Prism Central, Prism Element, and Operations Management
What this domain tests
Prism Element versus Prism Central, multi-cluster operations, health, alerts, tasks, and capacity management.
Core rules and concepts
- Prism Element is the built-in per-cluster UI and API. Prism Central is a separate VM or scale-out deployment that manages many clusters.
- Prism Central adds categories, images, protection policies, Flow, Calm blueprints, and Leap.
- A cluster registers to one Prism Central at a time. Prism Central can manage many clusters.
- NCC health checks run from Prism Element. Prism Central provides cross-cluster dashboards and alerts.
- Tasks and audits provide change history. Alerts have severity and can be routed.
- Capacity planning uses usable capacity, not raw capacity. Right-sizing identifies overprovisioned VMs.
- Prism Central sizing depends on the number of VMs and clusters.
Worked example
An administrator cannot find Flow policies in Prism Element. Reason: Flow is a Prism Central service. Register the cluster to Prism Central, assign categories, then create the policy. If the cluster is already registered to another Prism Central, resolve that first. For a single-cluster health check, use Prism Element and run NCC.
Traps
Do not say Prism Central runs on every node. Do not confuse Prism Element alerts with global Prism Central alerts. Do not assume Prism Central is required for local snapshots or replication. Do not ignore Prism Central backup and restore.