Unofficial Nutanix NCP Study Guide
I have always been a fan of leveraging community resources when studying for certification exams. The VCAP study guides here, and here were invaluable when I was studying for those exams. When I began preparing for the Nutanix NCP, I was a little bummed out when I couldn’t find any community resources like these.
I downloaded the NCP 5.5 Exam Blueprint, and slowly started adding to it until I had a respectable document that helped me to prepare for the exam. I wanted to share it with the community in the hope that it will help others become Nutanix certified.
A big credit goes to Steven Poitras, and his work on The Nutanix Bible. A lot of the study materials I used were from what he put together.
Update 4/2020: I have completed a PDF version of the study guide, which can be found here.
Section 1 – Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Concepts
- Define and differentiate features and technologies present in Acropolis, Prism and Calm
- Explain the relationship between nodes, blocks and clusters
- Recognize the benefits of a Nutanix hyperconverged infrastructure solution
- Differentiate between physical and logical cluster components
- Describe some of the primary AOS services running on the CVM
Section 2 – Managing a Nutanix Cluster
- Identify methods for managing a Nutanix Enterprise Cloud
- Identify how to download and configure tools and applications like Prism Central, Cmdlets, and REST API
- Utilize Prism Element to configure and monitor a cluster
- Describe, differentiate and utilize nCLI/aCLI to configure and monitor a cluster
- Differentiate between Pulse and Alert technologies
- Use the REST API Explorer to retrieve and/or make changes to a cluster
Section 3 – Securing a Nutanix Cluster
- Describe how Nutanix provides cluster security
- Explain security concepts such as two-factor authentication, key management and cluster lockdown
- Explain Data-at-Rest Encryption (DARE) functionality
- Configure user authentication
- Install an SSL certificate
Section 4 – Networking
- Differentiate AHV managed and unmanaged networks
- Describe AHV networking components and configuration settings
- Explain and implement network segmentation
- Explain how to separate 1GbE and 10GbE interfaces
- Identify the default AHV network configuration
- Explain IP Address Management (IPAM)
- Define and differentiate AHV Bond Modes
- Create a Backplane Network
- Create a User VM Network
- Given a scenario, configure the appropriate AHV Bond Mode
Section 5 – VM Creation and Management
- Explain Live Migration
- Describe VM High Availability functionality
- Describe VM Data Path Redundancy
- Perform guest customization on a Virtual Machine
- Perform a Self-Service Restore of a VM
- Use the Image Service to deploy a VM
Section 6 – Health Monitoring and Alerts
- Identify dashboards and monitoring tools that can be used to resolve cluster issues
- Utilize the Health dashboard and its major components
- Configure Alert e-mail settings for a cluster
- Utilize methods for configuring and monitoring health dashboards and alerts to resolve a given scenario
Section 7 – Distributed Storage Fabric
- Identify methods for creating a Storage Container
- Determine what capacity optimization method(s) should be used based on a given workload
- Describe and differentiate technologies used in conjunction with a Distributed Storage Fabric, including snapshots, clones, high availability and disaster recovery
- Configure Deduplication, Compression, and Erasure Coding on Nutanix containers
- Given a workload, determine how to best optimize storage capacity and explain how the various Nutanix Capacity Optimization features work.
Section 8 – AHV Workload Migration
- Describe the steps needed to perform an ESXi to AHV workload migration from preparation through completion
- Migrate a VM from an ESXi cluster to an AHV cluster
Section 9 – Acropolis Services
- Define and differentiate Acropolis Block Services (ABS) and Acropolis File Services (AFS)
- Configure Acropolis Block Services (ABS)
- Configure Acropolis File Services (AFS)
- Determine and implement storage services based on a given workload
Section 10 – Data Resiliency
- Describe the concept of the Redundancy Factor and related requirements
- Explain how availability impacts components and VMs within a Nutanix Cluster
- Identify Data Resiliency requirements and policies related to a Nutanix Cluster
- Describe and differentiate component, service, and CVM failover processes such as Disk Failure, CVM Failure, and Node Failure
Section 11 – Data Protection
- Describe and differentiate Nutanix data protection technologies such as NearSync, Cloud Connect, and Protection Domains
- Explain failover and failback processes
- Create and modify a Protection Domain
- Configure a Remote Site
Section 12 – Prism Central
- Identify Prism Central requirements
- Describe and differentiate Prism Element and Prism Central
- Identify methods for viewing information about VMs, clusters, hosts, disks, containers, and storage containers
- Deploy a Prism Central VM
- Register/Unregister a Nutanix Cluster with Prism Central
- Create and configure a custom dashboard
- Configure a custom report
Section 13 – Cluster Maintenance
- Describe available methods and resources for cluster maintenance
- Perform one or more Nutanix Cluster Checks
- Install NCC
- Configure an HTTP Proxy
I want to download and study
Hello naresh, thank you for your interest. Creating this guide into a PDF is on my to do list. Hopefully I’ll have something soon!
I am planning for NCP 5.10.Will it be applicable for 5.10 also ?.Hope the PDF is ready ?
Hey Sriram, the guide I created was specifically for the 5.5 exam. There are some differences between that, and the 5.10. You can check the blueprint for that one here.
Hi, Is the pdf version ready?
Hey Ramesh, still in progress!
Hi PDF version available or not.
Yes it is!
Hi, please share the pdf version..thank you
Hello Sass, the download link is at the top of this post.
Hello do you have NCP 5.10 pdf study guide?
I do not. If I start another guide, it will most likely be the 5.15.
Hi, do you have study guide for NCP-MCI 5.15
Hello Raghavendra, I do not.
Hi,
Can you please help / advise me the study materials I need to refer for 5.15. Your 5.10 study guide is systematically organized. Thank you so much for that.
Thanks and Regards
Raghavendra
Hello Raghavendra. I would say your best bets would be the exam blueprint, and the Enterprise Cloud Administration 5.15 course from Nutanix University.
hello ,
thank you for sharing these organized materials < please if you check the below topics are not working links are dimm :–
-Given a scenario, configure the appropriate AHV Bond Mode
-Utilize methods for configuring and monitoring health dashboards and alerts to resolve a given scenario
-Given a workload, determine how to best optimize storage capacity and explain how the various Nutanix Capacity Optimization features work.
-Explain how availability impacts components and VMs within a Nutanix Cluster
-Identify methods for viewing information about VMs, clusters, hosts, disks, containers, and storage containers
-Create and configure a custom dashboard
-Configure a custom report
-Describe available methods and resources for cluster maintenance.
Regards,
Bahloul.
Hello Bahloul, I’m sorry but I never got around to updating those sections of the guide. Best of luck!