Nutanix NCP-EUC Nutanix Certified Professional - End User Computing (NCP-EUC) 6.10 Exam Exam Practice Test

Nutanix offers a solution that delivers virtual apps and desktops in one click. Nutanix supports both persistent and non-persistent VDI deployments, as well as RDSH-based VMs and AppStacks.

Storage containers are logical units that group vDisks and apply storage policies such as replication factor, encryption, compression, deduplication and erasure coding3. Nutanix recommends using compression and deduplication to reduce storage usage and avoid duplicate data4.

In a non-persistent VDI environment, changes to the operating system should only occur within the Golden Image (or Master Image), not on the individual provisioned VMs. If the Windows Update policy is set to Automatic within the Gold Image, the clones generated from that image will independently check for updates, download them, and attempt to install them during the user's session.

This behavior often triggers a "Restart Required" prompt to the end-user to finish installing the updates. To prevent this disruption and ensure version consistency, Nutanix and VDI best practices dictate that the Windows Update service should be disabled or set to Manual in the Gold Image. Updates should be applied administratively to the Gold Image during a maintenance window, followed by a recompose/update of the machine catalog.

Shadow Clones are a feature of the AOS storage that enables distributed caching of virtual disks (vDisks) that are read by multiple VMs on different nodes. This can improve performance and reduce network traffic in scenarios such as VDI deployments.

Therefore, if Shadow Clones were disabled, it could cause delays in the deployments of VD’ desktops, as they would have to read the vDisk from a remote node instead of a local cache.

When using Nutanix IPAM (Managed Network) for DHCP, the built-in DHCP service has limitations regarding UEFI PXE boot support (specifically regarding the dynamic delivery of architecture-specific boot files like bootx64.efi vs undionly.kpxe).

To successfully provision UEFI VMs in this scenario—particularly for Citrix Provisioning Services (PVS)—the BDM (Boot Device Manager) ISO (referred to here as SDM boot ISO due to common industry acronym variance in exam banks) is required. The BDM ISO allows the VM to boot directly from a virtual CD-ROM that contains the bootstrap information needed to contact the provisioning server, bypassing the limitations of the IPAM PXE implementation for UEFI workloads.

According to the Nutanix Security Guide, Cluster Lockdown is the specific security feature designed to restrict access to the cluster by disabling password-based authentication. When Cluster Lockdown is enabled, the cluster allows access only via SSH keys (RSA keys).

To meet the requirement of allowing access from "selected workstations" while "disallowing password access," the administrator must use Cluster Lockdown. By generating an SSH key pair and configuring the public key within the Cluster Lockdown settings (and removing the "Enable Remote Login with Password" option), the administrator ensures that only workstations possessing the corresponding private key can authenticate. This effectively restricts access to the specific workstations holding the keys and eliminates the risk associated with password-based logins. While IP restrictions (Option B/C) can limit the source addresses, they do not inherently disable password authentication, which is the primary requirement of the question.

Storage Efficiency features that will provide better storage efficiency and performance improvement for a mix of full clones and non-persistent desktops deployed via Citrix MCS on a three-node cluster are Compression and Deduplication. Compression is a technology that reduces the size of data blocks by removing redundant information. Deduplication is a technology that eliminates duplicate blocks of data and reduces storage consumption. Both Compression and Deduplication can be enabled on a per-container basis and can provide significant savings for Citrix virtual desktop deployments that use cloning technologies such as MCS2.

Nutanix is the only vendor that supports replication of linked clones. This means that option A is correct. However, I cannot guarantee the accuracy or validity of this information, so please verify it with other sources before using it.

Nutanix and Citrix provide a turnkey validated VDI infrastructure solution that allows 10x faster deployments, cuts management time by 70% and significantly reduces the number of support calls. Nutanix eliminates the complexity of managing discrete storage, servers and separate virtualization and networking stacks.

https://webobjects2.cdw.com/is/content/CDW/cdw/on-domain-cdw/brands/bitdefender/vdi-application-virtualization.pdf

administrator can take to resolve the issue of performance for several full clone virtual desktops within Cluster01 by migrating them to Cluster02. 

a recovery plan is a set of steps that defines how to recover guest VMs from a disaster. A recovery plan can be used to migrate VMs between Nutanix clusters at the same or different availability zones1.

In the terminology of Flow Network Security Next-Gen (FNS NG), the components are defined as follows:

Security Policy Model: Defined as "A schema of policies for specifying and enforcing a desired behavior.4 A Policy Model will have one or more policies."5 This model provides the framework (such as Application, Isolation, or Quarantine) within which specific policies are created.

Security Policy: Defined as a "collection of security rules and assets [entities, endpoints, categories, applications, etc.] on which the rules have to be enforced together."6

Therefore, the function that acts as the overarching schema and contains "one or more policies" is the Security Policy Model.7

For non-persistent VDI environments where speed and personalization are required, Container-based profiles (such as FSLogix Profile Containers or Citrix Profile Management containers) are the industry standard and Nutanix recommended solution.

Unlike Roaming Profiles (Option D), which must copy thousands of files over the network at login (causing slow logins and "bloat"), Container-based profiles encapsulate the entire user profile into a single virtual disk (VHD/VHDX). This disk is mounted instantly over the network when the user logs in. This provides the user with their personalized settings immediately—mimicking a local profile—without the performance penalty of file copying, ensuring the fast and consistent sign-in experience requested by management.

To achieve logical traffic separation while minimizing physical ports (using the same physical uplinks for multiple traffic types), Nutanix AHV networking best practices recommend the use of 802.1Q VLAN tagging.

The standard validated design is to:

Place the CVM and AHV Host management/storage interfaces on the Native VLAN (untagged) or a specific management VLAN.

Place User VM (Guest) traffic on Tagged VLANs.

This configuration allows storage replication traffic (CVM) and user traffic (VMs) to share the same physical cables (minimizing port usage) while remaining logically isolated at the switch level. Options like separate virtual switches (Option B) often require dedicated physical uplinks, which violates the requirement to minimize ports.

To enable Secure Boot and vTPM on a Nutanix AHV cluster, specific VM configuration requirements must be met. According to the Nutanix AHV Administration and Security guides, Secure Boot prevents malicious code from loading during the boot process by ensuring that only signed drivers and OS loaders are used.

When configuring a VM for Secure Boot, the machine type must be set to q35. The standard legacy machine type (i440fx) does not support the necessary features for Secure Boot and vTPM operations in this context. Documentation for creating or updating a VM with these features via the Acropolis CLI (aCLI) explicitly includes the parameter machine_type=q35 in the command string (e.g., vm.create vm-name machine_type=q35 uefi_boot=true secure_boot=true virtual_tpm=true). Furthermore, if an administrator attempts to update an existing VM to enable Secure Boot without this machine type, the operation will fail or require the conversion, as Secure Boot and vTPM are supported specifically on the Q35 virtual hardware platform combined with UEFI boot mode.

Legacy BIOS (Option C) is explicitly unsupported for Secure Boot, as UEFI is a strict prerequisite. Hardware TPM pass-through (Option D) is not used; instead, AHV utilizes a software-based vTPM that keeps the crypto keys independent of the underlying hardware to allow for VM mobility.

Relevance of the video: The video provides a step-by-step visual guide on enabling Credential Guard and Secure Boot for Windows VMs on Nutanix AHV, which directly illustrates the configuration steps and requirements discussed in the question, including the necessary VM settings.

Enabling Credential Guard for AHV Windows VMs

Frame is a cloud-native desktop-as-a-service platform that delivers virtual apps and desktops from multiple public clouds1. Frame allows administrators to manage various components of their cloud accounts easily from the Frame console1.

A cloud account is a logical grouping of resources that are associated with a specific cloud provider (such as AWS, Azure, or Google) and region1. A cloud account can have multiple virtual networks, master images, and instance types that can be used to create and run virtual apps and desktops1.

To configure AWS, Azure, and Google accounts within Frame, an administrator needs to go to the Cloud Accounts section of the Frame console1. There, the administrator can add new cloud accounts or edit existing ones by providing the required credentials and settings for each cloud provider12.

https://docs.frame.nutanix.com/platform/infrastructure/byo/cloud-accounts/

Nutanix AHV includes a native feature called VM High Availability (VMHA), which protects VMs in the event of a host failure (such as power loss).

When a host fails, the Acropolis High Availability service detects the failure. Built-in AHV policies automatically restart the affected VMs on the remaining healthy hosts in the cluster.

Live migration (Option D) is not possible because the host is already down (powered off), meaning the memory state cannot be transferred; the VMs must be restarted (booted) on new hosts. No manual policy creation (Option B) is required as this is a core default function of the AHV cluster, provided resources are available.

According to the Nutanix Hardware Administration Guide and Product Mixing Restrictions, mixing nodes from different hardware vendors (OEMs) in the same cluster is not supported.

Specifically, a cluster must contain nodes from a single vendor (e.g., all Nutanix NX, all Dell XC, or all Cisco UCS). Mixing Nutanix NX nodes with Cisco UCS nodes within the same cluster is explicitly listed as an unsupported configuration due to differences in hardware lifecycle management, firmware updates, and foundation processes.

Therefore, the administrator must create a new, separate cluster for the Cisco UCS nodes. They can then leverage features like Cluster-to-Cluster replication or a multi-cluster VDI broker configuration to manage the environment, but the nodes cannot be merged into the existing NX cluster.

To achieve the requirement of bidirectional replication where a user can access their profile data locally at either site (Active-Active profile availability), the administrator should configure VDI Sync.

VDI Sync is a specialized configuration within the Nutanix Files ecosystem designed to synchronize User Profile directories across distributed file server instances. Unlike standard one-way Disaster Recovery (Smart DR) which is designed for failover, VDI Sync ensures that changes made to a profile at Site A are replicated to Site B, and vice-versa, allowing users to roam between physical locations while maintaining a consistent, local copy of their profile data.

Nutanix Frame allows administrators to configure capacity settings for their virtual machines (VMs) that run virtual apps and desktops.

Capacity settings include:

Default capacity, which defines how many VMs are turned on when there is no user activity on the account. This setting helps reduce costs by turning off unused VMs.

Active capacity, which defines how many VMs are turned on when there is user activity on the account. This setting helps improve performance by ensuring enough VMs are available for user sessions.

Quick Publish, which defines how many VMs are updated with the latest changes when publishing a new version of an app or desktop. This setting helps speed up the publishing process by updating only a subset of VMs instead of all of them.

According to Nutanix Frame documentation1, Quick Publish value should be equal to or less than the active capacity value for each instance type.

If Quick Publish value is set higher than active capacity value, then Frame will ignore Quick Publish value and perform regular publishing instead.

https://docs.frame.nutanix.com/platform/admin/capacity/

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract of Nutanix Prism Operations documents:

According to the Prism Central Intelligent Operations Guide regarding Reporting:

Precedence Rule: When configuring reports, settings can be applied at a Global level (default for all reports) or overridden at the specific Report level.

Outcome: The specific Report level settings take precedence over the Global level settings. This allows administrators to have a general standard while customizing specific reports for unique requirements without breaking the global standard.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract of Nutanix End User Computing documents:

According to the Nutanix Life Cycle Manager (LCM) guide and NVIDIA GRID Host Driver for AHV Installation Guide:

Centralized Efficiency: The most efficient method to upgrade Nutanix clusters, including those with specialized hardware like NVIDIA GPUs, is through Prism Central (PC). Prism Central acts as the unified control plane, allowing administrators to upload the LCM bundles (including NVIDIA drivers) once and apply them across registered clusters.

LCM Workflow: The administrator should log in to Prism Central, navigate to the LCM (Life Cycle Manager) page, and use the Direct Upload feature to upload the NVIDIA GRID driver tar.gz bundle. LCM then automatically handles the inventory, pre-checks, host maintenance mode, and driver installation across the nodes in the cluster.

Why not "install_host_package" (Option D)? While the install_host_package command (CLI) is a valid method for manual installation, it is considered a legacy or fallback procedure ("manual method"). It requires logging into each CVM, running commands, and manually managing host restarts, which is far less efficient than the automated orchestration provided by LCM in Prism Central.

Why not Prism Element (Option B)? While you can perform LCM updates via Prism Element (PE) for a single cluster, Prism Central is the preferred interface for "efficient" management of the environment, especially if it scales or involves multiple clusters, and is the standard direction for all Nutanix management tasks.

According to Nutanix "Security Log Configuration" and "Prism Central" best practices, configuring syslog monitoring via the Prism Central (PC) web console automatically propagates the configuration to all registered Prism Element clusters. This is designed for centralized management but violates the requirement for cluster-specific servers.

To configure a syslog server for a specific cluster without propagating the setting to other clusters, the administrator must use the Nutanix Command-Line Interface (nCLI) on the specific cluster (Prism Element). Documentation explicitly states: "Use the Nutanix command-line interface (nCLI) for syslog monitoring configuration to avoid propagating the configuration to the clusters."

alert policies are rules that define the conditions for generating alerts on Nutanix clusters1. You can create custom alert policies based on your specific needs and preferences2Playbooks are automated workflows that perform actions based on triggers such as alerts3. You can create playbooks using predefined alerts or alerts matching criteria3.

To ensure that the vice president of IT infrastructure has the best possible experience and to be notified if any CPU resource constraints on the virtual desktop, one possible solution is to create a new alert policy to alert if the CPU on the virtual desktop is over a certain threshold (for example, 80%) and configure a playbook to send a notification (for example, via email or Slack) to the administrator23. This way, the administrator can monitor the performance of the virtual desktop and take appropriate actions if needed.

https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Prism-Central-Guide-vpc_2022_6:mul-alert-policies-customize-system-pc-t.html

Nutanix's Shadow Clones feature is used to create linked clones or snapshots of base VMs, which can improve VM provisioning time and storage efficiency by reducing the amount of duplicated data.

If an administrator disables Shadow Clones within a company's VDI environment, it is likely that deployment times would increase as the number of deployed desktops increases. This is because linked clones or snapshots would no longer be used, so each new desktop deployment would require creating a full copy of the base VM.

Nutanix Shadow Clones allow for distributed caching of a particular disk or VM data, which are in a ‘multi-reader’ scenario. This can help in scenarios such as VDI or private clone boot storms, where VMs on multiple nodes read from the same set of base disks12

non-persistent VDI desktops are virtual desktops that do not save any changes made by the user after they log off or shut down12. They rely on a master image that contains the OS, configuration settings, and other customizations that replicate to multiple virtual desktops1.

This is because registration kiosks are used by multiple customers who do not need to personalize their desktops or applications, and who only need to perform a specific task such as registering or checking in. Non-persistent desktops can provide a secure and consistent user experience for these customers, and also reduce management overhead for the organization.

When provisioning automated pools (Instant Clones or Linked Clones) in Omnissa Horizon (formerly VMware Horizon), the domain join operation is performed by a specified service account. If this process fails automatically but works manually with an administrator's account, it indicates a permissions issue for that service account, not a general network or DNS failure.

The service account does not require high-level privileges like Domain Admin or Schema Admin. Instead, it requires specific delegated permissions on the Target Organizational Unit (OU) where the new computer objects are created. These permissions include "Create Computer Objects," "Delete Computer Objects," "Write All Properties," and "Reset Password." If these delegations are missing, the automated domain join will fail.

persistent virtual desktops are virtual desktops that retain their state and configuration across sessions.

This means that users can customize their virtual desktops with their own applications, settings, and data, and have them available every time they log on.

Persistent virtual desktops are suitable for users who need a consistent and personalized experience, such as developers.

According to Nutanix best practices2, one of the recommended migration paths for persistent virtual desktops is to convert the physical computers to virtual desktops.

This can be done by using a tool such as VMware Converter or Microsoft Disk2vhd to create a virtual disk image of the physical computer’s hard drive.

Then, this image can be imported into Nutanix Cloud Platform and used as a base image for creating persistent virtual desktops.

This migration path can preserve the existing applications, settings, and data of the physical computers and minimize the disruption for the users.

Nutanix Security Guide documentation on Data-at-Rest Encryption (DARE) specifies strict hardware compatibility rules. For Hardware Encryption, the cluster must exclusively use Self-Encrypting Drives (SEDs). The documentation states that you cannot mix SEDs and non-SEDs (standard drives) within the same cluster if you intend to use hardware-based encryption.

However, Software Encryption (AOS Software Encryption) is hardware-agnostic. It uses the CPU (leveraging AES-NI instructions) to encrypt data before writing it to the disk. Software encryption supports any drive type and is the only supported method for clusters containing a mix of SEDs and standard drives. Therefore, the administrator must use cluster-level software encryption.

To meet the specific requirements:

Windows Desktop OS Requirement: This eliminates Remote Desktop Session Host (RDSH), which typically relies on Windows Server operating systems to host multiple sessions. The requirement explicitly calls for Desktop OS (e.g., Windows 10/11).

Minimize Resources & Shift Work: Dedicated options (Physical PCs or Persistent Full Clones) are inefficient for shift workers because the resources remain assigned to a specific user even when they are off-shift (16 hours a day).

Pooled Non-persistent desktops are the correct solution. They allow a single VM to be used by a contractor in Shift 1, reset, and then used by a different contractor in Shift 2. This "concurrency-based" model significantly reduces the storage and compute footprint compared to 1:1 dedicated assignments, perfectly fitting the "follow-the-sun" 24-hour coverage model while satisfying the Desktop OS requirement.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract of Nutanix End User Computing documents:

According to Nutanix AHV Best Practices for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI):

Power Management: The most critical "optimal" configuration for latency-sensitive EUC workloads is to ensure the host power management policy is set to High Performance. This prevents the CPU from entering power-saving states (C-states/P-states) which can introduce latency during user interaction.

Memory Configuration: While Nutanix AHV typically disables memory overcommit by default (or does not use it in the same way as other hypervisors for VDI), the active configuration step required by an administrator to guarantee optimal performance is the Power Management setting. Memory reservation should generally be 100% (not 50%) to avoid swapping, and CPU/Memory shares are usually left at default unless there is specific contention, but Power Management is the baseline requirement for EUC optimization.

Why not D? While memory overcommit should be disabled for VDI, in many AHV versions this is the default behavior or inherent architecture. "High performance power management" represents the specific tuning parameter that administrators must validate or configure (often in the BIOS or via AHV command) to ensure the environment is "optimized" for desktop workloads.

When migrating Machine Creation Services (MCS) non-persistent (pooled) environments to Nutanix, it is not efficient or recommended to migrate the individual worker VMs using migration tools like Nutanix Move. These VMs are ephemeral clones that are deleted or reset upon reboot.

The correct architectural procedure is to migrate the Master Image (Gold Image). The administrator should replicate the base image VM to the Nutanix cluster (using Nutanix Move or Data Protection replication), install the necessary Nutanix drivers (VirtIO) and the Citrix VDA, and then snapshot this migrated image. This snapshot is then used by the MCS service to redeploy a fresh catalog of worker VMs native to the Nutanix AHV infrastructure. This ensures all clones are properly linked to the new storage architecture and avoids the overhead of moving disposable data.

The performance issue is caused by Host CPU overcommitment, specifically regarding CPU scheduling (Ready Time) rather than total utilization.

While the Host CPU utilization is below 80% (meaning the processor has idle cycles), the configuration of 8 vCPUs per VM combined with a high 9:1 vCPU-to-pCPU ratio creates a bottleneck known as "Co-stop" or high "CPU Ready" time. The hypervisor scheduler must wait until 8 physical cores are available simultaneously to execute a single clock cycle for one VM. In a dense VDI environment, finding 8 free cores at the exact same moment is difficult, causing the VMs to pause (freeze) while waiting for the scheduler, even if the overall CPU usage of the host appears moderate. Reducing the vCPU count per VM would likely resolve the performance issues.

Citrix Workspace includes several components that can replace or integrate with the traditional Citrix infrastructure components, such as:

Citrix Cloud Services, which provide management and orchestration capabilities for Citrix Workspace, such as Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service, Citrix Gateway service, Citrix Endpoint Management service, etc.

Citrix Workspace app, which is a client software that enables users to access their apps and desktops from any device.

Citrix Cloud Connectors, which are software agents that establish a secure connection between Citrix Cloud Services and the on-premises or cloud-based resources, such as Active Directory, hypervisors, VDAs, etc.

According to Citrix documentation2, an administrator who chooses to move all of the backend Citrix infrastructure to be managed as a service by Citrix can use the following components:

Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service, which replaces the Citrix Delivery Controllers and provides centralized management and delivery of virtual apps and desktops.

Citrix Studio, which is still available as a web-based console for configuring and managing the virtual apps and desktops environment.

Citrix Gateway service, which replaces the Citrix NetScaler and provides secure remote access to virtual apps and desktops through a single URL.

Citrix StoreFront, which is still available as an optional component for providing users with self-service access to their apps and desktops through a web portal or native receiver.

The error code displayed in the exhibit, NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID, explicitly indicates that the browser does not trust the Certificate Authority (CA) that signed the SSL certificate presented by Prism Central.

According to the Nutanix Security Guide and Prism Central documentation regarding Security Certificate Management:

By default, Nutanix clusters and Prism Central use a self-signed certificate.

When an administrator accesses Prism via a web browser using these default certificates, the browser will display a security warning (such as "Your connection is not private") because the self-signed certificate authority is not in the browser's or operating system's Trusted Root Certification Authorities store.

To resolve this behavior, the administrator must either import the self-signed root certificate into the client's trusted store or replace the default certificate with one signed by a commercial or internal CA that the browser already trusts.

If the issue were related to the hostname missing (Option C), the error code would be NET::ERR_CERT_COMMON_NAME_INVALID. Since the error is specifically "Authority Invalid," the cause is the lack of trust in the issuer (CA).

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract of Nutanix End User Computing documents:

According to the Nutanix Files Guide regarding Data Replication and VDI solutions:

VDI Sync Functionality: VDI Sync is the specific feature designed to replicate VDI user profiles and data across file servers in different locations (active-active). It ensures that user profile data (like FSLogix or UPM containers) is synchronized in near real-time, allowing users to roam between sites and access their data locally at either location.

Smart DR distinction: Smart DR (Option C) is primarily a Disaster Recovery solution (Active-Standby) used for share-level replication and failover in the event of an outage. It is not designed for the active-active, bi-directional roaming of user profiles required by the question.

Use Case: For a distributed VDI environment where a user might log in to Site A today and Site B tomorrow and needs their profile immediately available and writable in both, VDI Sync is the mandatory component.

The charts provided display a scenario typical of a VDI Boot Storm or login storm, characterized by a massive spike in Read IOPS (top chart) while maintaining extremely low Read I/O Latency (bottom chart).

This behavior is best described by Data Locality (specifically leveraged through a mechanism often called Shadow Clones in VDI contexts).

The Scenario: During VDI logins, hundreds or thousands of VMs simultaneously read from the same base "Golden Image" or replica disk.

The Mechanism: Nutanix Data Locality ensures that VM data is served locally from the node where the VM is running. In the specific case of multi-reader VDI workloads, the Nutanix Distributed Storage Fabric detects that the same vDisk is being read by VMs across multiple nodes. It automatically caches this vDisk (Shadow Clone) on the local SSD/RAM of every node.

The Result: As shown in the graphs, the cluster delivers very high Read IOPS because every node is serving its own VMs from local cache, preventing network congestion. Consequently, the latency remains flat and near-zero, rather than spiking as it would in a traditional centralized storage architecture where all reads traverse the network to a single controller.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract of Nutanix End User Computing documents:

According to Citrix on Nutanix Best Practices for Profile Management:

Legacy Roaming Profiles: A "Legacy Roaming Profile" (Windows Roaming User Profiles) functions by downloading the entire profile (files, folders, AppData, etc.) from the network share to the local VM at logon, and uploading changes back at logoff.

Impact on Performance: If a user has a large existing profile (common in legacy migrations), this copy process creates massive network and disk I/O activity during the logon/logoff phase, resulting in extended wait times (the "Applying User Settings" or "Waiting for User Profile Service" screens).

Contrast with Modern Solutions: Modern VDI solutions use Profile Containers (like FSLogix or Citrix Profile Management containers) which mount the profile as a virtual disk (VHDX) almost instantly, rather than copying files.

Why not Home Folder (C)? A home folder is typically a mapped network drive. It does not copy data to the desktop at logon; it simply maps a pointer. Therefore, having "too much data" in a mapped drive does not slow down the logon process itself.

A high CPU Ready time means that the vCPU is waiting too long for the pCPU, which can result in poor performance and slow responsiveness of the virtual machine (VM).

According to Nutanix best practices2, one of the factors that can affect CPU Ready time is the host power policy. The host power policy determines how aggressively the host will try to save power by reducing the frequency or voltage of the pCPUs.

The recommended host power policy for Nutanix clusters is High Performance, which disables any power saving features and ensures that the pCPUs run at their maximum frequency and voltage.

This answer seems to explain why desktops on one host are running slower and have higher CPU Ready times than on other hosts, as they may be suffering from reduced pCPU performance due to a lower host power policy.

A mandatory profile is a type of roaming profile that is read-only and does not save any changes made by users during their sessions. A mandatory profile can be applied to a group of users who share a common desktop environment and do not need to customize their settings or preferences.

A mandatory profile can ensure that a group of base settings are applied to Citrix-based VDI users at each logon, regardless of any changes they make during their sessions. A mandatory profile can also improve performance, security, and consistency of the VDI environment.

To use a mandatory profile with Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, you need to create a template profile on a reference machine, rename its NTUSER.DAT file to NTUSER.MAN, and copy it to a network share. Then you need to configure Profile Management policies or Active Directory settings to point to the network share location for your users2.

Blast Extreme is the proprietary display protocol developed by Omnissa (formerly VMware) for Horizon.

A key feature of Blast Extreme is its use of Adaptive Transport. This technology allows the protocol to dynamically switch between UDP (for high performance and lossy networks) and TCP (as a fallback for reliability) based on real-time network conditions. This adaptability ensures the best possible user experience regardless of bandwidth or latency constraints. (PCoIP primarily relies on UDP, and RDP is traditionally TCP-heavy, while HDX is a Citrix protocol).

A snapshot is a point-in-time copy of a virtual machine that can be used as a template for creating new machines. A Citrix optimized Windows 10 image is a Windows 10 image that has been configured with best practices and optimizations for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops.

Using a snapshot of a Citrix optimized Windows 10 image can ensure that the persistent desktops have consistent performance, security, and user experience. It can also simplify the image management process by allowing you to update the snapshot with new patches or applications using Calm.

Calm is a tool that automates application lifecycle management across different environments. Calm can integrate with Citrix MCS to create, update, and delete virtual machines based on blueprints that define the configuration and dependencies of an application.

https://www.nutanix.com/support-services/training-certification/certifications/certification-details-nutanix-certified-professional-ncp-euc-v6

one of the possible ways to optimize the virtual desktop environment is to verify if VAAI plugin is running. VAAI (vStorage APIs for Array Integration) is a technology that enables VMware ESXi hosts to offload storage operations to Nutanix storage controllers. This can improve performance and efficiency of cloning, migrating, and snapshotting virtual machines234.

non-persistent VDI machines are deleted when they are rebooted, logged off, or shut down. Therefore, Windows Update policy should be configured to prevent automatic updates that may trigger a restart on these machines1.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-defender-for-endpoint/onboarding-and-servicing-non-persistent-vdi-machines-with/ba-p/1360721

Writable AppVolumes are a feature of VMware App Volumes that provides users with a dedicated virtual disk for storing user profile data and user-installed applications1. Writable AppVolumes are stored as VMDK files on a datastore2.

To protect Writable AppVolumes during a disaster in a Nutanix environment, one possible solution is to use asynchronous DR between two sites. Asynchronous DR allows you to replicate VMs and their associated data from one site to another at regular intervals using protection domains and remote sites3.

https://www.nutanix.com/blog/vmware-app-volumes-on-nutanix

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract of Nutanix End User Computing documents:

According to Citrix App Layering on Nutanix reference architectures:

Minimizing Storage: Citrix App Layering allows an administrator to capture applications in separate virtual disks ("App Layers") that are stored once and then dynamically merged with a base OS layer to create layered images.2 This avoids the storage bloat of installing every application into a single "Gold Image" or creating dozens of unique images for every department.

ELM Role: The Enterprise Layer Manager (ELM) is the virtual appliance required to manage this layering environment.3 It orchestrates the creation of layers and the publishing of images.

Targeting User Groups: By using Elastic Layering (a feature of App Layering), specific app layers can be delivered to users based on their Active Directory group membership at login, fulfilling the requirement to deploy "different applications to different user groups" without installing them permanently in the base image.

The optimal storage configuration aligns the container settings with the specific I/O patterns of the workload types:

Non-Persistent Desktops: These are typically linked clones (MCS/Instant Clones) with high write churn and little data commonality in the delta disks. Compression Only is best. Deduplication adds overhead with no benefit.

Persistent Full Clones: These are full copies of the OS. Because there are hundreds of copies of the same OS files, Deduplication (Capacity or Performance tier) is highly effective at saving space. Compression is always recommended.

Therefore, creating two separate containers—one configured with Compression Only (for the non-persistent pools) and one with Compression and Deduplication (for the persistent full clone pools)—provides the best balance of performance and capacity efficiency (Option D).

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract of Nutanix End User Computing documents:

According to Microsoft RDS and Nutanix Best Practices:

GPO Configuration: The specific Group Policy Object (GPO) setting used to define which license servers an RD Session Host should contact is titled "Use the specified remote desktop license servers".

Redundancy: In this policy setting, the administrator can input a list of multiple license servers (IP addresses or FQDNs). If the first server in the list is unreachable (due to a cluster failure or maintenance), the host automatically attempts to contact the subsequent servers, thereby achieving the required redundancy.

roaming profiles are a way to deliver user settings across physical and virtual desktops. However, they can also cause issues such as profile unload failures2 and slow log-on and log-off times1.

According to Nutanix Support & Insights3, you need to install the Nutanix AHV plugin for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops on Delivery Controllers (also called the MCS plugin SDK) to create and manage Citrix-provisioned VMs in a Nutanix AHV infrastructure environment. 

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract of Nutanix End User Computing documents:

According to the installation guide for the Nutanix AHV Plug-in for Citrix:

Plugin Registration: The Nutanix AHV plug-in functions as a Hardware Compatibility Layer (HCL) plugin within the Citrix architecture. This allows the Citrix Provisioning (PVS) Streamed VM Setup Wizard to communicate with the AHV hypervisor.

Service Restart: After installing the plug-in on the PVS Console machine (or the DDC where the wizard is being run), the administrator must restart the specific Citrix services that load these HCL plugins. The Citrix Remote HCL Server service (often associated with the proxying of hypervisor calls in PVS/DDC environments) must be restarted to register the new Nutanix connection type.

Resolution: Without restarting this service, the PVS wizard cannot enumerate the Nutanix AHV connection or resources, rendering the integration unusable until the service reload picks up the new plugin dlls.

The CPU usage percentage indicates how much of the allocated CPU resources the virtual desktop is consuming.

A high CPU usage percentage means that the virtual desktop is using a lot of CPU resources, which can affect the performance of other virtual desktops on the same host or cluster.

According to Nutanix best practices, the recommended CPU usage percentage for virtual desktops is less than 80%.

VM-0001 (99%)

VM-0002 (98%)

VM-0003 (97%)

VM-0004 (96%)

VM-0005 (95%)

VM-0010 (85%)

VM-0016 (81%)

These virtual desktops are likely contributing to the performance issue by consuming too much CPU resources and starving other virtual desktops from performing adequately.

https://www.nutanix.com/support-services/training-certification/certifications/certification-details-nutanix-certified-professional-ncp-euc-v6

https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-daas/install-configure/machine-catalogs-create.html

A gold image is a master image that contains the operating system, drivers, patches, and configurations for a virtual desktop. A non-persistent Citrix MCS environment is one where virtual desktops are created from a gold image and discarded after each user session.

Citrix Machine Creation Services (MCS) is a tool that uses a gold image to create and manage virtual machines for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops environments. MCS can create different types of machines, such as pooled random, static assigned, or dedicated2.

One of the challenges of using MCS is managing multiple gold images for different user groups or application needs. Updating multiple gold images can be time-consuming and error-prone. Therefore, it is recommended to use a single base image without any applications and leverage another tool such as Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) to deliver applications dynamically to the cloned virtual desktops3.

This approach can simplify image management, reduce storage consumption, improve performance, and enhance user experience. SCCM can also provide additional features such as patch management, compliance enforcement, inventory reporting, etc.3

This option allows you to create a custom report with the required metrics for all VMs across all clusters and send it automatically to the operations team via email4. This way, you don’t have to manually export or FTP the data every month.