Course Overview
If you already have experience administering a Nutanix environment, this course will extend, deepen and broaden your knowledge as you grow in your career as a Nutanix administrator. In Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Administration (ECA), you’ll focus on Prism Central. This course provides a comprehensive look at Nutanix centralized management capabilities and allows you to explore the wide variety of features that are available in this web console.
Who should attend
- Administrators, engineers, and others who manage Nutanix clusters in the datacenter
- Managers and technical staff seeking information to drive purchase decisions
- Anyone seeking the Nutanix Certified Professional-Multicloud Infrastructure (NCP-MCI) certification
Certifications
This course is part of the following Certifications:
Prerequisites
None.
Course Objectives
- Core Nutanix Concepts: Gain a deep understanding of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) and the various Nutanix cloud solution packages. Learn the basics of cluster configuration and the components for creating and managing VMs – namely, networks and images.
- VM Management: Explore how to create and manage VMs, work with projects, protect VMs and their data, apply storage optimization features at the VM level, and migrate your workloads to a Nutanix environment.
- Monitoring and Troubleshooting: Learn about alerts, events, log collection, reporting, and how to use various features in Prism Central to identify, analyze and remediate performance issues.
- Maintenance and Upgrades: Learn how to set up a cluster for maintenance activities – such as starting and stopping nodes and clusters – and how to upgrade installed software and firmware with just a few clicks.
Outline: Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Administration (NECA)
1: Getting Started with a Nutanix cluster
- Understand three-tier and HCI
- Understand the Nutanix product portfolio
- Understand nodes, blocks, clusters, and cluster services
- Get started with Prism Central and Prism Element
- Understand when to use Prism Central and Prism Element
Hands-on-Labs
- Connecting to and exploring Prism Element
- Adding data services IP, an NTP server, and a name server in Prism Element
- Connecting to, exploring and configuring Prism Central
2: Configuring Cluster Networking
- Understand AHV networking terminology
- Use Prism Central to monitor cluster networks
- Use Prism Element to explore the Network Visualizer
- Create and update subnets and virtual switches
- Understand subnet extension and network segmentation
Hands-on Labs
- Creating unmanaged and managed networks
- Exploring the AHV network configuration
- Viewing virtual switches from Prism Element
3: Managing Images
- Understand the image service
- Use Prism Central to monitor, upload, import, and manage images
Hands-on Labs
- Uploading and importing images to Prism Central
- Configuring an image placement policy
4: Creating VMs
- Use Prism Central to create VMs
- Use Prism Central self-service capabilities to create VM templates
- Use Projects in Prism Central
- Install and enable Nutanix Guest Tools
Hands-on Labs
- Creating Windows and Linux VMs
- Installing Windows and Linux operating systems
- Installing Nutanix Guest Tools on Windows and Linux
- Creating a project
- Exploring the Self-Service dashboard in Prism Central
5: Managing VMs
- Update, clone, customize, export, and apply placement rules to VMs
- Create and apply storage policies to VMs
- Create playbooks to automate common VM administrative tasks
Hands-on Labs
- Updating a VM
- Assigning categories to a VM
- Creating a snapshot and restoring a VM
- Creating a template and a clone
- Exporting a VM as an Open Virtual Appliance (OVA) file
- Creating and running a playbook
6: Configuring and Managing Cluster Storage
- Understand AOS storage
- Understand key storage concepts such as storage pools, storage containers, redundancy factor, replication factor, capacity reservation, and snapshots
- Understand fault tolerance and failure handling mechanisms
- Create and update storage containers
- Create and update volume groups
- Use various capacity optimization features
Hands-on Labs
- Exploring the Storage dashboard
- Creating containers with and without compression
- Comparing data in a compressed vs uncompressed container
- Configuring volume groups
- Migrating vdisks between storage containers
7: Data Protection and Disaster Recovery
- Understand data protection terms and concepts
- Understand synchronous and asynchronous replication capabilities
- Create snapshots and recovery points
- Use Prism Element to configure local and remote backup and disaster recovery
- Use Nutanix disaster recovery to create protection policies and recovery plans
- Backup and restore Prism Central
Hands-on Labs
- Backing up and restoring Prism Central
- Configuring Self-Service Restore
- Creating protection domains and local VM restore
- Creating containers for replication
- Configuring remote sites and creating protection domains
- Performing VM migration and migrating back to primary
8: Securing a Nutanix Cluster
- Understand the Nutanix approach to security
- Use the Security dashboard in Prism Central
- Use Prism Central to configure authentication, users and RBAC
- Implement hardening features for AHV and the CVM
- Understand policies in Flow Network Security
- Understand data-at-rest encryption
Hands-on-Labs
- Exploring the Security dashboard
- Adding a local user
- Adding Active Directory authentication
- Configuring Role Mapping
- Verifying a new user account
- Cluster lockdown
9: Migrating Workloads with Nutanix Move
- Understand, install and upgrade Nutanix Move
- Use Move to migrate VMs
- Download Move logs
Hands-on Labs
- Preparing a VM for migration
- Deploying a Move VM
- Configuring Move and a migration plan
10: Monitoring Cluster Performance
- Understand performance monitoring features in Prism Central
- Create sessions, charts and reports
- View and manage project resource utilization
- Create custom dashboards in Prism Central
- Resource planning and capacity runway
Hands-on Labs
- Creating a Prism Central performance monitoring dashboard
- Creating charts to analyze metrics using Prism Central
- Creating and managing reports
11: Monitoring Cluster Health
- Understand health monitoring features in Prism Central and Prism Element
- Get summarized and detailed health information from Prism
- Use Nutanix Cluster Check
- Collect and forward logs
Hands-on Labs
- Using Nutanix Cluster Check health checks
- Collecting logs for Support
- Verifying cluster health
12: Maintaining and Upgrading a Cluster
- Perform a health check
- Use node-maintenance mode
- Understand hardware upgrade and replacement tasks
- Start and stop nodes and clusters
- Add and remove nodes
- Understand and explore Life Cycle Manager (LCM)
- Use LCM to perform inventory and upgrades
Hands-on Labs
- Using node maintenance mode
- Performing upgrades with LCM (with and without internet access)
13: Investigating and Remediating Performance Issues
- Understand alerts and events and the associated dashboards in Prism Central
- Troubleshoot issues with protection policies, LCM, security, and performance
- Identify problematic or inefficient VMs
- Explore potential methods of remediating problematic VMs
Hands-on Labs
- Working with Alerts
- Exploring Events