NCA-6.5 Nutanix Certified Associate (NCA) v6.5 exam Free Practice Exam Questions (2025 Updated)

To maintain high availability in the case of a node failure in a two-node cluster, a Witness VM is required. Therefore, the correct answer is A. The Witness VM acts as a tie-breaker and arbitrator in the event of a split-brain scenario, where both nodes lose connectivity to each other, to ensure that only one node continues to operate and serve workloads. It is also recommended to use a high-performance network to minimize network latency between the two nodes and the Witness VM.

To compare the performance of multiple VMs on a Nutanix cluster, an administrator can use an Analysis Chart. Analysis Charts allow administrators to view and compare performance metrics for multiple entities, such as VMs, over time. This can help the administrator diagnose performance issues by comparing the performance of the slow and unresponsive VM to other VMs on the cluster

The Compatibility and Interoperability Matrix (CIM) is the resource that should be used to ensure a successful upgrade of the hypervisors and AOS within a vSphere-based Nutanix cluster. The CIM provides information about the compatibility and interoperability of the different components of the Nutanix cluster, including the hypervisors, AOS, and other related components. Reference: https://www.nutanix.com/support/compatibility-matrix/

To assure system stability and support for critical applications running on a Nutanix cluster, the administrator can adhere to the LTS (Long Term Support) release cycle. LTS releases provide stability and long-term support, with a focus on maintenance and bug fixes rather than new features. This can help ensure that the system remains stable and supported during the annual maintenance window 

Anti-affinity rules are used to ensure that virtual machines are not running on the same physical host. This can be useful in situations where the administrator wants to ensure that virtual machines are running on different hosts for high availability and to minimize the impact of a host failure. By creating an anti-affinity rule via CLI, the administrator can ensure that the SQL Server VMs are running on different hosts while still leveraging high availability in case of host failure. Reference: https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Web-Console-Guide-Prism-v5_11:wc-affinity-anti-affinity-rules_wc-affinity-anti-affinity-rules.html

In the case of a single host in a four-node AHV-based cluster experiencing a complete network failure, the user VMs running on that host will stay up, but will be unreachable until connectivity is restored. This is because if more than enough resources exist in the cluster to tolerate a node failure, the VMs will continue to run, but will be unable to communicate with other nodes in the cluster due to the network failure. This is stated in the official Nutanix Certified Associate (NCA) v6.5 study guide on page 49, under the heading “Virtual Machine Availability in the Event of Node Failure”.

Replication Factor 2 (RF2) refers to the number of copies of data written in the cluster. When RF2 is enabled, the Nutanix Distributed File System (NDFS) will create two copies of the data, resulting in higher levels of data durability and availability. Reference: https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Advanced-Administration-v5_7:aa-ndfs-rf2-c.html

An administrator can create an Entity Chart to view the logical usage for multiple storage containers in one chart. This chart can be created from the Prism Element dashboard, and it provides a visual representation of the logical usage of each container, allowing administrators to easily compare the usage of multiple containers at once.

 To display potentially reclaimable resources in a Nutanix cluster running out of memory, an administrator can use the List of Inactive VMs and List of Overprovisioned VMs predefined views for Reporting 

In Prism Element, policies such as replication factor and storage efficiency settings are applied to Containers. A container is a logical grouping of one or more storage pools and defines the storage resources available to virtual machines. By applying policies to a container, you can set the replication factor, storage efficiency settings, and other storage-related settings for all of the virtual machines that are associated with that container. This is a fundamental concept in Nutanix Platform.