The Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud Infrastructure (NCP-MCI) v6.5 exam (NCP-MCI-6.5)

Answer: D. Load the Virtual SCSI pass-through controller.

The error message shown in the image indicates that Windows 10 setup cannot find any drives to install the OS. This is because the Nutanix AHV hypervisor uses a virtual SCSI pass-through controller to present disks to the VMs, and Windows 10 does not have a built-in driver for this device. Therefore, the administrator needs to load the Nutanix VirtIO driver for the virtual SCSI pass-through controller during the OS installation process. The Nutanix VirtIO driver package contains various drivers that are specifically used by Windows VMs hosted in the Nutanix environment to enhance their stability and performance 1 . The administrator can download the latest Nutanix VirtIO driver package from the VirtIO downloads page of the Nutanix support portal. The administrator can then follow these steps to load the driver and install the OS 2 :

On the Windows 10 setup screen, click Load driver.

Insert a USB drive or mount an ISO image that contains the Nutanix VirtIO driver package.

Browse to the location of the driver package and select the folder that matches the OS architecture (32-bit or 64-bit).

Select the vioscsi.inf file and click Next.

Wait for the driver to load and then click Refresh.

Select the disk where you want to install Windows 10 and click Next.

References: 1 : VirtIO Driver Versions for Windows 2 : Installing Windows on AHV

According to the  Nutanix Prism Central Guide , you can click on any chart in a widget to expand it and view more details about the data elements.

LCM (Life Cycle Manager) is a feature that allows Nutanix administrators to perform one-click firmware and software upgrades for Nutanix clusters and components. LCM fetches inventory and update information from a pre-configured URL that contains the latest versions of firmware and software packages. However, upgrading Nutanix AOS does not automatically update the fetch URL. To update the fetch URL, the administrator needs to update the LCM framework.  The LCM framework is the core component of LCM that provides the logic and functionality for inventory, download, and upgrade operations 1 .

To upgrade the LCM framework, the administrator needs to perform an LCM inventory. An LCM inventory is a process that scans the cluster and its components for their current firmware and software versions and compares them with the available versions from the fetch URL. If there is a newer version of the LCM framework available, it will be shown as an update option under Cluster Software Component in the Available Updates page.  The administrator can then select and apply the LCM framework update to upgrade it to the latest version 2 .

The administrator can perform an LCM inventory using Prism Element or Prism Central.  The steps are as follows 3 :

In Prism Element, go to the Network Configuration page and click Life Cycle Management.

In Prism Central, go to the Services page and click Life Cycle Management.

Click Inventory in the toolbar and select Perform Inventory from the drop-down menu.

Wait for the inventory process to complete and check for any available updates.

NTP  service needs to be configured to ensure logs, alerts and information is consistent across clusters that are located in different countries.  NTP stands for Network Time Protocol and it is used to synchronize the clocks of all the nodes in a cluster 1 .  This helps to maintain accurate timestamps for logs, alerts and other information that are generated by Nutanix clusters 1 .

Curator is the process that runs on every node in a Nutanix cluster and is responsible for data management tasks such as deduplication, compression, erasure coding, and replication factor compliance. Curator also handles disk failure recovery by scanning Cassandra to find all data previously hosted on the failed disk, and all disks in that node.  Curator then rebuilds the data on other nodes in the cluster using the distributed storage fabric 1 .

Automated live migration is a feature of Nutanix that allows the cluster to automatically move VMs from one host to another without any downtime, in order to optimize the performance and availability of the cluster.  According to the Nutanix documentation 1 , automated live migration can occur in the following scenarios:

Cluster resource hotspot: When a host or a group of hosts experience high resource utilization, such as CPU, memory, or network, the cluster can automatically migrate some VMs to other hosts with lower utilization, in order to balance the load and avoid performance degradation.

AOS upgrade: When upgrading the Nutanix software (AOS), the cluster can automatically migrate the VMs from the host that is being upgraded to another host in the same availability zone, in order to maintain the VM availability and minimize the impact of the upgrade process.

AHV host maintenance mode: When putting an AHV host into maintenance mode, the cluster can automatically migrate all the VMs from that host to another host in the same availability zone, in order to prepare the host for maintenance operations such as hardware replacement or firmware update.

According to the image description, the exhibit shows a screenshot of a computer screen with a table of data. The table has 6 columns and 4 rows. The columns are labeled “Date”, “Time”, “Status”, “Details”, “Configuration”, and “Duration”. The rows contain information about different configurations and their statuses. The background is a light blue color. There is a pop-up message on the bottom right corner of the screen that reads “This question has been answered. Click here to enable the edit button.”

Based on the table data, it seems that the screenshot is taken from the Prism Central web console, showing the results of a cluster health check report.  The report shows that there are four failed checks: Host Password Policy, CVM Password Policy, NTP Configuration, and Cluster Time Skew 2 . These checks indicate that some initial cluster configuration tasks were missed during the deployment process.

The Host Password Policy check verifies that the host passwords are not set to default values and are compliant with the password policy defined in Prism Central 3 .  The CVM Password Policy check verifies that the CVM passwords are not set to default values and are compliant with the password policy defined in Prism Central 4 . These checks are important for ensuring the security and compliance of the cluster. Therefore, changing the host and CVM passwords from their default values and following the password policy guidelines are two initial cluster configuration tasks that were missed.

References:  1 :  VM Details View - Nutanix Support & Insights   2 :  Cluster Health - Nutanix Support & Insights   3 :  Host Password Policy - Nutanix Support & Insights   4 :  CVM Password Policy - Nutanix Support & Insights

The default network configuration for AHV hosts and CVMs is a bond named br0-up with two or more uplinks in active-backup mode. This means that only one uplink is active at a time, while the others are in standby mode. This provides high availability, but not load balancing or increased bandwidth. To increase the bandwidth available to the AHV host and the CVM, the administrator can change the bond mode to Active-Active, which allows all uplinks to be used simultaneously. This can be done using the manage-ovs commands on each AHV host.  The steps are as follows 1 :

Log in to the AHV host using SSH.

Enter maintenance mode on the CVM by running  allssh ' cluster status | grep -i cvm | grep -i down ' .

Change the bond mode to Active-Active by running  manage_ovs --bond_mode active-active update_uplinks br0-up < uplink_list > , where  < uplink_list >  is a comma-separated list of uplink interfaces (for example, eth0,eth1).

Verify the bond mode by running  manage_ovs show_uplinks .

Exit maintenance mode on the CVM by running  allssh ' cluster start ' .