NCP-EUC Exam Dumps - Nutanix Certified Professional (NCP) Questions and Answers

an action that the administrator should take to identify the virtual desktops in the environment that are using the most resources and causing resource contention is Filter the virtual desktops by Constrained: High. Constrained is a metric that indicates how often a virtual machine is unable to get its requested CPU resources. A high value means that the virtual machine is frequently starved for CPU and may experience performance degradation. By filtering the virtual desktops by Constrained: High, the administrator can see which ones are suffering from resource contention and take appropriate actions such as migrating them to less loaded hosts or increasing their CPU allocation.

https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Prism-Central-Guide-Prism-v6_0:mul-tasks-view-page-pc-r.html

In the "Omnissa Horizon on Nutanix Best Practices" (formerly VMware Horizon), the recommended provisioning method for non-persistent desktops (specifically for task workers who do not need to retain user-installed apps) is Instant Clones.6

Instant Clones (vmFork technology) allow for the rapid provisioning of desktop VMs that share a base image and memory footprint, offering high storage efficiency and fast deployment times. Nutanix AHV and AOS are fully optimized to support Instant Clones (often utilizing Shadow Clones for caching the replica disk). Linked Clones (Option D) are considered a legacy technology and are deprecated in modern versions of Horizon. Full Clones (Option C) are typically reserved for persistent, power-user use cases where storage efficiency is less of a priority than persistence.

In a Nutanix AHV cluster, resource management and Admission Control ensure that VMs are only powered on if there are sufficient physical resources (specifically Memory) available to back them.

A cluster designed to run an "average" of 800 VMs likely has its physical memory sized to accommodate that workload plus some buffer (HA). Attempting to power on 1400 VMs simultaneously (almost double the average load) on the same 6-node cluster will likely exhaust the available physical RAM. Once the cluster memory capacity is full, AHV will refuse to power on additional VMs, resulting in the state observed in Citrix Studio where many VMs remain off. Citrix network issues (Directory/Storefront) would typically result in registration failures or connection errors, not the inability of the hypervisor to power on the VM.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract of Nutanix End User Computing documents:

According to Nutanix storage best practices for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), the optimal configuration for Linked Clones is Compression Only.

Linked Clones and Data Efficiency: In a Linked Clone environment, the Virtual Machines (VMs) already share a common base image (replica disk) at the hypervisor level. Because the identical operating system data is already shared via the cloning technology, the Nutanix Distributed Storage Fabric (DSF) manages this duplicate data efficiently without needing the Deduplication feature enabled on the container.

Redundancy of Deduplication: Nutanix technical documentation explicitly states that for Linked Clones or Nutanix VAAI clones, deduplication provides no additional benefit because the data is already single-instanced. Enabling deduplication in this scenario would introduce unnecessary metadata overhead without delivering significant capacity savings.

Role of Compression: Inline Compression is recommended for almost all workloads, including VDI. It effectively reduces the size of the unique data written to the delta disks (user data, temp files, and logs) associated with non-persistent desktops, maximizing storage efficiency without the performance cost of deduplication.

Shadow Clones: For the read-heavy workload of 2000 desktops accessing the same base image, Nutanix utilizes Shadow Clones (enabled by default) to cache the "hot" replica disk locally on every node, ensuring high performance during boot storms, rendering the need for "performance tier deduplication" redundant for linked clones.

Summary of Best Practice:

Full Clones / Persistent Desktops: Compression + Deduplication.

Linked Clones / Non-Persistent Desktops: Compression Only.

Citrix Studio is the primary management console for the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (or Citrix DaaS) site.7 It is explicitly designed with wizards to guide administrators through deployment scenarios, such as creating Machine Catalogs (provisioning VMs) and Delivery Groups.

It is specifically within the Delivery Groups wizard in Citrix Studio that an administrator configures the publishing of resources (such as applications and desktops) and assigns them to users.8 While Prism Central manages the underlying Nutanix infrastructure (VMs, networking), it does not handle the session brokering or the specific definition of "published resources" for the VDI users.

ersistent virtual machines are those that retain all the user’s personal settings, files, and customizations after each session12. Non-persistent virtual machines are those that reset to a predefined state after each session and do not save any user data12. MCS (Machine Creation Services) is a Citrix feature that allows administrators to create and manage multiple virtual machines from a single master image3. Remote Desktop Services (RDS) is a Microsoft feature that allows users to access applications or desktops hosted on a remote server4. Citrix Virtual Apps is a Citrix feature that allows users to access applications hosted on a remote server or cloud5

one of the factors that affects end-user performance in a virtual desktop environment is network latency, which is the time it takes for data packets to travel between two points on a network.

Therefore, if the company wants to optimize end-user performance, they should choose a public cloud data center location that minimizes the network latency between the end user and the data center.

To change the account lockout behavior from the default (which is typically a temporary 15-minute lockout) to a permanent lockout required for high-security environments, the administrator must enable the DoD (Department of Defense) configuration compliance.

This is managed through the Security Configuration Management Automation (SCMA) framework, often found within the "Cluster Hardening" or "Security Dashboard" settings (sometimes referenced as "Additional Settings" in exam contexts). Applying the DoD STIG (Security Technical Implementation Guide) policy modifies the underlying Linux PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) configuration (pam_faillock) to enforce strict rules, including permanently locking user accounts after a specific number of failed attempts until an administrator manually unlocks them. "Cluster Lockdown" (Option A) refers to disabling password authentication entirely in favor of SSH keys, which does not fit the requirement of locking accounts after incorrect login attempts.1

Here are the 100% verified answers for Questions 12, 13, 14, and 15, derived from Nutanix End User Computing architectural best practices.

Writable AppVolumes are a feature of VMware App Volumes that provides users with a dedicated virtual disk for storing user profile data and user-installed applications1. Writable AppVolumes are stored as VMDK files on a datastore2.

To protect Writable AppVolumes during a disaster in a Nutanix environment, one possible solution is to use asynchronous DR between two sites. Asynchronous DR allows you to replicate VMs and their associated data from one site to another at regular intervals using protection domains and remote sites3.

https://www.nutanix.com/blog/vmware-app-volumes-on-nutanix

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract of Nutanix End User Computing documents:

According to Citrix App Layering on Nutanix reference architectures:

Minimizing Storage: Citrix App Layering allows an administrator to capture applications in separate virtual disks ("App Layers") that are stored once and then dynamically merged with a base OS layer to create layered images.2 This avoids the storage bloat of installing every application into a single "Gold Image" or creating dozens of unique images for every department.

ELM Role: The Enterprise Layer Manager (ELM) is the virtual appliance required to manage this layering environment.3 It orchestrates the creation of layers and the publishing of images.

Targeting User Groups: By using Elastic Layering (a feature of App Layering), specific app layers can be delivered to users based on their Active Directory group membership at login, fulfilling the requirement to deploy "different applications to different user groups" without installing them permanently in the base image.