NCP Cheat Sheet 2026

The 30 highest-yield NCP facts, distilled from real exam questions. Print it, save it as a PDF, or study it here — free, no sign-up.

1. What Nutanix feature allows a storage container to access capacity from multiple Nutanix clusters? → Distributed Storage Fabric
2. In Prism Central, what is the maximum number of vCPUs that can be assigned to a single VM by default on an AHV cluster? → 128
3. What is the purpose of the 'shadow clones' feature in Nutanix cluster deployment for VDI workloads? → Deduplicate boot disk reads by caching popular data locally on each node
4. How does Nutanix scale? → Add more nodes to the cluster
5. Which statement BEST describes the relationship between Certified Nutanix Professional certification and industry evolution? → Requirements evolve periodically to reflect advances in knowledge and practice
6. Which storage container setting enables thin provisioning and allows VMs to consume more logical space than is physically available? → Advertised Capacity
7. An administrator needs to verify that Nutanix software-defined storage is not contributing to application latency. Which metric should be monitored in Prism? → Controller Average I/O Latency
8. After applying a hypervisor patch, VMs on one host fail to vMotion/live migrate. Which Prism alert category would surface this issue? → Compute
9. What is the MOST important reason for maintaining equipment maintenance logs in NCP practice? → To track maintenance history, predict failures, and demonstrate compliance
10. What does the 'cluster_init_successful' indicator in the Foundation log confirm? → The cluster has been created and CVMs are communicating
11. When deploying Nutanix clusters across multiple racks for rack-level fault tolerance, which configuration must be applied? → Configure fault domains using node-to-rack mapping
12. Which Nutanix feature enables you to deploy VMs from pre-configured templates with standardized settings? → VM Templates
13. Which Nutanix component handles I/O operations? → Stargate
14. When documenting assessment findings in NCP practice, which approach is MOST appropriate? → Record objective findings, measurements, and observations factually
15. What does the Nutanix 'Stargate' service primarily handle? → All data I/O operations including reads, writes, and caching
16. Which statement BEST describes the relationship between Certified Nutanix Professional certification and industry evolution? → Requirements evolve periodically to reflect advances in knowledge and practice
17. In Nutanix AOS, what is a Storage Container? → A logical storage policy grouping that maps to a datastore
18. Which approach is MOST important for NCP professionals when applying technical procedures? → Adhering to established protocols while adapting to specific conditions
19. What is the FIRST step before operating any equipment in NCP practice? → Conduct a pre-operation inspection and verify safety systems
20. Which Nutanix tool detects configuration issues? → Health checks
21. In a Nutanix cluster, what is the purpose of the 'Recycle Bin' for VMs in Prism? → Stores deleted VMs temporarily for recovery before permanent deletion
22. In Nutanix, what is the function of 'VM anti-affinity' rules? → Ensure specified VMs run on different physical hosts
23. Which log type helps diagnose VM issues? → VM logs
24. Which Nutanix service is responsible for providing the Prism Element and Prism Central web interfaces? → Prism
25. After a successful cluster deployment, an administrator finds that CVMs cannot reach external DNS. What is the first configuration element to verify? → CVM network configuration including DNS server IPs and gateway
26. What happens to the Controller VM (CVM) I/O path when a node fails in a Nutanix cluster? → Remote CVMs on surviving nodes take over I/O for the failed node's VMs via CVM autopathing
27. Which maintenance mode behavior is specific to Nutanix AHV when a node enters maintenance mode? → AHV live-migrates all VMs off the node automatically before maintenance begins
28. What technology underpins Nutanix’s distributed storage? → Distributed Storage Fabric
29. During a rolling upgrade of AOS, one CVM fails to rejoin the cluster after rebooting. What is the recommended first step? → Manually trigger genesis restart on the failed CVM
30. During Foundation-based cluster deployment, what is the correct order of operations? → Image nodes → Create cluster → Configure network