Unofficial Nutanix NCAP Study Guide
After completing the NCP, the NCAP was the next goal on my list. I began to prepare for this in a similar fashion to how I did with the NCP. The first step was of course, to download the Exam Blueprint.
As with the NCP guide, a big credit again goes to Steven Poitras, and his work on The Nutanix Bible. Additionally, the Advanced Administration & Performance Management online class provided by Nutanix was very helpful.
There is also a NCAP Practice Exam available which gives you an idea on what you can expect for the exam.
Section 1 – Administer Advanced Virtual Machine Deployments
- Perform unattended installation and configure Nutanix Guest Tools (NGT)
- Set up and configure Self Service Restore
- Add/Remove CPU and/or Memory resources to a live system
- Identify the need for Flash mode/AHV Turbo for VM storage or performance tuning
- Manage Acropolis containers
Section 2 – Implement Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
- Based on a given scenario, administer and manage Nutanix data protection solutions
- Demonstrate how to install and configure synchronous replication for multiple hypervisors
Section 3 – Configure Advanced Networking
- Identify the physical switch configuration necessary to support a given AOS networking feature
- Utilize network CLIs to manage OVS (Open vSwitch) instances and make changes to multiple nodes
- Manage bridges and uplinks
- Configure and utilize Network Visualization
- Describe and differentiate Network Segmentation for CVM-CVM/CVM-Hypervisor/CVM-Intranet
Section 4 – Enable and Customize Security Services
- Describe and manage Nutanix’s custom Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIGs)
- Describe and manage role mapping between Prism Element and Prism Central
- Describe and differentiate audit events and logs for local and AD/LDAP users
- Create and install SSH Keys for Cluster Lockdown
- Implement 2-factor authentication for an AOS cluster
Section 5 – Manage Acropolis File and Block Services
- Identify use cases for Acropolis Block Services (ABS)
- Identify use cases for Acropolis File Services (AFS)
- Deploy ABS to an AOS cluster (including Volume Groups, iSCSI Initiators, Discovery, CHAP)
- Deploy AFS to an AOS cluster (including a File Server and File Shares)
- Manage an AFS cluster
- Connect to an ABS target from both Windows and Linux clients
Section 6 – Administer Prism Central with and without Prism Pro
- Describe and differentiate capabilities of Prism Central with and without Prism Pro
- Use Prism Central to identify and fix bottlenecks and anomalies
- Exploit Machine Learning for entity management and resource optimization
- Plan for future growth using Capacity Runway and What-if Scenarios
- Manage assets and applications using Calm
- Automate application Life Cycle Management (LCM)
- Implement and administer Prism Self-Service
Section 7 – Manage and Optimize Performance
- Determine correct system storage settings for compression, deduplication, erasure coding and validate expected savings
- Monitor CPU/Memory utilization to identify problems and propose solutions
- Analyze existing network configuration and adjust for optimal performance (NLB, Bond configuration)
- Identify the capabilities of the Enterprise Cloud as they relate to performance of AOS clusters, AHV hosts and VMs
- Describe and monitor storage performance and methods of optimization