Nutanix AHV Virtualization & VM Management Flashcards

Which hypervisor is natively bundled with Nutanix AOS at no additional license cost?

Answer: AHV (Acropolis Hypervisor)

AHV (Acropolis Hypervisor) is Nutanix's native, license-included hypervisor built on KVM/QEMU, eliminating third-party hypervisor licensing costs.

Which Nutanix management interface is used to create and manage virtual machines on AHV?

Answer: Prism Element or Prism Central

VMs are created and managed through Prism Element (single-cluster) or Prism Central (multi-cluster), Nutanix's native management planes.

How are VM disk images stored in a Nutanix AHV environment?

Answer: vDisks within the Nutanix Distributed Storage Fabric

Nutanix stores VM disks as vDisks within the Distributed Storage Fabric (DSF), providing built-in redundancy, performance, and data locality.

What AHV feature enables a running VM to be moved to a different host without any downtime?

Answer: Live migration

AHV live migration transfers a running VM between hosts transparently with no service interruption, similar to VMware vMotion.

Which Nutanix tool is specifically designed to migrate VMs from VMware ESXi or Microsoft Hyper-V to AHV?

Answer: Nutanix Move

Nutanix Move (formerly Xtract) is the dedicated cross-hypervisor VM migration tool that handles disk conversion and cutover automatically.

Which virtual network adapter type is recommended for optimal VM network performance on AHV?

Answer: VirtIO

VirtIO is the paravirtualized network driver recommended for AHV VMs, offering the best throughput and lowest CPU overhead on KVM-based hypervisors.

What is the correct method to install a guest OS on a newly created AHV VM using an ISO image?

Answer: Mount the ISO as a CD-ROM device and boot from it

In AHV, you attach an ISO file as a virtual CD-ROM to the VM and configure it to boot from that device for OS installation.