NCP Nutanix Architecture and Concepts 5

Question 1

What is Nutanix Volumes (formerly DSF Block Store) used for?

Accepted Answer

Exposing iSCSI block storage to external hosts, bare-metal servers, or non-AHV hypervisors

Answer

Nutanix Volumes exposes the Distributed Storage Fabric as iSCSI LUNs, allowing external servers, Windows clusters, or other hypervisors to use Nutanix storage directly.

Question 2

Which Nutanix product provides file services (SMB/NFS) natively on the HCI cluster?

Accepted Answer

Nutanix Files (formerly Acropolis File Services)

Answer

Nutanix Files (formerly AFS) runs as a scale-out file server on the cluster, providing SMB and NFS shares without requiring separate file server infrastructure.

Question 3

What is the Nutanix 'Pithos' service responsible for?

Accepted Answer

Storing vDisk configuration and metadata within the CVM

Answer

Pithos is the vDisk configuration store that maintains mappings between vDisks, their extents, and their locations within the Nutanix Distributed Storage Fabric.

Question 4

How does Nutanix handle a disk failure within a node?

Accepted Answer

Nutanix automatically rebuilds the data from replicas on other nodes while the cluster continues serving I/O

Answer

When a disk fails, Nutanix uses the existing replicas of the lost data on other nodes to automatically rebuild redundancy, maintaining RF levels without administrator intervention.

Question 5

What is the difference between Nutanix Replication Factor 2 (RF2) and RF3?

Accepted Answer

RF2 stores 2 copies and tolerates 1 node failure; RF3 stores 3 copies and tolerates 2 simultaneous node failures

Answer

RF2 maintains 2 data copies providing single-node failure tolerance, while RF3 maintains 3 copies allowing the cluster to survive two simultaneous node failures.

(NCP) Certified Nutanix Professional Practice Test

(NCP) Certified Nutanix Professional Practice Test

NCP Nutanix Architecture and Concepts 5