Prism Management and Operations
What the domain tests
Prism questions cover day-to-day operations: health, alerts, tasks, VM lifecycle, snapshots, upgrades, and the difference between Prism Element and Prism Central.
Core rules
- Prism Element is the built-in manager for a single cluster. It can run a cluster without Prism Central.
- Prism Central is a separate VM or scale-out set that registers multiple clusters. It adds centralized dashboards, categories, RBAC, reports, and multi-cluster operations.
- Categories are key-value pairs used to group VMs and entities for policy, search, and automation; they are not folders.
- Tasks and alerts are the audit trail. NCC (Nutanix Cluster Check) validates cluster health before and after changes.
- Lifecycle Manager (LCM) performs software and firmware updates from Prism; it is not a guest OS patching tool.
- Pulse sends automated support telemetry; it is not a backup mechanism.
Worked example
An administrator must deploy 20 identical VMs across two clusters. In Prism Central, they create a category such as Environment=Prod, assign the clusters, and use a template or blueprint to deploy. They then filter by category to verify placement. Reasoning: Prism Element can create VMs cluster by cluster, but Central's categories and multi-cluster view make the operation repeatable and auditable.
Traps
Do not say Prism Central is required to run a cluster. Do not treat categories as folders. Do not confuse NCC with LCM: NCC checks health, LCM performs upgrades. Do not assume Pulse is a data protection feature.