Nutanix NCP-MCA - Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud Automation (NCP-MCA 6.10) Exam

When launching Calm blueprints, there are two view options available: Developer and Consumer. The Developer view allows you to create, edit, and manage blueprints, as well as access advanced features such as macros, actions, and scripts. The Consumer view allows you to launch and manage applications from the Marketplace, as well as access basic features such as variables, tasks, and alerts. The view option is determined by the role assigned to the user in the project. Users with the Project Admin or Project Auditor role can switch between the Developer and Consumer views, while users with the Project User role can only access the Consumer view. References:

Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud Automation (NCP-MCA) v6.5, Section 1 - Describe and Differentiate Automation Concepts and Principles, page 3

Nutanix Multicloud Automation Administration (NMCAA), Module 2 - Nutanix Calm, Lesson 2.1 - Nutanix Calm Overview, page 9

Nutanix Calm User Guide, Introduction to Nutanix Calm, Nutanix Calm User Interface

The best option to automate the installation of the local agent on all Linux VMs is to create an Endpoint that includes all Linux VMs and include the Endpoint in a Runbook that executes a shell script for agent installation. This way, the administrator can leverage the Calm Runbook feature, which allows orchestrating tasks across multiple VMs without the need of a blueprint or an application. The administrator can also filter the VMs by name, tag, or other criteria to select the target VMs for the Endpoint. The shell script can be added as a task in the Runbook and run on the selected Endpoint.

Option A is not correct because a Brownfield deployment is used to create an application from existing VMs and an existing blueprint. It is not suitable for automating tasks across multiple VMs without a blueprint. Moreover, a Brownfield deployment cannot attach to post-Calm created VMs, as they are already managed by Calm.

Option C is not correct because creating a new golden image and deploying all VMs again is a very time-consuming and disruptive process. It also requires the administrator to migrate the data and configuration of the existing VMs to the new ones. This option does not leverage the Calm automation capabilities and is not recommended. References: Nutanix Calm Runbooks & API Automation, Nutanix Support & Insights, Calm 3.0 is Here!, Nutanix Cloud Manager

 The Send Alert to Webhook action allows the administrator to send an HTTP request to a specified URL, which can be used to trigger a PagerDuty incident via its REST API1. This action requires the least number of configurations compared to the other options, as it only needs the webhook URL, the HTTP method, and the payload. The other options would require additional steps, such as creating a custom action, configuring the IP address, or using the Nutanix v3 API, which is not designed for integrating with third-party services.

References:

Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud Automation (NCP-MCA) v6.5, Section 3, Objective 3.3

Nutanix Multicloud Automation Administration (NMCAA), Module 5, Lesson 5.2

Training Spotlight: Nutanix Multicloud Automation Administration (NMCAA), Video 5.2

Process Automation | PagerDuty

To update the running configuration for a multi-VM application in AWS using the Manage tab for the application in Calm, the administrator needs to provide the provider information for the AWS account. This includes the access key, secret key, region, and VPC ID. If the provider information is missing, the administrator will not be able to perform any actions on the application from Calm. References: Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud Automation (NCP-MCA) Exam Blueprint Guide, page 16, section 4.1.1. 

The administrator should use a conditional playbook and create a playbook using alert to accomplish this task. A conditional playbook is a type of playbook that allows the administrator to define different actions based on certain conditions or criteria1. A playbook using alert is a type of playbook that is triggered by an alert policy that monitors the VM status2. By using these two features, the administrator can create a playbook that checks if the rebooted VM is the mission-critical VM and sends a notification to the on-call administrator, or else sends an email to the Operations team.

References:

Nutanix Multicloud Automation Administration (NMCAA) course, Module 3: Nutanix X-Play, Lesson 2: Nutanix X-Play Playbooks, Topic: Conditional Playbooks

Nutanix Multicloud Automation Administration (NMCAA) course, Module 4: Nutanix Calm Governance, Lesson 2: Nutanix Calm Alerts, Topic: Alert Policies and Playbooks

Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud Automation (NCP-MCA) v6.5 Exam Blueprint Guide, Section 1: Describe and Differentiate Automation Concepts and Principles, Objective 1.3: Define the components of X-Play

A service dependency is a feature of Nutanix Calm that allows you to define the order of execution and the conditions for starting and stopping services in a blueprint. By creating a service dependency between the application and the database, you can ensure that the application will not start until the database is fully installed and ready. This avoids the need for manual intervention or inefficient workarounds like loops or sleep statements. References: Nutanix Multicloud Automation Administration (NMCAA), page 41; Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud Automation (NCP-MCA), section 2.

To automate the reduction of vCPUs in a VM on a specific schedule, the administrator should create a playbook triggered at a specified time. This playbook can be scheduled to run at 1:00 AM on the following Sunday and perform the task of reducing the number of vCPUs in the VM.

References:

Nutanix documentation on Playbook Scheduling.

Nutanix Best Practices for Automating VM Tasks.

The best way to automate the scale-out of the application layer using a third-party tool is to create a Playbook with a webhook as a trigger and a REST API call as an action. A webhook is a mechanism that allows a third-party service to send a notification to a Calm server when a certain event occurs, such as a code commit or a build completion. A REST API call is a way to interact with the Calm server programmatically, such as launching a blueprint or scaling out a service. By creating a Playbook that combines these two elements, the administrator can enable the third-party tool to trigger the scale-out action on the Calm server with a single command. The other options are either not feasible, not efficient, or not relevant for this task. References: Nutanix Calm: Playbooks - Read the Docs and Nutanix Calm: REST API - Read the Docs.

The error message indicates that customization of the guest operating system is not supported. This issue often arises because open-vm-tools is not installed or not running on the Redhat Enterprise Linux VM. open-vm-tools is necessary for vSphere to perform guest customization tasks, such as setting the hostname, IP configuration, and other initialization tasks.

References:

Nutanix documentation on Guest Customization Requirements.

VMware documentation on Installing Open VM Tools.

A Branch Condition is a type of action in X-Play that allows you to create conditional logic based on the output of a previous action or a custom expression. A Branch Condition can have multiple branches, each with a different condition and a different set of actions to execute if the condition is met. The minimum number of actions required in a Branch Condition is two: one for the condition itself, and one for the action to perform if the condition is true. If the condition is false, the Branch Condition will skip to the next action in the Playbook. You can add more branches to a Branch Condition, but you cannot have less than two. References: Nutanix Calm: Playbooks - Read the Docs and Nutanix Calm: Branch Condition - Read the Docs.