objects, not backup details. The namespace ${testbackup} is also incorrect, as Velero resources are typically in a specific namespace (e.g., velero).

B. velero backup describe aws-velero-testbackup : The backup name is testbackup, not aws-velero-testbackup. The NKPA course does not indicate any prefix for the backup name.

D. kubectl get backupstoragelocations -n ${WORKSPACE_NAMESPACE} -o yaml : This retrieves Backup Storage Locations, not the backup itself, and does not provide backup details.

The NKPA course explains that deleting a workspace in NKP, especially after all associated clusters have been removed, is a straightforward process through the NKP UI. The correct method is to navigate to the Global view in the top menu bar, select Workspaces from the menu, locate the target workspace, click the three-dot button next to it, and select Delete . This action removes the workspace and its associated configurations from NKP, ensuring a clean environment after the project is finished.

The Nutanix Cloud Native (NCP-CN) 6.10 Study Guide states: “To delete an empty workspace in NKP, go to the Global view in the UI, select Workspaces, click the three-dot menu for the workspace, and choose Delete.” The course confirms that a workspace must be empty (no clusters or resources) before it can be deleted, which aligns with the scenario where the three clusters have already been removed.

Incorrect Options :

A & B. Run kubectl delete workspace : Both options are syntactically similar, but kubectl delete workspace is not a valid command in NKP. Workspaces are managed through the NKP UI or CLI (nkp), not directly via kubectl.

D. Ask a workspace user to delete the workspace : Workspace users typically lack permissions to delete workspaces; this action is reserved for administrators via the Global view.

NKP uses Cluster API (CAPI) to provision and manage Kubernetes clusters across supported infrastructures, including Nutanix AHV, vSphere, AWS, and GCP. CAPI components, such as controllers and providers, are deployed to manage the lifecycle of clusters on these platforms. However, when NKP attaches to a managed Kubernetes service like Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), CAPI components are not deployed because AKS is managed by Azure, and NKP only integrates with the cluster for fleet management, not provisioning.

The NKPA course explains: “For managed Kubernetes services like AKS, NKP attaches the cluster to its management plane without deploying CAPI components, as the underlying infrastructure is managed by the cloud provider.” The Nutanix Cloud Native (NCP-CN) 6.10 Study Guide reinforces this: “CAPI is used for NKP-managed clusters on Nutanix, vSphere, AWS, and GCP, but not for attached managed services like AKS.”

Incorrect Options :

A. vSphere : NKP deploys CAPI components (e.g., CAPV provider) to manage vSphere-based clusters.

B. GCP : NKP deploys CAPI components (e.g., CAPG provider) for GCP-based clusters.

C. Nutanix : NKP deploys CAPI components (e.g., CAPA provider for AHV) for Nutanix AHV clusters.

As per the NKPA 6.10 documentation under “Day 2 Operations: Managing Applications”, the recommended procedure to enable an application (like NKP Insights) involves accessing the cluster’s Application Dashboard . The NKP Insights application does not appear in the general category list if the cluster does not have the correct context or if the application category is not globally enabled.

The specific procedure to enable NKP Insights includes:

Navigate to the Clusters section from the left-side menu.

Select View Details for the target cluster (prod-01 in this case).

In the Application Dashboard of that specific cluster, locate the NKP Insights application.

Click the three-dot menu (ellipsis) for NKP Insights and select Enable .

The NKPA course addresses performance issues in NKP clusters, such as high CPU and memory consumption on worker nodes, by recommending scaling options to distribute workloads more effectively. The Kubernetes cluster in the scenario has 4 workers, each with 8 vCPUs and 32 GB RAM, and is running out of resources. The most effective solution is to add more workers to the cluster to increase overall capacity and balance the load, rather than modifying existing workers or reducing application replicas.

The correct action is to add one more worker using the command nkp scale nodepools ${NODEPOOL_NAME} --replicas=5 --cluster-name=${CLUSTER_NAME} -n ${CLUSTER_WORKSPACE} (Option D). This command scales the specified node pool to 5 replicas (from the current 4), adding one additional worker to the cluster. The new worker will have the same configuration (8 vCPUs, 32 GB RAM) as the existing workers, providing additional capacity to alleviate resource contention. The Nutanix Cloud Native (NCP-CN) 6.10 Study Guide states: “To address performance issues due to resource exhaustion in an NKP cluster, scale out by adding workers using nkp scale nodepools < nodepool-name > --replicas < count > --cluster-name < cluster-name > -n < workspace > .”

Incorrect Options :

A. Call tech support to investigate : While support can help, the issue is clearly resource exhaustion, which can be resolved by scaling the cluster—a task the Platform Engineer can perform directly.

B. Ask developers to lower application replicas : Reducing replicas may decrease resource usage but could impact application availability or performance, which is not ideal for a development cluster.

C. Add more CPU and memory to workers with nkp scale --cpu 16 --memory 64 : The nkp scale command does not support --cpu and --memory flags for resizing existing workers. Resizing VMs typically requires updating the node pool configuration and replacing nodes, which is more complex than adding new workers.

The NKPA 6.10 documentation outlines that in air-gapped environments where default pod network CIDR conflicts exist, the cluster manifest (created via the nkp create cluster command) should be updated to specify an alternate, non-conflicting pod CIDR block range before deployment.

For deployments in air-gapped environments where there is no external Internet connectivity, the --airgapped parameter is required. This instructs the NKP deployment to rely solely on internal resources, using pre-staged images and local container registries, ensuring that no external network dependencies cause deployment failures.