Nutanix NCS-Core - Nutanix Certified Services Core Infrastructure Professional (NCS-Core 6.8)

When a consultant sees a message indicating that the MD5 sum for the hypervisor is not found in the Whitelist file after uploading it during the Foundation process, the appropriate step is to download the latest hypervisor ISO whitelist file from the Nutanix portal (Option C). This file contains the approved checksums for various ISO images, ensuring that the hypervisor ISO being used is verified for compatibility and integrity.References: Nutanix Foundation Guide, Nutanix Support Portal.

In a Nutanix environment managed by Prism Central, protecting workloads and SQL servers from a disaster involves creating a recovery policy. A recovery policy in Nutanix is a set of rules that define how data is protected and recovered in the event of a disaster1.

Creating a new recovery policy involves selecting the virtual machines (VMs) that need to be protected and specifying the hardware requirements for the recovery environment1. This includes the compute and storage resources needed to run the protected VMs in the recovery site1.

Once the recovery policy is created, Nutanix’s built-in data protection and disaster recovery capabilities can ensure that the protected VMs can be quickly and efficiently recovered in the event of a disaster2. This includes capabilities such as efficient snapshot, cloning, and replication capabilities to provide a higher level of protection at a lower cost2.

Therefore, to meet the CEO’s request, the IT administrator should create a new Recovery policy by selecting the VM that needs to be protected and get hardware requirements.

References:

Designing, Optimizing and Scaling Microsoft SQL Server - Nutanix

Nutanix Data Disaster Recovery - Protect Apps & Data | Nutanix

Recommendations For Leap And Supported Service-level … - Nutanix

Cloud Disaster Recovery Services | Nutanix

Nutanix – High Availability and Data Protection

The proper network configuration to solve the described issue involves using tagged VLANs for the CVM (Controller Virtual Machine) and host, allowing these components to correctly interact with the customer's VLAN-configured network. For the IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface), which is used for out-of-band management and does not require connectivity to multiple VLANs, setting it to access mode is appropriate. This configuration ensures that the IPMI only communicates over a single, untagged VLAN, effectively isolating its traffic from the production network.

References:

Nutanix Bible (https://www.nutanixbible.com ), particularly the sections on networking and VLAN configurations.

Nutanix University: NCS-Core 6.8 Training (https://university.nutanix.com ), where VLAN and network settings are covered.

In the event of an Active Directory outage that prevents login to Prism, the recommended approach is to have a contingency plan that allows for local management of the cluster. Option B, "Create and use an emergency local account on the cluster," is the correct choice. This approach ensures that administrators can still access and manage the cluster even if external authentication services are down.

An emergency local account provides a direct, reliable means to access Prism and perform necessary administrative tasks without depending on external systems. This is a critical backup strategy for maintaining access control and managing the cluster during outages.

References:This method is in line with best practices for system availability and disaster recovery, ensuring administrators retain access to manage and troubleshoot without interruption, as detailed in Nutanix's documentation and security configuration guidelines.

To validate the performance of a Microsoft SQL workload for a CRM application, using X-Ray with an OLTP (Online Transaction Processing) Workload is most suitable. OLTP workloads simulate typical transactional database operations which are representative of CRM application usage, providing accurate insights into expected performance on the Nutanix platform.

References:

Nutanix Bible (https://www.nutanixbible.com ), specifically the sections on performance testing tools and methodologies.

Nutanix University: NCS-Core 6.8 Training (https://university.nutanix.com ), detailing how to use X-Ray for specific application testing.

In a Nutanix cluster, when a Controller Virtual Machine (CVM) fails, the iSCSI targets for the volume groups managed by that CVM are not left inoperable. Instead, the volume group's iSCSI targets (vDisks) are automatically redirected to another operational CVM in the cluster. This failover mechanism ensures that there is no interruption in service or data availability. The redirection is seamless and does not require manual intervention, allowing for continuous access to the volume group by the SQL cluster.

References:

Nutanix Bible: Data Protection and High Availability

Nutanix University: Resiliency and Disaster Recovery

The "Advertised Capacity" parameter in the context of creating a storage container in Nutanix systems is used to cap the usage of storage containers to be smaller than the limit of a storage pool's capacity. This feature allows administrators to set a maximum storage limit for a container, preventing it from using the entire storage pool's capacity and ensuring that resources are allocated based on planned capacity requirements. This helps in maintaining predictable storage management and allocation within a Nutanix environment.References: Nutanix Storage Container Management Documentation, Nutanix Best Practices for Storage Configuration.

When adding a new node with a higher AOS version (5.9) into an existing cluster running an older version (5.8), the recommended method is to use Prism Element to expand the cluster and select the re-image option. This process involves re-imaging the new node to the AOS version currently running in the cluster (5.8), ensuring compatibility and stability across the cluster without requiring an overall upgrade to a newer version. This approach maintains the cluster's operational integrity while integrating the new hardware.References: Nutanix Bible, NCS-Core 6.8 official training materials, and Nutanix support documentation on cluster expansion.