Nutanix NCA study plan

Define the role of each major piece of the Nutanix stack (AOS, AHV, Prism Element, Prism Central, Foundation, NCC, LCM) in one sentence apiece.

Contrast hyperconverged infrastructure with a traditional three-tier design by listing three operational differences you can defend.

Explain how a cluster scales out, and describe what happens to data placement and running workloads when a node is added.

Map each of the nine exam domains to the product component responsible for it, so later study has a home.

Describe the difference between Prism Element and Prism Central in terms of scope (single cluster versus many).

Describe the Controller VM's role and explain how it mediates all storage I/O for its host.

Explain how the distributed metadata store (Cassandra ring) and cluster state services support a healthy cluster, and what Curator does in the background.

Explain data locality and trace how a read and a write are routed across the distributed storage fabric.

List the per-node IP addressing, VLAN, and MTU requirements for CVM-to-CVM communication and state how many IPs a node consumes.

Compare RF2 and RF3 by usable capacity and tolerated failures, and compute usable capacity for a 4-node cluster under each.

Create, clone, and convert a VM into a template in Prism, specifying vCPU, memory, disk, and network assignment.

Explain AHV's KVM foundation and describe which path VM I/O takes relative to the CVM.

Configure VM high availability and describe exactly what happens to a VM when its host fails.

Perform a live migration and state the prerequisites that must be true before it can run.

Group VMs with Prism Central categories and apply a policy to that category.

Distinguish storage pools from containers and set redundancy factor and compression at the container level.

Describe deduplication, inline versus post-process compression, and erasure coding, and state the workload profile that benefits from each.

Trace a guest write from the vDisk through the CVM to the extent store and onto physical media.

Explain how snapshots and clones are represented at the storage layer and whether they consume capacity up front.

Describe volume groups and identify the case where an external host needs one instead of a container.

Explain AHV networking concepts: managed versus unmanaged networks, bridges, and VLAN tagging on guest NICs.

Describe how the virtual switch handles VM traffic and compare bond modes, including which modes require switch-side configuration.

Configure a bond in Prism and state the failure behavior of active-backup versus link-aggregation bonding.

Explain how Flow network security and microsegmentation policies are expressed at a conceptual level.

Describe the LCM workflow end to end: inventory, compatibility checking, pre-checks, and the order in which cluster components are upgraded.

Explain how protection domains, snapshot schedules, and replication schedules combine to determine RPO.

Compare asynchronous and near-synchronous replication and state which site sends data in a two-site setup.

Contrast protection-domain replication, Leap orchestrated failover, and backup-to-target as disaster recovery options.

Explain data-at-rest encryption at cluster and VM scope and describe where keys are held and what breaks if the key server is unreachable.

Build a role-and-permission matrix for Prism showing how directory-backed users inherit roles and where least privilege applies.

Interpret NCC health-check output and classify findings by severity and by the component they implicate.

Describe how to triage an active alert in Prism, including which logs or bundles to collect before escalating.

Explain the capacity and performance metrics exposed in Prism Element and Prism Central and what each is actually measuring.

Re-attempt every question missed in weeks 1 through 6 and tag each miss to one of the nine domains.

Rank your three weakest domains and write a concrete remediation action for each.

Complete two timed full-length mock exams spanning all nine domains and record section-level scores.

Re-derive the RF2 and RF3 usable-capacity math and restate three storage efficiencies from memory with no notes.

Re-teach in writing the three weakest topics identified in week 7, as if explaining them to a colleague.

Build a single-page final cheat sheet written entirely in your own words.

Review the corrected-error log and confirm no error category repeats across the two mocks.