NCP-MCI-6.5 Questions and Answers

According to the Nutanix Prism Central Guide, Prism Central allows you to apply storage policies on a per VM basis using Category, so that the VM uses the storage configuration defined in the storage policy. Using a storage policy, you can manage parameters of VMs, such as encryption, type of or lack of data compression, and IOPS or Throughput throttling values to be applied to the entities.

According to the Nutanix Support & Insights web search result1, erasure coding is a data savings technique that utilizes stripes and parity calculation in a Nutanix cluster. Erasure coding increases the usable capacity on a cluster by reducing the replication factor of data blocks. Instead of replicating data, erasure coding uses parity information to rebuild data in the event of a disk or node failure. Erasure coding can save up to 50% of storage space compared to replication factor 2, and up to 75% compared to replication factor 32.

"An administrator has been tasked with increasing security on Nutanix cluster by disabling password authentication when accessing the CVM and AHV hosts and instead moving to key-based SSH, What is the easiest way for the administrator to meet these needs? Enable Cluster Lockdown and provide an RSA key."

 Cluster Lockdown mode disables password authentication when accessing the CVM and AHV hosts and instead requires key-based SSH. To enable Cluster Lockdown mode, you need to provide an RSA key.

Therefore, by enabling Cluster Lockdown mode and providing an RSA key, you can increase security on Nutanix cluster by disabling password authentication when accessing the CVM and AHV hosts and instead moving to key-based SSH with minimal effort.

https://next.nutanix.com/how-it-works-22/streamlined-login-and-increase-security-key-based-ssh-login-37397

Nutanix Move is a tool that allows you to migrate VMs from different sources to Nutanix AHV with minimal downtime and complexity. Nutanix Move supports migration from Hyper-V to AHV, including VMs configured for UEFI-boot. UEFI stands for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, which is a standard for the software interface between the operating system and the firmware. UEFI-boot is a mode of booting that uses UEFI instead of BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) to load the operating system. UEFI-boot offers some advantages over BIOS-boot, such as faster boot time, larger disk support, and better security features1.

To migrate a VM configured for UEFI-boot from a Nutanix Hyper-V cluster to AHV, you need to use Nutanix Move and follow these steps2:

• Download and deploy the Nutanix Move appliance on the AHV cluster.
• Log in to the Nutanix Move web console and add the source Hyper-V environment and the target AHV environment.
• Create a migration plan and select the VMs that you want to migrate. You can choose either automatic or manual preparation mode for the migration.
• Start the migration plan and monitor the progress. The migration plan will perform data seeding, which is the process of copying the VM data from the source to the target in the background.
• When the data seeding is complete, perform a cutover, which is the process of shutting down the source VMs and powering on the target VMs. The cutover will also configure the boot device for the UEFI-boot VMs on AHV.
• Verify that the migrated VMs are working as expected on AHV.

References: 1: UEFI Boot - Nutanix Support & Insights 2: Hyper-V to AHV and Hyper-V to Nutanix Clusters on AWS VM Migration - Nutanix Support & Insights

According to the web search results, one of the requirements for cross-hypervisor disaster recovery (CHDR) is to install and configure Nutanix Guest Tools (NGT) on all the VMs2. NGT configures the VM with all the required drivers for VM portability. Without NGT, the VMs may fail to boot after being migrated to a different hypervisor type. 

According to the Red Hat Customer Portal, to use RELP with Rsyslog, you need to install the rsyslog-relp package on both the server and the client. If the remote server does not have rsyslog-relp installed, RELP logging will not work as expected.

According to the Nutanix Support & Insights web search result3, shadow clones are vDisk copies that are created by the cluster when a vDisk is read by multiple VMs. Shadow clones are immutable copies of a vDisk that are stored in different nodes in the cluster, and are used to improve read performance and reduce network traffic. Shadow clones are automatically created and deleted by the cluster, based on the demand and availability of resources.

When a VM is connected to a Nutanix managed network, the IP address is assigned when the VM is powered on. A Nutanix managed network is a network that is created and managed by Prism Central using IP address management (IPAM). IPAM allows Prism Central to automatically assign IP addresses to VMs from a pool of available addresses in a subnet. IPAM also tracks the IP address usage and availability across clusters and networks4.

When a VM is connected to a Nutanix managed network, the administrator can choose one of the following assignment types for the IP address:

• Assign Static IP: This option allows the administrator to manually specify a static IP address for the VM from the subnet range. The IP address will not change unless the administrator changes it.
• Assign with DHCP: This option allows Prism Central to dynamically assign an IP address for the VM from the subnet range using DHCP. The IP address may change depending on the DHCP lease time and availability.
• No Private IP: This option allows the administrator to skip assigning an IP address for the VM. This option is useful for scenarios where the administrator wants to use an external IPAM solution or assign an IP address later5.

Regardless of the assignment type, the IP address is assigned when the VM is powered on. This is because Prism Central needs to communicate with the hypervisor (AHV or ESXi) to configure the virtual NIC (vNIC) of the VM with the IP address information. This communication can only happen when the VM is in a powered on state6.

References: 4: IP Address Management - Prism Central Guide 5: Creating a New Report - Prism Central Guide 6: IP Address Assignment - AHV Networking Guide

According to the web search results, the most efficient action an administrator should take to ensure a supported state when adding a node with a higher AOS release to an existing cluster is to perform a standalone reimage of the new node and then add it to the cluster1. This way, the new node will have the same AOS version as the existing nodes, and there will be no compatibility issues or downtime. Therefore, option C is correct, while options A, B, and D are not.

The best method to provide access for a user to view real-time performance metrics for all VMs on all clusters across the datacenter is to configure AD authentication create a custom role, assign the user to the role, and apply the role to all clusters and VMs. This method accomplishes this with the least effort and ongoing maintenance because:

• AD authentication allows Nutanix Prism Central to integrate with an existing Active Directory (AD) domain and use AD users and groups for authentication and authorization5. This simplifies user management and avoids creating local users on Prism Central.
• Creating a custom role allows Nutanix Prism Central to define granular permissions for different actions and entities based on specific needs6. This ensures that users only have access to what they need and nothing more.
• Assigning the user to the custom role allows Nutanix Prism Central to grant access rights for that user based on the role definition7. This avoids assigning permissions individually for each user.
• Applying the role to all clusters and VMs allows Nutanix Prism Central to propagate the access rights for that role across all entities in scope8. This ensures that users can view real-time performance metrics for all VMs on all clusters without having to configure each entity separately.

References: 1: Health Dashboard - Prism Element Guide 2: Understanding Native VLANs - Cisco 3: VMs may lose network connectivity if connected to virtual network with … - Nutanix Support & Insights 4: VLAN Configuration - AHV Networking Guide 5: Active Directory Authentication - Prism Central Guide 6: Create Custom Roles - Prism Central Guide 7: Assign Roles - Prism Central Guide 8: Apply Roles - Prism Central Guide

The correct answer is D. Fewer than 30 I/Os and less than 1000 bytes per day of network traffic for the past 21 days.

A zombie VM is a type of inactive VM that is powered on but does very little activity. A zombie VM wastes host resources such as CPU, memory, disk, and network that could be used by other VMs. A zombie VM can be identified by using the VM Profile feature in Prism Central. The VM Profile feature analyzes the resource utilization of each VM and assigns it a profile based on its efficiency and impact on other VMs. The profiles are as follows1:

• Efficient: The VM is well-provisioned and has optimal resource utilization.
• Over-provisioned: The VM has more resources than it needs and has low resource utilization.
• Constrained: The VM has less resources than it needs and has high resource utilization.
• Inactive: The VM has no resource utilization and is idle or powered off.
• Bully: The VM has high resource utilization and causes contention for other VMs.

A zombie VM is a subtype of an inactive VM that meets the following criteria2:

• The VM is powered on for the past 21 days.
• The VM does fewer than 30 read or write I/Os (total) per day for the past 21 days.
• The VM receives or transfers fewer than 1000 bytes per day of network traffic for the past 21 days.

To identify a zombie VM, the administrator can use Prism Central to view the VM Profile dashboard and filter by profile type. The dashboard shows the number of VMs in each profile type, as well as their resource consumption and efficiency score. The administrator can also drill down into each VM to see its detailed metrics and recommendations for optimization.

According to the Nutanix Files Guide, Nutanix Files instances are composed of a set of VMs (called FSVMs). Files requires at least three FSVMs running on three nodes to satisfy a quorum for high availability. By default, Files deploys three FSVMs when you create a file server instance.

Based on the VM performance metrics shown in the exhibit, the most likely cause of the poor performance in the particular VM is that the host’s CPU is severely overloaded. This is indicated by the high percentage of Hypervisor CPU Ready Time, which is shown as 96% in the CPU ready chart. CPU Ready Time is a metric that shows the amount of time a VM is ready to run but is unable to run because the host CPU resources are not available. In a healthy environment, this value is typically low. A high percentage indicates that the VMs are waiting for available CPU cycles, which means the CPU is not able to schedule the VM effectively, often due to overcommitment or heavy CPU load.

When the CPU ready time is consistently high, it is a clear indicator that the VM is frequently waiting for CPU resources, which can lead to performance issues such as sluggishness or delays in processing. It is not related to the storage subsystem (Oplog fullness or SSD tier size), nor directly to the number of vCPUs assigned to the VM. While adding more vCPUs might seem like a solution, it could actually exacerbate the issue if the host is already CPU constrained.

To resolve this issue, an administrator should consider balancing the load across the hosts more effectively, possibly by using Nutanix's built-in automation and balancing features, or by scaling out the cluster to add more CPU resources. It is also advisable to check for any VMs with unusually high CPU demand and to adjust resource allocation as needed. Nutanix provides extensive documentation and guidelines in their Resource Management Guide to help administrators identify and resolve such performance issues.

According to the Nutanix AHV Networking Guide, active-active bond mode provides load balancing and fault tolerance for network traffic by distributing packets across multiple interfaces using a hashing algorithm based on source and destination MAC addresses, IP addresses, and TCP/UDP ports. This mode does not require any special configuration on the network switch and can improve throughput for hosts with many small VMs.

https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Prism-Central-Guide-vpc_2023_3:mul-cluster-storage-policy-pc-c.html

According to the web search results, one recommended configuration change to improve throughput for a custom backup application that requires a 2TB disk and runs on Windows is to span the 2TB disk across four vDisks. Spanning is a technique that allows you to create a single logical disk from multiple physical disks. Spanning can improve throughput by distributing I/O requests across multiple disks and reducing contention5. To span a disk across four vDisks, the administrator should create four vDisks of equal size (500 GB each) and attach them to the VM. Then, in Windows Disk Management, create a spanned volume from the four vDisks and format it as NTFS6.

Nutanix clusters are resilient to a drive, node, block, and rack failures because they use redundancy factor 2 by default, allowing Nutanix clusters to self-heal2. Failure scenarios can be thought of in terms of fault domains, which are the physical or logical parts of a computing environment or location that are adversely affected when a device or service experiences an issue or outage3. There are four fault domains in a Nutanix cluster: Disk, Node, Block, and Rack4. Block and Rack are two options that are available for expanding the failure domain level of a cluster. Block fault tolerance is enabled by default and ensures that data is replicated across different blocks in a cluster5. Rack fault tolerance has to be configured manually and ensures that data is replicated across different racks in a cluster4.

References: 1: Behavioral Learning Tools - Prism Central Resource Management - Nutanix 2: How Nutanix Handles Failures | Node Failure 3: Failure Domain Considerations - Nutanix Support & Insights 4: [Understanding Fault Domains and Rack Awareness - Nutanix] 5: [Nutanix Cluster Architecture Overview - Nutanix Bible]

The only option that requires iSCSI initiator configuration in the guest OS to use Volumes is Microsoft Windows Failover Cluster. Volumes is an enterprise-class, software-defined block storage solution that exposes storage resources directly to virtualized guest operating systems or physical hosts using the iSCSI protocol7. To use Volumes, customers need to configure iSCSI initiators on their hosts or guest OSes. However, some applications or services can use native storage adapters instead of iSCSI initiators when running on AHV VMs. These include:

• SQL Server Always On Availability Group: This is a high availability and disaster recovery solution for SQL Server databases that uses Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) and Availability Groups (AGs) as its core components. When running on AHV VMs, SQL Server Always On Availability Group can use native storage adapters instead of iSCSI initiators.
• Oracle RAC: This is a clustered database system that provides high availability and scalability for Oracle databases. When running on AHV VMs, Oracle RAC can use native storage adapters instead of iSCSI initiators.
• Exchange DAG: This is a group of up to 16 mailbox servers that hosts a set of databases and provides automatic database-level recovery from failures that affect individual servers or databases. When running on AHV VMs, Exchange DAG can use native storage adapters instead of iSCSI initiators.

According to the web search results, one of the best practices for Nutanix AHV networking is to create a second bridge on each host and assign the 1GbE interfaces to it3. This way, the customer can use both 10GbE and 1GbE interfaces for VM traffic, and also benefit from network isolation and redundancy. 

https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details/?targetId=Web-Console-Guide-Prism-v50:wc-bl ock-services-enabling-t.html

Provision storage on the Nutanix cluster by creating a volume group. Create a client whitelist to enable access to the volume group by using the IP addresses or client initiator IQNs in a whitelist (as part of the volume group configuration). Create a secret for the volume group if you are using CHAP authentication.

Deploy the Move appliance and Import the .vmdk into the Image Service. These are two methods that can be used to migrate a VM from VMware ESXi to AHV2. The Move appliance is a tool that automates the migration process by converting the VM disks and configuration to AHV format and transferring them to the Nutanix cluster3. The Image Service is a feature that allows users to upload and manage disk images that can be used to create or clone VMs on AHV4. By importing the .vmdk file of the VMware VM into the Image Service, users can create a new AHV VM from that image.

According to section 6 of the exam blueprint guide1, one of the topics covered is VM placement options. When creating a new VM on an AHV cluster, there are two ways to determine its initial placement:

• Automatic placement: The Acropolis Dynamic Scheduler (ADS) selects a host that provides adequate resources for the VM’s configuration, such as CPU, memory, disk space, and network bandwidth. ADS also considers factors such as host load, power state, availability domains, and affinity rules.
• Manual placement: The administrator can specify a host or a host group where they want to place the VM.

According to the Nutanix Prism Central Guide, role-based access control (RBAC) in Prism Central allows you to create custom roles and assign them to users or groups based on the categories of the entities they need to manage1. Categories are key-value pairs that you can assign to entities such as VMs, hosts, clusters, images, etc. to group them logically2. For example, you can create a category key called “OS” and assign values such as “Linux” or “Windows” to different VMs based on their operating system.

In the exhibit, the Linux Admin role has been created with the following settings:

• The role has the “VM Admin” permission, which allows the user to perform all actions on VMs3.
• The role has been assigned to the admin1 user.
• The role has been scoped to the entities that have the category key “OS” and the value “Linux”.

However, the admin1 user does not have access to all Linux VMs in the environment. This means that some of the Linux VMs do not have the proper category assigned to them. To grant the proper access, the administrator should add the category key “OS” and the value “Linux” to each Linux VM that needs to be managed by the Linux Admin role. This can be done either individually or in bulk through Prism Central4. Once the categories are added, the admin1 user will be able to see and manage all Linux VMs in the environment.

https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/solutions/details/?targetId=BP-2029_AHV:BP-2029_AHV

Administrators can use Acropolis with IPAM to deliver a complete virtualization deployment, including network management, from the unified Prism interface. This capability radically simplifies the traditionally complex network management associated with provisioning VMs and assigning network addresses. To avoid address overlap, be sure to work with your network team to reserve a range of addresses for VMs before enabling the IPAM feature.

The Acropolis master assigns an IP address from the address pool when creating a managed VM NIC; the address releases back to the pool when the VM NIC or VM is deleted.

According to the web search results, the cluster redundancy factor (RF) determines how many copies of the cluster metadata and configuration data are stored on different nodes. By default, the cluster RF is 2, which means that there are three copies of the Zookeeper and Cassandra data on the cluster. If the cluster RF is increased to 3, then there will be five copies of the Zookeeper and Cassandra data on the cluster12. This means that the Zookeeper component can tolerate two failures, as it can still operate with a quorum of three nodes out of five3.

However, the container replication factor (RF) determines how many copies of the VM data and oplog are stored on different nodes. The container RF can be set independently for each container, and it can be different from the cluster RF. For example, a container can have RF 2 even if the cluster has RF 34. In this case, the container will only have two copies of the VM data and oplog on the cluster, regardless of the cluster RF. This means that the Extent Groups component can only tolerate one failure, as it needs at least one copy of the VM data and oplog to be available5.

Therefore, if the administrator increases the cluster RF to 3, but does not modify the containers, then the new values in the data resiliency dashboard will be Zookeeper = 2 and Extent Groups = 1.

Terminology

• Availability Zone – it is represented by all resources (Nutanix Clusters) connected to Prism Central or Xi Leap Availability zone. Depends on the architecture, Availability zone can represent geographic territory, datacenter or server room in the datacenter. Protection policies – in protection policies you set up (RPO, Retention), rules to auto-apply policies to virtual machines

https://vmware mine.com/2019/02/08/nutanix-leap-runbooks-part-1/#sthash.VwrzSzhQ.dpbs

According to the Nutanix Support & Insights website1, you can configure alert emails through Prism Central by enabling or disabling customer email notification for each alert. You can also modify or create custom alert policies for different entities and clusters23.

According to the Network File System web search result3, NFS (Network File System) is a distributed file system protocol that allows a user on a client computer to access files over a network in a manner similar to how local storage is accessed. NFS is one of the access protocols supported by Files. According to the [MS-WPO]: File Access Services Protocols web search result4, SMB (Server Message Block) is a Windows file sharing protocol that enables applications to discover, access, and share files that are hosted on or made available by a file server, using a network between them, in a secure and managed environment. SMB is another access protocol supported by Files. Therefore, SMB and NFS are two access protocols supported by Files.

This is because there is no GUI method to unregister a cluster from Prism Central, so the process requires SSH access to the PC VM as well as to a CVM of the cluster2. The unregistration process involves getting the UUID of the cluster from the CVM and then using that to trigger de-registration from PC command line2. The unregistration process also involves cleaning up any associated metadata and configuration on both PC and PE2. Therefore, the administrator needs to use a Host SSH session to perform this task.

In Nutanix AHV, when creating a virtual switch and trying to add network interfaces (NICs) to it, the NICs must be connected to the network before they can be selected and assigned to the switch. If the interfaces are showing as disconnected, the system will not allow them to be added to a virtual switch because it cannot verify their operational status or the presence of a live network connection.

It is a standard requirement for the interfaces to have physical connectivity (i.e., network cables plugged in and connected to a live switch port) so that the AHV host can detect the link status as up. Once the interfaces are connected and recognized by the host, they can then be added to a virtual switch in the Nutanix AHV.

It's important to note that while the command-line interface (CLI) is indeed a powerful tool for managing network configurations on AHV hosts, and some configurations do indeed require CLI, the inability to select disconnected interfaces is not specifically a limitation that requires the use of CLI to overcome. The focus should be on ensuring that the physical connectivity is established for the interfaces in question.

This behavior is consistent with networking best practices and Nutanix's network configuration guidelines, as detailed in the Nutanix AHV Networking Guide. This guide explains the requirements and procedures for configuring virtual switches and managing NICs in a Nutanix AHV environment.

According to section 4 of the exam blueprint guide1, one of the topics covered is AHV networking components and configuration settings. One of these components is Open vSwitch (OVS), which is a software switch that provides network connectivity between VMs and physical networks. OVS has two types of ports:

• Uplink ports: These are physical ports that connect to external networks or switches.
• Internal ports: These are virtual ports that connect to VMs or other internal networks.

To view the uplink state of all AHV nodes in the cluster, an administrator can use the manage_ovs command with the show_uplinks option. This command displays information such as port name, link state, speed, duplex mode, MTU size, bond mode, and bond status. However, this command only works on a single node. To run the command on all nodes in the cluster, an administrator can use the allssh command, which executes a command on all CVMs in parallel. Therefore, the correct command is:

allssh manage_ovs show_uplinks

The correct answer is C. Network latency.

The diagram shows a solution that uses synchronous replication between two remote protection domains, cluster site A and cluster site B. Synchronous replication is a feature that allows near-zero RPO (recovery point objective) by replicating data to the remote site before acknowledging writes to the local site. However, synchronous replication has some requirements and limitations that must be met for it to work properly. One of these requirements is that the network latency between the two sites must be less than or equal to 5 ms1. If the network latency is higher than 5 ms, the synchronous replication will fail and the protection policy will be suspended2.

Therefore, based on the diagram, the most likely cause of the issue is that the network latency between cluster site A and cluster site B is higher than 5 ms, which prevents the synchronous replication from working. To verify this, the administrator can use the “ncli cluster ping” command to measure the network latency between the two sites3. If the network latency is indeed higher than 5 ms, the administrator can either improve the network performance or switch to a different replication mode, such as near-synchronous or asynchronous.

https://next.nutanix.com/blog-40/net work-load-balancing-with-acropolis-hypervisor-6463

The best way to fix this issue is to increase the amount of memory assigned to the VM from the Prism web console. This option allows the administrator to modify the VM configuration without accessing the CVM or shutting down the VM. The Prism web console provides a simple and intuitive interface for managing Nutanix clusters and VMs1. To change the memory allocation for a VM, the administrator can follow these steps2:

• Go to the VM dashboard
• Select the VM from the VMs list
• Choose Update
• Adjust the amount of memory assigned to the VM
• Click Save

According to the Nutanix Support & Insights web search result2, VM NICs on AHV can operate in two modes: Access and Trunked. Access NICs are the default, and allow one VLAN on the NIC. Trunked NICs allow multiple VLANs on a single NIC for VMs that are VLAN aware. If you must use trunked NICs, follow the steps described in the web search result2. Therefore, the most efficient way to have a VM on an AHV cluster with access to multiple VLANs is to update a vNIC on the VM to operate in trunked mode for all desired VLANs.

According to the Nutanix Support & Insights, IPAM enables AHV to assign IP addresses automatically to VMs using DHCP. You can configure each virtual network and associated VLAN with a specific IP subnet, associated domain settings, and group of IP address pools available for assignment.

 According to the Nutanix Support & Insights web search result1, the name of the internal bridge used by AHV nodes and CVMs is br0. The internal bridge is an Open vSwitch (OVS) bridge that connects the AHV host management interface, the CVM interface, and the VM vNICs. The internal bridge also acts as a gateway for the CVM and VM traffic to reach the external network through the host physical NICs.

Answer: D. Load the Virtual SCSI pass-through controller.

The error message shown in the image indicates that Windows 10 setup cannot find any drives to install the OS. This is because the Nutanix AHV hypervisor uses a virtual SCSI pass-through controller to present disks to the VMs, and Windows 10 does not have a built-in driver for this device. Therefore, the administrator needs to load the Nutanix VirtIO driver for the virtual SCSI pass-through controller during the OS installation process. The Nutanix VirtIO driver package contains various drivers that are specifically used by Windows VMs hosted in the Nutanix environment to enhance their stability and performance1. The administrator can download the latest Nutanix VirtIO driver package from the VirtIO downloads page of the Nutanix support portal. The administrator can then follow these steps to load the driver and install the OS2:

• On the Windows 10 setup screen, click Load driver.
• Insert a USB drive or mount an ISO image that contains the Nutanix VirtIO driver package.
• Browse to the location of the driver package and select the folder that matches the OS architecture (32-bit or 64-bit).
• Select the vioscsi.inf file and click Next.
• Wait for the driver to load and then click Refresh.
• Select the disk where you want to install Windows 10 and click Next.

References: 1: VirtIO Driver Versions for Windows 2: Installing Windows on AHV

A bond is a logical interface that combines two or more physical interfaces on an AHV host. A bond provides high availability and load balancing for the network traffic of the host and its VMs. A bond can have different modes that determine how the traffic is distributed and how the bond handles failures of the physical interfaces. The most common bond modes are active-backup, active-active, and LACP1.

Nutanix recommends including at least two physical interfaces in every bond to ensure high availability and redundancy. If one of the physical interfaces fails or is disconnected, the other interface can take over the traffic without affecting the connectivity of the host or its VMs. Having at least two physical interfaces in a bond also allows for maintenance operations such as firmware upgrades or cable replacements without downtime2.

Nutanix does not recommend including NIC models from different vendors in the same bond, as this may cause compatibility issues or performance degradation. Nutanix also does not recommend using only one physical interface in a bond, as this provides no redundancy or load balancing benefits3.

According to the web search results, the policy that should be used to meet this requirement is an Isolation Environment Policy. An Isolation Environment Policy is a type of security policy that can be created in Prism Central using Flow Network Security, which is a feature that provides microsegmentation and network security for Nutanix environments1. An Isolation Environment Policy allows the administrator to isolate a group of VMs from another group of VMs based on their categories, and block all traffic between them regardless of direction2. This policy can be useful for creating isolated environments for testing, development, or compliance purposes2.

 When a node with Erasure Coding fails, the cluster will automatically rebuild the missing data using replication factor (RF) 2 or 3, depending on the cluster configuration. This means that the data that was previously stored using Erasure Coding will now be stored using full copies, which may increase the amount of data stored in the SSD tier1.