A few tips for preparing for the Nutanix Certified Expert — Multicloud Infrastructure exam

In 2022, I had the opportunity to take the Nutanix Certified Expert — Multicloud Infrastructure (NCX-MCI) certification exam, and in this article, I would like to talk a little about the certification and give some tips for preparation.

Notice: This is a translated version of my original post, written in 2022 after I passed this exam. Since then, a few things have changed, but the overall process is still the same.

First, let’s look at Nutanix certification track:

There are four certification levels available at Nutanix, from Associate to Expert. At each level, you can find one or more certifications.

Associate – Beginner level. Available Certifications:
Nutanix Certified Associate (NCA) – short about Nutanix.

Professional – higher level. Available Certifications:
Nutanix Certified Professional – Multicloud Infrastructure (NCP-MCI) – Nutanix Core Components. AOS, AHV;
Nutanix Certified Professional – Unified Services (NCP-US) –Objects, Files, Volumes;
Nutanix Certified Professional – End User Computing (NCP-EUC) – VDI on Nutanix;
Nutanix Certified Professional – Database Automation (NCP-DB) – Nutanix Database Service;
Nutanix Certified Professional – Multicloud Automation (NCP-MCA) – Calm, XPlay;
Nutanix Certified Professional – Cloud Integration – NC2 on AWS or Azure.

Next level – Master. Available Certifications:
Nutanix Certified Master – Multicloud Infrastructure (NCM-MCI) – This is a practice exam in the real lab environment, measuring the ability to manage core Nutanix infrastructure.

Final level – Expert. Two certifications await us here:
Nutanix Certified Expert – Multicloud Infrastructure (NCX-MCI) –More about it later. I call this certification modestly – mini NPX. At the moment of writing, there are about 60 holders;
Nutanix Platform Expert (NPX) – The top of the Nutanix certification track. Defense for half a day, several tasks, and a large amount of pre-prepared documentation. The certification is over 7 years old, but only 24 people have the status. Probably, says something.

Nutanix Certified Expert – Multicloud Infrastructure

Now that we’ve briefly looked at the certification that is available at the time of writing, let’s move on to what it’s all about – Nutanix Certified Expert – Multicloud Infrastructure.

Let’s look at how Nutanix describes this certification in the NCX directory:

The Nutanix Certified Expert certification tests candidates on their ability to create and deliver Cloud-Smart solutions that leverage the Nutanix stack for Private Cloud and the best offerings from our Public Cloud partners for hybrid services.

Every NCX is an expert in their field and has the proven ability to design enterprise-scale solutions that support business-critical applications with service level agreements specified by business stakeholders.

Pricing: $399 per attempt mentioned in the Blueprint, but on the official website it’s offered for free of charge.

Also, it’s mentioned that candidates are responsible for travel and other costs related to their pursuit of the credential. My defense was remote, using Zoom, and maybe it’s still an option.

Obtaining an expert-level certificate, in most cases, is not about the exam itself, but about a journey that is much longer than the process of defending.

The process itself consists of several steps:

Although it’s enough to obtain NCP-MCI certification before the NCX exam, I highly recommend obtaining NCM-MCI;
Attend the Nutanix Multicloud Infrastructure Design (NMCID) course – former Enterprise Cloud Solution Design Boot Camp, and get familiar with the Nutanix solution design methodology;
Prepare a presentation on your project, following the methodology, and send it for review;
If you successfully pass the presentation review, an exam date will be set, and you should defend your project in front of a group of panelists;
Obtain expert status and start preparing documentation for NPX ;).

In total, to obtain certification you must go through four stages. The fifth is an interesting option.

Step 1. Obtain the required certification.

First, you need to obtain the “technical” certifications. Nutanix Certified Master – Multicloud Infrastructure, also known as Nutanix Certified Advanced Professional in the past is optional.

If suddenly (which is unlikely) we start from the beginning, we will need to pass the following exams (NCM-MCI is optional):

Nutanix Certified Associate (NCA);
Nutanix Certified Professional – Multicloud Infrastructure (NCP-MCI);
Nutanix Certified Master – Multicloud Infrastructure (NCM-MCI).

This blog contains instructions for preparing for the NCA, NCP-MCI, and NCM-MCI exams. At the time of writing those articles, based on the recent Nutanix release, but in the future, the overall process should be the same.

The main assistance at this stage is experience and documentation.

A lot of information can be found at Nutanix University, taking free online courses:

Nutanix Hybrid Cloud Fundamentals – for NCA;
Enterprise Cloud Administration – for NCP-MCI;
Advanced Administration & Performance Management – for NCM-MCI.

Many videos can be found on the Nutanix University YouTube channel . Here are playlists of recommended videos for the NCA, NCP, and NCM exams.

For additional hands-on experience, you can use Nutanix Community Edition 2.0. I also have a post – How to deploy Nutanix CE 2.0.

For backup operations, you can use Veeam or HYCU. Both companies can provide NFR licenses to certified specialists or Community program participants.

I also have several articles about the work of Veeam and Nutanix:

Thus, without any financial investments, we can build a laboratory environment to test most of the basic capabilities of Nutanix and even play with backup and replication.

About the cost of exams. Each exam costs from $99 to $299, however, discounts are often offered, ranging from 25% to 100%. Sometimes there are promotions like “Take a free online course and get a voucher for the exam.”

The easiest way to follow this is through Nutanix University Twitter, as well as on the Community portal.

Step 2. Attend Nutanix Multicloud Infrastructure Design (NMCID) course.

I don’t have experience with the Nutanix Multicloud Infrastructure Design course because I’ve attended Enterprise Cloud Solution Design Boot Camp, but I assume that both courses have a lot in common.

I wrote earlier about my experience of participating in the boot camp (originally in Russian). The article contains some recommendations on what skills you should first master.

Let’s say you are an engineer (like me) far from anything like architecture, presale, consulting, etc.

Once upon a time, a truth was revealed to me: all decisions taken in a project should be based on some requirements, primarily business, and not on the desire of an engineer who reads an article and wants all this fancy stuff.

Here the following terms are included:

Requirements – This is why the project begins in the first place. There is a requirement – we select a solution for it;
Constraints – Moments that in some way limit our decision. The simplest option is a budget. I would like a farm of 100 servers, but we only have enough money for 5;
Assumptions – We are buying 5 servers and believe that customer should have enough licenses to cover all the hosts. Each assumption must be verified and confirmed, otherwise, you can buy 5 servers, and install them, but the customer has only 4 licenses. Another example – “We will not deploy a DNS server, because the customer already has one at the customer’s site.” It remains to check if this is true;
Risks – Everything is clear here. A list of everything that could interfere with the implementation of the project or its functioning in the future. If possible, every risk should be eliminated or mitigated. Suppose it is not possible to eliminate the risk or at least minimize it. In that case, it is necessary to at least report its existence and obtain written confirmation of agreement that such a risk exists.

Now a little about the types of design. Conceptual, Logical, and Physical.

I still can’t explain it better than in this article, but in short:

Conceptual – Simple about complex, there’s no better way to find a phrase. High-level design describing the main concepts of the project. For business people;
Logical – diagram of component interaction. At this stage, deep technical details are usually not specified. For example, a block with an image of a server connected to a switch. Ideally, changing a vendor does not require a design change;
Physical – This is where the real freedom is. Schemes, diagrams, and tables indicating ports, speeds, and protocols. The more detailed – the better and more understandable to the engineers who will be involved in installation and implementation.

Understanding all these aspects is highly desirable before attending the course, since much of it is built on the initial gathering of requirements and constraints, followed by the development of a solution and its presentation in the form of conceptual and logical diagrams.

To close these gaps, I would like to recommend the book IT Architect Series: The Journey by Melissa Palmer, aka vMiss, and also VCDX #236. This book contains everything that I wrote about above (and more), and in sufficient detail. An excellent book for those just starting in architecture.

So, before attending the course, I recommend understanding what I wrote about above, and also brushing up on the following topics:

Check out the available best practices on the documentation portal;
Get yourself familiar with the Nutanix hardware;
If you haven’t worked with Nutanix Sizer before (like me), it’s worth starting (or then calculating everything in Excel, like me);
Read and understand the Nutanix Design Guide;
Read and understand Nutanix Hybrid Cloud Validated Design – This is a recent document and extremely useful. A lot of designs can be found using this link.

When we are ready, we can register for the course. You can start from the Nutanix University Portal and find suitable date and class.

Seats for the course fill up very quickly, so you shouldn’t delay registering, and it’s better to do it immediately after the announcement of new groups.

After the course, you should receive an NCX presentation template, which will be your starting point on your way to certification.

You may ask – why are you talking so much about the course (or boot camp). The answer is simple, attending the course is, probably, half of the work. After the course, you will be ready to take the exam. Believe me 🙂

Step 3. Preparing a presentation on the project.

So, this is what the article was started for. We successfully obtained the minimum required certification, attended the course, and became familiar with the Nutanix solution design methodology.

At this point, I would recommend reading another book (at least the first few chapters and the last) – Foundation in the Art of Infrastructure Design by John Yani Arrasjid, Mark Gabryjelski, and Chris McCain.

This book is great material for the VCDX certification and it very well describes the process of gathering requirements, constraints, assumptions, and risks, how to transfer them to infrastructure, examples of diagrams from conceptual to physical, and much more that can help on the path of design and preparation.

Before you take on the blueprint and start preparing your presentation for NCX certification, you need to decide on the project.

I haven’t seen any minimal requirements for the project, but assume that a cluster of 3 nodes won’t work here.

The main requirement, in my opinion, for a good project is that it must meet the requirements, it must minimize risks, and the entire solution must fit into existing constraints. The size of the infrastructure is not critical.

If you are an architect, presale engineer, or consultant, I doubt that in this case there may be problems with finding a project suitable for certification.

However, representatives from the customer side may encounter this problem, especially if the infrastructure is not very large and there are no interesting projects, or they were designed by someone else, for example, a partner.

And here, as for me, you can kill two birds with one stone. Prepare a solution not for an existing project, but for the future, thereby preparing for the exam, and, at the same time bring a real project to the company.

This can be done by conducting several interviews with managers or stakeholders. For example:

Hello, I want to prepare for the exam, and at the same time see how we can improve our infrastructure to make life a little better for the company.
Great. You should be aware that our databases have been “slowing down” lately (noted and recorded in the requirements column), and also due to the increase in the number of clients, the storage space for those same databases is very quickly running out (recorded).
Okay, what else? I remember that you were thinking about the microservices.
Yes. We are currently looking for solutions to simplify the process of deploying Kubernetes clusters.
Listen, what about licenses for %random_software%?
There are not many licenses, free licenses can now cover no more than 30 cores, and, unfortunately, we cannot buy new ones this year (they are included in the constraints).
But I also remember that our backup copies are stored in the same data center where the systems are. Don’t you think this is wrong? (here are the risks).
Yes, I agree, it will be good if you come up with a solution. (you will save us from this risk completely).

All this is done to collect a list of requirements, constraints, and risks. Then add your assumptions and confirm that they are correct.

After collecting all the necessary data, there should be no problems with the formation of the project. A good starting point as an example is a project from a boot camp, this is something you can focus on when developing your own.

When developing a project, the main thing is not to forget one – every decision should be justified by something. It would be nice to make a table of the format – Problem/Requirement/Risk – Solution. You always should have an answer for why?

For the NCX exam, the project must be presented in the form of a presentation. In this regard, NCX is much simpler than NPX, since a large amount of accompanying documentation is not required. The only document required is a presentation of the solution.

A blueprint guide will help us prepare the presentation, which can be taken from Nutanix University in the section dedicated to the NCX exam.

Section 3 of the blueprint guide outlines the areas that should be covered in your presentation. They are divided into 3 large sections:

Customer Consultation – Everything that concerns the customer and input into the project. The current state of infrastructure. Collected requirements, constraints, risks, and assumptions. Plans and methods for migrating to new infrastructure;

Conceptual/Logical Design – Conceptual and logical diagrams, as well as answers to questions – how to scale, what about performance, how to protect data, what about fault tolerance, etc.;

Physical Design – Everything about hardware selection, sizing, network, data center infrastructure, etc.

In total, all 3 areas include about 22 objectives. For myself, I created a three-column table based on the blueprint:

Topic;
What is meant by objective, what needs to be covered in the presentation;
Done/not done. If done, indicate the slide number.

With such a table it is quite simple to keep track of progress, and not forget all the objectives that need to be covered in the presentation.

If you wish, you can add another column with thoughts on each topic, in case there is no time to write now, but the thought has already come to 🙂

As a result, following the blueprint and the templates, a presentation on your project should be created, which describes all the required objectives.

The size of the presentation is different for everyone. I followed the format of one objective – one slide, but in some cases, there could be more.

Anything that seems important, but is not related to the main topic can be placed at the end of the presentation in the Appendix section. In my case, it was the same size as the main presentation – some diagrams, design decisions, and so on.

You may ask – why don’t you talk more about objectives and how to put them into the presentation? Where is an example? Believe me, when you get the presentation template and read the blueprint you will know what to do next.

When the presentation is ready, all that remains is to send an email to npx@nutanix.com, indicate your desire to participate in the NCX exam, and attach the presentation.

If the presentation is prepared correctly and meets the requirements, an exam date will be scheduled.

Step 4. Exam.

The exam format is quite simple; you have an hour and a half of time during which you need to present your solution to the examiners, answering their questions along the way.

Few advices:

“Speak” the presentation several times to understand how much time the presentation process can take;
Know everything about your design, and be ready to answer for each element in the diagram or each value in the table;
Be ready to answer questions – “why?”, “why didn’t you do this?”

If your project is designed according to the methodology, all the objectives from the blueprint are in the presentation, and you are 100% focused, there will be no problems with defense.

Step 5. What next?

If the project defense was successful, you can be congratulated on receiving Nutanix Certified Expert status, a certificate, a badge in Credly, as well as an entry about you in the official NCX directory on the Nutanix website.

However, that’s not all. You can always test your skills in the Nutanix Platform Expert (NPX) certification. This certification will require significantly more effort, but the reward is commensurate.

As a conclusion

As I wrote at the beginning, NCX certification is about the journey. A journey that consists of initial certification, boot camp, studying a large amount of material (sometimes not even related to the main work), project preparation, presentation, and the defense itself.

Don’t forget about the power of the community. Find a mentor, if you need one. Ask for advice, or a review. I want to say: Thank You to Artur Krzywdzinski, who helped me during the preparation.

One thing I can say with confidence is that I have never once regretted the time spent on self-education and preparation for this certification. All this pays off very quickly and not only in money.

The skills you develop during training can and should be applied to other areas, not just designing Nutanix-based solutions. And this is undoubtedly a big plus.

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