NCM-MCI study guide
NCM-MCI · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
NCM-MCI (Nutanix Certified Master – Multicloud Infrastructure) is an advanced, hands-on credential aimed at engineers who design, deploy, and operate Nutanix environments across on-premises and public cloud. It sits above the associate and professional tiers, so it assumes working fluency with Prism Element and Prism Central, AOS storage behavior, AHV virtualization, and cluster networking rather than teaching those from scratch. The NCM-MCI study guide has 9 sections and about 3,064 words.
01Design and Plan a Nutanix Multicloud Infrastructure
This domain asks you to turn a workload requirement - capacity, RPO/RTO, latency, growth - into a node count, resiliency factor, network topology and Prism Central footprint. Expect scenario questions phrased as "minimum number of nodes" or "which design meets the requirement".
375 words, about 2 min02Deploy and Configure Nutanix Clusters and Prism Central
Deployment questions test the order of operations: image the nodes, create the cluster, deploy Prism Central, register clusters, then configure categories, projects and features centrally. Foundation images nodes out-of-band using IPMI and MAC addresses; plan each node's IPMI, hypervisor and CVM address before you start.
358 words, about 2 min03Networking and Network Virtualization (Flow, VLANs, Overlay)
Networking questions mix AHV plumbing (bridges, bonds, VLANs) with the two Flow products: Flow Network Security for microsegmentation and Flow Virtual Networking for overlay networks. OVS runs on every host; br0 is the default bridge, and VLAN-backed networks appear as br0.<vlan sub-interfaces.
329 words, about 2 min04Storage Architecture
Storage questions probe the Distributed Storage Fabric: where a write goes, how copies are protected, and which features save capacity without hurting latency. A VM write is handled by the local CVM's Stargate service and lands in the OpLog, a low-latency persistent write buffer on SSD/NVMe.
351 words, about 2 min05Data Protection and Resiliency
This domain covers protecting VMs locally and remotely: snapshots, protection policies, replication and orchestrated recovery. Snapshots are crash-consistent by default; installing Nutanix Guest Tools enables VSS/application-consistent snapshots and self-service restore.
332 words, about 2 min06Virtual Machine and Workload Management
Workload management covers AHV day-two operations: creating and cloning VMs, organizing them, keeping them available through maintenance, and moving workloads between platforms. Images are the source for disks; clones can be full or fast (redirect-on-write).
297 words, about 1 min07Security, Identity, and Access Control
Security questions test identity plumbing, authorization scope and hardening: who can log in, what they can do, and how the platform is locked down. Authentication sources include local users, Active Directory/LDAP directory services and SAML SSO.
332 words, about 2 min08Performance Monitoring, Troubleshooting, and Optimization
Troubleshooting questions give a symptom - high latency, low IOPS, a stalled migration - and ask for the first diagnostic step or the most likely cause. Know which metric lives where and which tool to reach for.
333 words, about 2 min09Multicloud Operations, Automation, and Lifecycle Management
The operations domain covers keeping clusters current with LCM, automating the platform through APIs and blueprints, and extending it beyond the datacenter with Nutanix Cloud Clusters. LCM performs inventory, then plans and executes software and firmware updates for AOS, AHV, Prism Central, NCC and BMC/disk firmware.
357 words, about 2 min