NCP-MCA Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud Automation (NCP-MCA v6.5) Exam Free Practice Exam Questions (2025 Updated)

Self-Service (formerly Calm) automatically cleans up the database every 3 months. This regular maintenance task helps manage database size and performance by removing old and unnecessary data.

References:

Nutanix Calm documentation on Database Cleanup.

Nutanix Best Practices for Calm Maintenance.

Calm integrates natively with AWS and AHV as providers. A provider is a cloud platform or infrastructure that hosts the application VMs or services. Calm supports various providers such as Nutanix, AWS, Azure, GCP, VMware, and Kubernetes. AWS and AHV are two of the most commonly used providers in Calm, as they offer scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency for deploying applications. References: Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud Automation (NCP-MCA) Exam Blueprint Guide, page 11; Nutanix Calm User Guide, section 3.1.

In Nutanix Self-Service (formerly known as Calm), substrates refer to the combination of the underlying cloud infrastructure and the virtual machine instances. Substrates define the environment where applications will be deployed and managed, encompassing cloud providers, virtualization platforms, and the associated VM configurations.

References:

Nutanix Calm documentation on Substrates.

Nutanix Best Practices for Application Deployment.

The default connection timeout value for an HTTP endpoint in Nutanix Calm is 60 seconds. This timeout defines how long the system will wait for a connection to be established before timing out.

References:

Nutanix Calm documentation on HTTP Endpoints.

Nutanix Best Practices for Configuring Endpoints.

In the context of deploying an application with Calm, if a customer receives an error for a Linux VM, it could be due to the absence of network adapters selected for the Address box in the Connection section within the blueprint. This means that there is no specified network connection for the VM, leading to a failure in script execution. 

Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud Automation (NCP-MCA) Exam Blueprint Guide: This is the official exam blueprint guide that covers the objectives, topics, and skills required for the certification. It also provides some sample questions and answers. The question you asked is similar to the one in section 3.1.1.

Nutanix Multicloud Automation Administration (NMCAA): This is a training course that teaches you the skills needed to install, configure, operate, and manage Nutanix X-Play and Nutanix Calm. It includes topics such as blueprint creation, connection configuration, and script execution.

Nutanix Calm User Guide: This is a user guide that explains how to use Nutanix Calm to automate the deployment and management of applications across different environments. It includes topics such as connection settings, blueprint validation, and error handling.

When configuring Calm to use Kubernetes as a provider, the administrator can choose between two Kubernetes types: Karbon and Vanilla. Karbon is Nutanix’s own Kubernetes distribution that is integrated with Prism and AHV. Vanilla is any other Kubernetes distribution that is not Karbon, such as OpenShift, Rancher, or EKS. The administrator needs to provide the Kubernetes API endpoint and credentials for the Vanilla type, while the Karbon type is automatically discovered by Calm. References: Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud Automation (NCP-MCA) Exam Blueprint Guide, page 14; Nutanix NCP-MCA Questions, question 102.

The error message indicates that the password parameter is not a secret parameter, which means it is not encrypted and stored securely in the Calm database. This can happen when a Playbook is cloned from another Playbook that has a password parameter defined as a secret parameter. The cloned Playbook will inherit the password value from the original Playbook, but it will not be a secret parameter. To resolve this issue, the administrator needs to either delete the password parameter and create a new one as a secret parameter, or edit the password parameter and mark it as a secret parameter. References:

Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud Automation (NCP-MCA) Exam Blueprint Guide, page 15, section 4.2.1

Nutanix Calm Playbooks

Nutanix Calm Parameters

A playbook REST API action allows the administrator to send an HTTP request to a specified endpoint, such as the Prism Central API, to perform an operation, such as deleting a VM. A playbook webhook action allows the administrator to send a payload to a specified URL, such as a ServiceNow webhook, to trigger an event, such as an approval flow. Both of these actions can be used to automate the deletion of VMs from a ServiceNow approval flow, where the developers can request and confirm the removal of their environments. A playbook webhook trigger and a playbook REST API trigger are not valid options, as they are used to initiate a playbook based on an external event, not to perform an action within a playbook. References: Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud Automation (NCP-MCA) 6.5 Exam Blueprint Guide, page 10; Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud Automation (NCP-MCA), section 4; NCP-MCA Exam Dumps - Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud …, question 70.

To reduce the CPU and RAM memory allocation on a VM using playbooks, the VM must be powered off. This is because the operation of reducing CPU and memory allocation cannot be performed on a running VM without causing instability or potential crashes.

References:

Nutanix documentation on VM Management.

Nutanix Best Practices for Resource Allocation.

You can upgrade Nutanix Calm or Epsilon (the orchestration engine used by Nutanix Calm) by using the Life Cycle Manager (LCM) from the Prism Central. LCM allows you to upgrade Calm or Epsilon independently or simultaneously. You can also select the version that you want to upgrade to and perform the update from the Options list. For more information, see the Nutanix Calm Upgrades section in the Nutanix Calm Admin and Operations Guide1 and the Performing Inventory and Upgrading Calm with Life Cycle Manager article2. References:

Nutanix Calm Admin and Operations Guide1

Performing Inventory and Upgrading Calm with Life Cycle Manager2

 Nutanix Calm is a feature of Prism Central that enables you to automate the deployment and management of infrastructure and applications across multiple clouds. Prism Central is a centralized management plane that provides unified visibility and control over Nutanix clusters and services. Prism Element is the local management plane for each Nutanix cluster that runs the Acropolis Operating System (AOS). Both Prism Central and Prism Element are required for Nutanix Calm to function properly and access the resources and services of the Nutanix platform. References:

Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud Automation (NCP-MCA) v6.5, Section 2 - Deploy and Configure Nutanix Calm and Related Components, page 1

Nutanix Multicloud Automation Administration (NMCAA), Module 1 - Introduction to Nutanix Multicloud Automation, Lesson 1.1 - Nutanix Multicloud Automation Overview, page 4

Nutanix Calm User Guide, Introduction to Nutanix Calm, Nutanix Calm Architecture

In Nutanix's Multicloud Automation (formerly known as Calm), playbooks can be configured to respond to various conditions and events that occur within the infrastructure. If a VM, such as one named ORACLE, becomes CPU constrained, a playbook can be triggered to automatically add more virtual CPUs (vCPUs) to the VM. In addition, playbooks can integrate with various notification services such as Slack, allowing administrators to be informed of the changes being made.

Based on the provided options and according to Nutanix documentation, the correct action is that the playbook will add more vCPU and will send a Slack message. This ensures that the VM's performance can be adjusted dynamically while keeping the relevant personnel informed via Slack.

References:

Nutanix Calm Documentation

Nutanix Multicloud Automation Playbooks Guide

According to the Nutanix Multicloud Automation Administration (NMCAA) course, the recommended Prism Central VM size depends on the number of VMs that are managed by Calm and the number of concurrent users. For a large-scale environment with more than 5000 VMs and more than 100 concurrent users, the recommended size is 3 nodes Large - 10vCPU and 52GB Memory per node1. This size provides enough resources for the Prism Central cluster to handle the workload and performance requirements of Calm.

References:

Nutanix Multicloud Automation Administration (NMCAA) course, Module 2: Nutanix Calm Installation and Configuration, Lesson 2: Nutanix Calm Installation and Configuration2

Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud Automation (NCP-MCA) v6.5 Exam Blueprint Guide, Section 2: Deploy and Configure Self-service and Related Components, Objective 2.2: Identify required configuration settings for a Self-Service deployment3

Scaling out Prism Central | Nutanix Community1

The correct macro syntax in Nutanix Calm is @@{and}@@. This syntax is used to reference variables and parameters within blueprints and tasks, allowing for dynamic substitution of values during execution.

References:

Nutanix Calm documentation on Macro Syntax.

Nutanix Best Practices for Using Macros.

When a play is stuck in a suspended state, a common reason is that the playbook was set with a Manual trigger and requires manual intervention to proceed. This can occur if the playbook is designed to pause at a certain step, waiting for an administrator or user to manually approve or provide additional input before continuing.

References:

Nutanix documentation on Playbook Triggers.

Nutanix Best Practices for Playbook Automation.

When configuring Playbooks to automate the scaling of CPU and memory resources for VMs, the administrator should consider the following prerequisites:

CPU can be added to a powered on VM if the guest OS supports it. This is also known as hot-plug CPU. The administrator should check the compatibility of the guest OS and the hypervisor before enabling this feature. For example, Windows Server 2019 supports hot-plug CPU on AHV, ESXi, and Hyper-V, but not on XenServer1.

Memory can be removed from a powered on VM if the guest OS supports it. This is also known as hot-unplug memory. The administrator should check the compatibility of the guest OS and the hypervisor before enabling this feature. For example, Linux supports hot-unplug memory on AHV, ESXi, and XenServer, but not on Hyper-V2.

VM must be powered off to add CPU if the guest OS does not support hot-plug CPU. This is also known as cold-plug CPU. The administrator should plan for the downtime required to power off and power on the VM after adding CPU.

VM must be powered off to reduce memory if the guest OS does not support hot-unplug memory. This is also known as cold-unplug memory. The administrator should plan for the downtime required to power off and power on the VM after reducing memory. References: Nutanix Multicloud Automation Administration (NMCAA), page 10; Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud Automation (NCP-MCA), section 3; Nutanix Support Portal - Guest OS Compatibility Matrix

According to the Nutanix Prism Central Guide1, categories are key-value pairs that can be assigned to entities such as VMs, images, blueprints, etc. Categories can be used to filter, group, and manage entities based on their attributes. To review and clean up all existing categories within the Nutanix environment, the administrator should filter on the name, value, entities, and policies of the categories. The name and value of the categories identify the category type and the category value respectively. The entities show how many and which entities are assigned to the category. The policies show how many and which policies are associated with the category. By filtering on these information, the administrator can organize the findings and eliminate unused categories. References:

1 Nutanix Prism Central Guide: Categories2

To enable Calm, the administrator needs to log on to Prism Central with a local ADMIN account and click Services -> Calm -> Enable. This will install the Calm service on Prism Central and allow the administrator to access the Calm UI and features. The other options are incorrect because they either refer to Prism Element, which is not the correct platform for Calm, or they involve unnecessary or incorrect steps. References: [Enabling and Accessing Calm | Nutanix Community] (https://next.nutanix.com/installation-configuration-23/enabling-and-accessing-calm-40191); [Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud Automation (NCP-MCA) Exam Blueprint Guide] (https://www.nutanix.com/content/dam/nutanix/resources/support/ds-ncp-mca.pdf), section 2.1.

 The easiest way to satisfy the request is to add an Email action to the end of the existing playbook and use the {{action[index] .stdout}} parameter in the Message field. This way, the administrator does not need to modify the script or create a file to store the output. The {{action[index] .stdout}} parameter will capture the standard output of the previous action, which is the VM SSH action that executes the script. The Email action will then send the output as the message body to the specified recipients. References: You can find more information about this topic in the following sources:

Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud Automation (NCP-MCA) Exam Blueprint Guide, Section 3 - Validate Blueprints, Runbooks, Playbooks, and Automation Settings, page 10

Nutanix Multicloud Automation Administration (NMCAA), Module 4 - X-Play, Lesson 2 - Playbooks, page 4-11