NCS-Core case studies
NCS-Core · Put your knowledge to work in context.
The Nutanix Certified Services Core (NCS-Core) is a certification aimed at customer-facing delivery professionals: implementation consultants, professional services engineers, and partner field engineers who install, configure, and hand over Nutanix environments rather than simply administer them day to day. It validates that you can take a cluster from bare hardware through configuration, validation, and a clean customer handover while following delivery methodology and documentation standards. The exam spans the delivery lifecycle: platform architecture and fundamentals, cluster deployment and configuration, networking and storage services including data protection, Prism and Lifecycle Manager operations, health monitoring and support escalation, upgrades and expansion, security and access control, and basic automation through APIs and scripting. Expect scenario-style multiple choice and multiple response items that ask what you would do next, which prerequisite you would verify, or how you would document a result, rather than pure recall. The NCS-Core case studies are 5 cases and about 2,737 words.
1Foundation Discovery Fails on a Segmented BMC Network
A partner engineer is deploying a four-node Nutanix cluster at a manufacturing site. The nodes are racked and cabled: 25 GbE front-end ports to two top-of-rack switches in an MLAG, and 1 GbE BMC ports to a separate management switch.
591 words, about 3 min2Erasure Coding Requested on an RF3 Cluster with a Failed Node
Six nodes run AOS 6.5.3 with a single RF3 container at 58% used. The container holds 40 TB of production data.
547 words, about 3 min3LCM Precheck Warnings After an NVMe Replacement
Four nodes run AOS 6.5.2 and are managed by a three-VM Prism Central 2024.1 deployment on the same cluster. Eight hours ago, a failed NVMe disk was replaced in node 3; rebuild is still running, and NCC reports data rebuild in progress plus elevated CVM memory pressure.
531 words, about 3 min4Least-Privilege Console Access for a Project Contractor
Prism Central manages three AHV clusters with 180 VMs. Categories are applied as Project=Atlas and Project=Borealis.
534 words, about 3 min5Bulk VM API Script Hits 429 and Creates Duplicates
A Python automation script provisions 300 VMs through the Prism Central v3 API. It uses 20 worker threads and posts to /vms with a name such as web-001.
534 words, about 3 min