Nutanix Exam Quality Assurance & Improvement 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which Nutanix technology automatically tiers data between SSD and HDD to optimize performance?
- Acropolis Dynamic Scheduler (ADS)
- Intelligent Tiering via ILM (Information Lifecycle Management) (Correct answer)
- Prism Pro Anomaly Detection
- Storage QoS policies
Correct answer: Intelligent Tiering via ILM (Information Lifecycle Management)
ILM continuously monitors data temperature and moves hot data to SSD and cold data to HDD to maintain optimal performance-to-cost balance.
Question 2: What does Nutanix's 'Data Resiliency Status' widget in Prism indicate when showing 'OK'?
- All VMs have active backup snapshots
- The cluster can tolerate the configured number of node or disk failures without data loss (Correct answer)
- Deduplication and compression ratios are within expected range
- All NCC checks have passed in the last 24 hours
Correct answer: The cluster can tolerate the configured number of node or disk failures without data loss
Data Resiliency Status 'OK' confirms the cluster currently meets its replication factor requirements and can survive the intended failure domains.
Question 3: In the context of Nutanix quality improvement, what is the role of Pulse?
- It sends anonymized cluster telemetry to Nutanix for proactive support and product improvement (Correct answer)
- It monitors network latency between CVMs and triggers alerts on degradation
- It enforces QoS policies on storage containers during peak hours
- It validates firmware versions against the Nutanix compatibility matrix
Correct answer: It sends anonymized cluster telemetry to Nutanix for proactive support and product improvement
Pulse transmits anonymized health and configuration data to Nutanix, enabling proactive support case creation and informing product improvements.
Question 4: Which Prism Central feature helps identify VMs that are consuming disproportionately high resources compared to their peers?
- VM Efficiency Widget showing overprovisioned and inactive VMs (Correct answer)
- Storage Container utilization heatmap
- Network flow visualization
- Calm blueprint audit log
Correct answer: VM Efficiency Widget showing overprovisioned and inactive VMs
The VM Efficiency widget categorizes VMs as overprovisioned, inactive, or constrained, helping admins right-size workloads to improve cluster efficiency.
Question 5: What is the impact of running Nutanix clusters at sustained storage utilization above 95%?
- Deduplication ratios improve as more data is eligible for deduplication
- Curator cannot move data to restore resiliency after a drive failure, risking data loss (Correct answer)
- Erasure coding automatically activates to reclaim space
- QoS policies are automatically relaxed to maximize throughput
Correct answer: Curator cannot move data to restore resiliency after a drive failure, risking data loss
Above ~95% storage utilization, Curator lacks the free space needed to re-replicate data after failures, making data loss possible.
Question 6: Which NCC check category specifically validates that Nutanix software versions are consistent across all nodes?
- Network checks
- Cluster services checks
- Software version checks (Correct answer)
- Hardware compatibility checks
Correct answer: Software version checks
Software version checks detect mixed AOS, AHV, or NCC versions across nodes, which can cause instability or unsupported configurations.
Question 7: How does Nutanix's Acropolis Dynamic Scheduler (ADS) contribute to workload quality?
- It schedules VM backups during off-peak hours to reduce storage contention
- It live-migrates VMs to balance CPU and memory load across hosts without downtime (Correct answer)
- It dynamically adjusts replication factor based on workload criticality
- It throttles network bandwidth to prevent noisy-neighbor effects
Correct answer: It live-migrates VMs to balance CPU and memory load across hosts without downtime
ADS continuously evaluates host resource utilization and live-migrates VMs to balance load, improving overall workload performance quality.
Which Nutanix technology automatically tiers data between SSD and HDD to optimize performance?