Nutanix announced that the Nutanix Certified Master – Multicloud Infrastructure (NCM-MCI) certification is updated to version 6.10, and the exam is now in the beta state.
For those who don’t know, this is a practice exam in a real-lab environment, and this is not a test. I have an article on how to prepare for the NCM-MCI 6.5 exam
As usual, beta exams are available totally free for the first 150 participants; just use the discount during checkout: NCMMCI610BETAFREE2. You can schedule this exam from the Nutanix University. Thefinal date to take the test is July 27, 2025.
Notice: After taking a beta exam, you won’t get your results immediately. Results typically appear 1.5 or 2 months after the beta exam period concludes.
Nutanix released AOS 7.3, which is now the latest available release with the end of support life up to June 2027. In addition to the AOS, new versions of AHV and PC were released.
The AOS7.3 release includes: 1. Support of 185 TB Capacity in All-Flash Node for Asynchronous Replication with One Hour to Less Than Six Hours RPO; 2. Support of 370 TB Capacity in All-Flash Node for Asynchronous Replication with 24 Hours or More RPO; 3. Support for Accessing a Volume Group using NVMeoF/TCP – check the doc; 4. Node-Level Support for Centralized Password Management for AHV Accounts – This procedure also described in the doc; 5. Enhanced Controller VM (CVM) Security (enabled by default for new clusters deployed with the AOS 7.3 release) – With this enhancement, access to underlying data is further restricted to internal system processes, helping reduce the risk of unauthorized modification; 6. Support for LUKS-Based Encryption of AOS and AHV Configuration Data – support for encrypting AOS and AHV configuration data at rest using LUKS. Read the documentation carefully; 7. Enabled Protection of vTPM-Enabled VMs in PD-Based DR with Asynchronous Replication Schedule; 8. On-Wire Encryption of Replication Traffic.
And more. You can find all release notes following this URL.
Let’s move to AHV 10.3: 1. Single Root Input Output Virtualization (SR-IOV) – Network interface card (NIC) passthrough provides a VM with direct access to a physical NIC.. A long-awaited feature. For more information, check the AHV administration guide. Also make sure to check supported versions; 2. Network Offload – The Network Offload (datapath offload) feature removes the burden by offloading the datapath rules to the NIC hardware. Links above are applicable for Network Offload feature too; 3. Automatic Cluster Selection Feature Enhancements; 4. CCLM and OD-CCLM Support for Guest VMs Connected to an Open Virtualized Network (OVN) LAN; 5. Support for RHEL High-availability Pacemaker Clusters – If you’re working with Red Hat clusters and Pacemaker and use STONITH, this is a must-have feature for you. Check out the documentation.
This release also includes a bunch of resolved issues, so make sure to read the release notes for AHV 10.3.
The last release is Prism Central pc.7.3 (you may notice a change in naming): 1. Enhancements in Network Settings of Recovery Plan; 2. Multicluster Virtual Switches in Prism Central – Starting with pc.7.3, you can create and manage virtual switches in Prism Central that span multiple clusters managed by the Prism Central instance. Check the documentation for more; 3. SR-IOV NIC Profile; 4. Network Offload NIC Profile; 5. Support for Accessing a Volume Group using NVMeoF/TCP; 6. Category Access from Prism Central Admin Center; 7. Prism Central Backup and Restore on Nutanix Objects – You can now back up your Prism Central instances to an S3 compatible object-based storage bucket on Nutanix Objects and recover them; 8. Template Placement Policies; 9. Support for AHV Metro in Multisite Deployments; 10. Intelligent Assist – Starting with pc.7.3, Prism Central displays the Intelligent Assist icon in the bottom-right corner of the Prism Central user interface. The icon provides in-product contextual recommendations, tips, and help resources for blueprints, runbooks, playbooks, and other features of Self-Service and Intelligent Operations; 11. Prism Central Backup and Restore: Configurable Recovery Point Objective (RPO) for Backups to AWS S3 and Nutanix Objects; 12. On-Wire Encryption of Replication Traffic.
This is a really large release, and I didn’t post more than 20 other features, and as always, please refer to the release notes for more information.
For those who did not hear about this certification, NCP-CN measures your ability to use the Nutanix Kubernetes Platform product, which makes Kubernetes management much easier.
This guide outlines the preparation methodology I am using for certification exams, and it is applicable to other Nutanix exams as well.
Nutanix Certified Professional is the second stage in the Nutanix certification track. This certification requires the candidate to have good theoretical and practical knowledge of working with Nutanix solutions and is divided into several tracks:
Nutanix Certified Professional – Multicloud Infrastructure (NCP-MCI) Nutanix Certified Professional – Database Automation (NCP-DB) Nutanix Certified Professional – Unified Storage (NCP-US) Nutanix Certified Professional – Multicloud Automation (NCP-MCA) Nutanix Certified Professional – End User Computing (NCP-EUC) Nutanix Certified Professional – Cloud Integration (NCP-CI) Nutanix Certified Professional – Cloud Native (NCP-CN)
In this article, we will look at the main topics from the Nutanix Certified Professional – Cloud Native (NCP-CN) exam version 6.10, and I will also share materials that you can use to prepare yourself.
As you know, Nutanix .NEXT 2025 is all around, and in this post, I want to share announcements made during the conference.
What I really love to see is a partnership with PureStorage —the leader in the storage market, a partnership with Canonical, and that Omnissa Horizon (ex. VMware Horizon) will support the AHV hypervisor.
Nutanix released new minor versions of AOS, AHV, and PC with a few new features and many resolved issues in AOS, AHV, and Prism Central.
If you’re waiting for the first patch to upgrade your clusters to AOS 7 and PC 2024.3, make sure to read the release notes, resolved issues, and known issues. Maybe it’s time to upgrade.
For AOS 7.0.1 and AHV 10.0.1, there is a new feature: AMD Turin Processor Support – Starting with AOS 7.0.1, AOS supports nodes based on the AMD Turin processor, such as Nutanix G10 platforms. Currently, Nutanix has qualified the AMD Turin processor for Lenovo HX platforms.
For Prism Central 2024.3.1: There are few features related to NCM, but I want to highlight a new and highly anticipated feature called Power Monitor – Starting with pc.2024.3.1, you can gain insights into the power consumption of your IT infrastructure by enabling the Power Monitor feature. Power Monitor collects real-time power usage data at the node and cluster levels and displays this historical data as line charts on the Prism Central dashboard.
You can read more on how Prowe Usage works in the documentation.
Nutanix Certified Professional – Cloud Native (NCP-CN)6.10 is ready to leave the beta state and exam is now open for scheduling with exam appointments starting on Tuesday, April 22
For those, who do not know, what NCP-CN is, it is the certification that measures your ability to deploy, configure, optimize, and perform administrative tasks on a Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP).
The best way to start preparing is to check the blueprint guide. You can find the blueprint guide here.
To schedule the exam, use the My Certification section on Nutanix University. Next, find the Nutanix Certified Professional – Cloud Native 6.10 certification and click schedule. You will be forwarded to the PSI page, where you can select a suitable date and time.
In addition, I highly recommend checking the Nutanix Kubernetes Platform Administration (NKAP) free online course to get the knowledge on the NKP solution. Also, if you have an opportunity, I recommend visiting this course live, because it includes a lot of hands-on labs, and it really can boost your knowledge on NKP, especially if you have a poor practice experience.
This topic is related to the previous post when we were talking about connecting to the existing Nutanix AHV appliance, but what should we do if we completely lose it or we need to restore the previous configuration? – The answer is simple: we can restore its configuration from the backup.
In this article, we will look at how to restore Nutanix AHV Backup Proxy from the configuration backup.
Did you know that you can connect the VBR Server to the existing Nutanix AHV Backup Proxy (Appliance) instead of deploying a new one in case it was removed from the backup infrastructure for some reason, or you just want to connect an appliance previously used by another backup server?
I never thought that I needed this feature until I reinstalled the Prism Central in my lab. After that, I had to remove the old PC instance from the Veeam Inventory, which requires removing the existing proxy from the configuration as well.
Next, I will provide a quick walkthrough on how to connect to the existing proxy.
With the release of Prism Central PC 2024.x, you may see significant improvements and changes in the functionality, features, user interfaces, and menus.
In my opinion, one of the major features added is the marketplace providing us the ability to deploy additional PC components, including NKE.
Although I believe that the Nutanix Kubernetes Platform is the future of Kubernetes management in Nutanix, I am still a big fan of the Nutanix Kubernetes Engine and want to demonstrate how to deploy NKE with pc.2024.x.
Let me remind you that I have a few blog posts on NKE, and all of them can be found using the NKE tag.
