The Nutanix NCA exam preparation guide is designed to provide candidates with necessary information about the Nutanix Certified Associate exam. It includes exam summary, sample questions, practice test, objectives and ways to interpret the exam objectives to enable candidates to assess the types of questions-answers that may be asked during the Nutanix Certified Associate (NCA) exam.
It is recommended for all the candidates to refer the NCA objectives and sample questions provided in this preparation guide. The Nutanix Certified Associate certification is mainly targeted to the candidates who want to build their career in Associate Level domain and demonstrate their expertise. We suggest you to use practice exam listed in this cert guide to get used to with exam environment and identify the knowledge areas where you need more work prior to taking the actual Nutanix Certified Associate exam.
Nutanix NCA Exam Summary:
Nutanix Certified Associate Syllabus:
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Section |
Objectives |
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Describe Lifecycle Management |
- Describe Life Cycle Management (LCM)
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Describe how to verify if alerts are present
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Identify which updates are available
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Identify differences in using LCM in Prism Central and Prism Element
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Describe the LCM Inventory process
- Identify and monitor LCM software and firmware
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Describe how to ensure nodes are not in maintenance mode
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Identify which tasks are running
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Describe the LCM workflow
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Describe Nutanix Fundamental Concepts |
- Describe how to access Prism Central and Prism Element
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Recall proper access URL format
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Recall proper login format
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Identify which access ports are used
- Identify differences between Prism Central and Prism Element
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Identify capabilities and information types of each User Interface (UI)
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Describe administrative task differences between Prism Central and Prism Element
- Describe components of a Nutanix cluster
- Identify components and configuration elements, such as:
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Node
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Block
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Cluster
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Hypervisor
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Controller VM (CVM)
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Storage tier
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Storage pool
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Container
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vDisk
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Virtual IP (VIP)
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Data Services IP (DSIP)
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IPMI
- Identify Nutanix cluster concepts, such as:
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Single node vs dual node
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ROBO basics
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Compute node vs Storage-only node
- Define Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI)
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Identify differences between Nutanix HCI and legacy three-tier architecture
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Describe AOS purpose and functionality
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Explain Cluster Alerts and Monitoring Administration
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- Interpret alerts and events
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Describe failure behavior of nodes, CVMs, and disk drives
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Recognize Acropolis responses to failure
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Identify failures in Prism Central and Prism Element
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Recall how a Nutanix cluster responds to scenarios, such as:
- Node failure
- Network failure between nodes
- Disk failure
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Distinguish alert severity
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Utilize chart information to interpret and export information
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View alerts and events
- Interpret cluster health
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Interpret cluster status
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Interpret elements of the Health Dashboard
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Run health checks with the Prism Web Console
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Perform log collection
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Review data resiliency status
- Describe the benefits of Pulse
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Verify the Pulse status
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Recognize when to disable Pulse
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Describe the Pulse Connection Status when Pulse is disabled
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Describe how to collect logs with Prism Central and Prism Element when Pulse is disabled
- Describe interaction with the Support Portal
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Describe how to create a support case
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Identify documentation types
- Differentiate between VM, node, and cluster performance metrics
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Describe how to navigate the Analysis Dashboard
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Determine differences between metric and entity charts
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Describe Storage Concepts |
- Describe Nutanix storage architecture and features
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Identify storage components, such as Storage Tiers, Containers, Volume Groups, and vDisks
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Identify storage optimization features, such as compression types, deduplication, and inline vs post process erasure coding
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Describe snapshots
- Explain replication factors
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Identify number of data copies
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Describe replication factors
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Identify number of simultaneous failures supported
- Describe differences between redundancy factor and replication factor
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Identify requirements to enable different replication and redundancy factors
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Differentiate replication and redundancy factors
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Describe how redundancy factor relates to the fault tolerance level
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Describe differences between metadata copies and data copies
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Identify number of simultaneous failures supported
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Recognize how redundancy is related to node count in a cluster
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Explain Virtual Infrastructure Administration |
- Identify VM, network, and node configuration
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Identify VM configuration details
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Identify network types, such as the difference between managed and unmanaged networks
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Interpret network visualization details
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Identify disk drives and disk drive details, such as capacity, storage tier, physical vs logical characteristics, and mode
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Identify node details
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Describe VM placement policies, such as affinity vs anti-affinity rules, storage performance, and compute utilization
- Describe the image service
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Describe how to import images into Prism Central and Prism Element
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Identify requirements and limitations of the image service
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Describe placement policies when using the image service
- Explain VM operations
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Describe how to create, modify, and delete VMs, including how to deploy VMs from a template
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Differentiate different VM power states
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Explain how to assign categories to VMs
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Summarize VM details, such as the number of cores, memory, storage containers, host placement, and I/O metrics
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Describe Nutanix Solutions |
- Describe Nutanix architectural concepts
- Identify Nutanix products by use case
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