NCP-MCI-6.5 Nutanix Certified Professional - Multicloud Infrastructure (NCP-MCI) v6.5 exam Questions and Answers

The best method to provide access for a user to view real-time performance metrics for all VMs on all clusters across the datacenter is to configure AD authentication create a custom role, assign the user to the role, and apply the role to all clusters and VMs. This method accomplishes this with the least effort and ongoing maintenance because:

• AD authentication allows Nutanix Prism Central to integrate with an existing Active Directory (AD) domain and use AD users and groups for authentication and authorization5. This simplifies user management and avoids creating local users on Prism Central.
• Creating a custom role allows Nutanix Prism Central to define granular permissions for different actions and entities based on specific needs6. This ensures that users only have access to what they need and nothing more.
• Assigning the user to the custom role allows Nutanix Prism Central to grant access rights for that user based on the role definition7. This avoids assigning permissions individually for each user.
• Applying the role to all clusters and VMs allows Nutanix Prism Central to propagate the access rights for that role across all entities in scope8. This ensures that users can view real-time performance metrics for all VMs on all clusters without having to configure each entity separately.

References: 1: Health Dashboard - Prism Element Guide 2: Understanding Native VLANs - Cisco 3: VMs may lose network connectivity if connected to virtual network with … - Nutanix Support & Insights 4: VLAN Configuration - AHV Networking Guide 5: Active Directory Authentication - Prism Central Guide 6: Create Custom Roles - Prism Central Guide 7: Assign Roles - Prism Central Guide 8: Apply Roles - Prism Central Guide

The best way for the administrator to configure Prism to send encrypted messages to a set of recipients is to set the SMTP Security Mode to STARTTLS. This will ensure that all messages sent over SMTP are encrypted and secure. Additionally, the administrator should consider installing SSL certificates on Prism Central to ensure that the messages are being sent securely. Finally, the administrator should consider configuring Prism Central to use Cluster Lockdown, which will help ensure that the messages are only sent to the intended recipients.

 According to the Nutanix Support & Insights web search result1, the name of the internal bridge used by AHV nodes and CVMs is br0. The internal bridge is an Open vSwitch (OVS) bridge that connects the AHV host management interface, the CVM interface, and the VM vNICs. The internal bridge also acts as a gateway for the CVM and VM traffic to reach the external network through the host physical NICs.

Data locality is the capability of storing VM data on the node where the VM is running and ensuring that the read I/O does not have to traverse the network. Data locality is a unique feature of Nutanix that provides high performance and low latency for VMs by minimizing network traffic and crosstalk. Data locality works by writing one copy of the data local to the VM and the other copy (or copies) on other nodes. When a VM migrates to another node, Nutanix also moves its data to the new node and serves all I/O requests locally. Data locality also adapts to changing workloads and access patterns by dynamically moving data to where it is needed most1.

Port 389 is the default port for LDAP without SSL encryption. Port 636 is used for LDAP over SSL (LDAPS). Port 3268 and 3269 are used for Global Catalog (GC) and Global Catalog over SSL (GCSSL), respectively2.

According to the CPU (%) - VMware Docs web search result2, one of the possible causes of high CPU ready % is over-provisioning vCPUs for a VM or having too many VMs on a host. CPU ready % indicates the percentage of time that the VM was ready, but could not get scheduled to run on the physical CPU. High CPU ready % can lead to VM performance problems, such as slow response time or application latency. To improve VM performance, the administrator should reduce the number of vCPUs assigned to VMs or reduce the number of VMs on the hosts, so that there is less contention for CPU resources.

According to the web search results, one of the requirements for cross-hypervisor disaster recovery (CHDR) is to install and configure Nutanix Guest Tools (NGT) on all the VMs2. NGT configures the VM with all the required drivers for VM portability. Without NGT, the VMs may fail to boot after being migrated to a different hypervisor type. 

inline compression is a technique that compresses all incoming write I/O operations over 4 KB inline in the persistent write buffer (oplog)23. This approach enables you to use oplog capacity more efficiently and helps drive sustained performance2. From AOS 5.18 onward, inline compression (compression delay=0) is enabled by default for all new containers24.

https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/solutions/details?targetId=TN-2032-Data-Efficiency:TN-2032-Data-Efficiency

According to the Nutanix Support & Insights web search result1, route injection is used to maintain I/O operations in the cluster when the Stargate service becomes unavailable on a single CVM on an AHV node. Route injection is a mechanism that allows the CVMs to communicate with each other and redirect the I/O requests to another healthy CVM in the cluster. Route injection uses the Linux kernel routing table to add or delete routes dynamically, based on the availability of the Stargate service on each CVM.

The default network configuration for AHV hosts and CVMs is a bond named br0-up with two or more uplinks in active-backup mode. This means that only one uplink is active at a time, while the others are in standby mode. This provides high availability, but not load balancing or increased bandwidth. To increase the bandwidth available to the AHV host and the CVM, the administrator can change the bond mode to Active-Active, which allows all uplinks to be used simultaneously. This can be done using the manage-ovs commands on each AHV host. The steps are as follows1:

• Log in to the AHV host using SSH.
• Enter maintenance mode on the CVM by running allssh 'cluster status | grep -i cvm | grep -i down'.
• Change the bond mode to Active-Active by running manage_ovs --bond_mode active-active update_uplinks br0-up , where  is a comma-separated list of uplink interfaces (for example, eth0,eth1).
• Verify the bond mode by running manage_ovs show_uplinks.
• Exit maintenance mode on the CVM by running allssh 'cluster start'.

Nutanix supports two types of deduplication: post-process and inline. Post-process deduplication runs periodically on a schedule and can be enabled on any cluster. Inline deduplication runs in real time before data is written to disk and can be enabled only on all-flash clusters.

Therefore, by checking the type of storage and the type of deduplication, you can determine if you can enable inline deduplication on a storage container or not.

 Nutanix inline deduplication is a feature that reduces the stored size and avoids duplicate data on a storage container1. It is recommended only on some specific scenarios, such as when using Nutanix Files or virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) workloads12.

According to section 6 of the exam blueprint guide1, one of the topics covered is VM placement options. When creating a new VM on an AHV cluster, there are two ways to determine its initial placement:

• Automatic placement: The Acropolis Dynamic Scheduler (ADS) selects a host that provides adequate resources for the VM’s configuration, such as CPU, memory, disk space, and network bandwidth. ADS also considers factors such as host load, power state, availability domains, and affinity rules.
• Manual placement: The administrator can specify a host or a host group where they want to place the VM.

https://hyperhci.com/2019/07/22/nutanix-lcm-upgrade-process-failed-trouble-shooting/

These are the three steps that the administrator must take to increase throughput to the host. According to the network diagram, the host has two 10Gb interfaces and two 1Gb interfaces in the default bond, but only one of the 10Gb interfaces is connected to a switch. The other 10Gb interface is disconnected and has a red “X” on it. The two 1Gb interfaces are also disconnected and have dotted lines. This means that the host is using only one 10Gb interface for all its network traffic, which limits its maximum bandwidth to 10 Gbps.

To increase the throughput, the administrator should connect both 10Gb interfaces to the physical switch, preferably to different switches for redundancy and high availability. This will allow the host to use both 10Gb interfaces for network traffic, which can increase its maximum bandwidth to 20 Gbps. However, this also requires changing the bond mode from active-backup to balance-slb or balance-tcp, which are load balancing modes that distribute network traffic across multiple interfaces based on source MAC address or TCP session1. The default bond mode of active-backup only uses one interface at a time and switches to another interface only when the active one fails2.

Finally, the administrator should remove any 1Gb interfaces still connected from the default bond, as they are not needed and may cause performance issues or conflicts with the load balancing modes. The 1Gb interfaces can be used for other purposes, such as management or backup networks, by creating separate bonds or bridges for them3. Alternatively, they can be left disconnected if they are not required.

NTP service needs to be configured to ensure logs, alerts and information is consistent across clusters that are located in different countries. NTP stands for Network Time Protocol and it is used to synchronize the clocks of all the nodes in a cluster1. This helps to maintain accurate timestamps for logs, alerts and other information that are generated by Nutanix clusters1.

https://www.vstellar.com/2019/01/10/ahv-networking-part-1 -basics/#:~:text=AHV%20Network%20Architecture&text=virbr0%20is%20an%20internal%20switch,virbr0)%20have%20IP%20address%20192.168.

In this case, the administrator wants to investigate the performance of a core banking system that consists of application servers and database servers. The application servers have high CPU utilization during business hours, which may indicate a bottleneck or a resource contention issue. The administrator needs to review multiple metrics in Prism Analysis Graphs to identify the root cause and determine if there is a problem with the app servers only, or with other components as well.

The metrics that are relevant for this analysis are:

• Cluster IO: This metric shows the input/output operations per second (IOPS) and throughput (MBps) of the cluster. It can help to understand if there is a high demand for disk IO from the VMs or if there is any latency or congestion in the storage layer.
• Cluster CPU: This metric shows the CPU utilization (%) and load average of the cluster. It can help to understand if there is enough CPU capacity in the cluster to handle the workload or if there is any imbalance or contention among hosts.
• Cluster Memory: This metric shows the memory utilization (%) and available memory (GB) of the cluster. It can help to understand if there is enough memory capacity in the cluster to support the VMs or if there is any pressure or swapping in the memory layer.
• Network: This metric shows the network throughput (MBps) and packets per second (pps) of the cluster. It can help to understand if there is enough network bandwidth in the cluster to transfer data between hosts and VMs or if there is any congestion or packet loss in the network layer.
• App Server CPU: This metric shows the CPU utilization (%) and load average of each application server VM. It can help to understand if there is any variation or anomaly in the performance of each app server or if there is any correlation with other metrics.
• Database Server CPU: This metric shows the CPU utilization (%) and load average of each database server VM. It can help to understand if there is any variation or anomaly in the performance of each database server or if there is any correlation with other metrics.

Fault tolerance (FT) is the ability of a cluster to withstand node failures and maintain data availability. FT is determined by the replication factor (RF) of the data, which is the number of copies of each data block stored on different nodes. FT = RF - 1, meaning that the cluster can tolerate as many node failures as one less than the RF. Block awareness is a feature that enhances fault tolerance by ensuring that data copies are distributed across different blocks, which are groups of nodes that share a power source and network switch. Block awareness requires a minimum of three blocks and a minimum of six nodes in the cluster.

In this scenario, the administrator has been asked to enable block awareness and increase the fault tolerance to FT2 on a Nutanix AHV cluster with the following configuration: Four blocks, One node per block. The administrator will not be able to accomplish these tasks because:

• To enable block awareness, the cluster needs at least six nodes, but it only has four nodes.
• To increase the fault tolerance to FT2, the cluster needs at least five nodes per RF3 or seven nodes per RF4, but it only has four nodes.

Therefore, the administrator will need to add more nodes to the cluster before enabling block awareness and increasing the fault tolerance to FT2.

NGT is a software package that enables advanced VM management features provided by Nutanix, such as file-level restore, VM mobility, and application-consistent snapshots12. To use NGT, you need to enable the NGT feature for a VM in the Prism Element web console, mount the NGT installer (ISO disk file) in the VM, and install NGT in the VM1. However, before installing NGT, you need to ensure that the VM can communicate with the NGT-Controller VM service, which runs on the Controller VM (CVM) of each Nutanix node3. The NGT-Controller VM service listens on port 9943 for incoming requests from the guest VMs3. Therefore, you need to enable port 9943 on the ESXi-hosted VM to allow communication with the NGT-Controller VM service.

Step 1 ---> Login into Prism Element.

Step 2 ---> Select the Gear Icon at top right of the page.

Step 3 ---> Click Upgrade Software.

Step 4 ---> Select the component to upgrade.

Step 5 ---> Click download.

Step 6 ---> Once the download completes, select upgrade.

Invalid:-

1 - Select Prism Central.

2 - Select user login.

3 - On left select upgrade Prism Central.

According to the Nutanix Community1, host maintenance mode is used to safely migrate all the user virtual machines (VMs) in the host and make sure no VMs are running on the node. If a VM can’t be migrated to another host, you need to shut down the VM for the host to enter into maintenance mode.

According to The Virtualist2, a storage container is a logical segmentation of a storage pool that can be mounted as an NFS datastore on ESXi hosts. You can choose a replication factor (RF) for each storage container, which determines how many copies of data are stored across different nodes.

VirtIO drivers are device drivers that are specifically designed for virtualized environments. They allow the guest operating system to communicate directly with the underlying hardware, bypassing the emulation layer. This improves the performance and efficiency of the virtual machines. VirtIO drivers are supported by various hypervisors, including Nutanix AHV1.

Nutanix AHV uses SCSI disks for VMs by default. However, Windows does not have native support for SCSI disks and requires VirtIO drivers to recognize them. Therefore, if an administrator is installing Windows 2019 on a new VM on an AHV cluster, they need to install the VirtIO drivers before selecting the destination disk for the installation. Otherwise, they will not see any drives listed for the install2.

To install the VirtIO drivers during Windows installation, the administrator can use one of the following methods3:

• Use a VirtIO ISO image that contains the driver files. The administrator can download the VirtIO ISO image from the Nutanix support portal and upload it to the AHV image service. Then, they can attach the VirtIO ISO image to the VM as a CD-ROM device and load the driver from it during Windows installation.
• Use a Nutanix Guest Tools (NGT) ISO image that contains the driver files and other tools. The administrator can download the NGT ISO image from Prism Element or Prism Central and attach it to the VM as a CD-ROM device. Then, they can load the driver from it during Windows installation.
• Use a floppy disk image that contains only the driver files. The administrator can create a floppy disk image using tools such as WinImage or WinRAR and upload it to the AHV image service. Then, they can attach the floppy disk image to the VM as a floppy device and load the driver from it during Windows installation.

The issue described pertains to the inability to ping the IPMI IPs after moving the IPMI network links to the actual switches with specific VLAN configurations. The two changes that the administrator needs to make are:

A. SSH to AHV and set the VLAN ID using IPMI Tool: Since all VLANs are tagged in the new network configuration, the IPMI network interface needs to be aware of the VLAN it’s supposed to communicate on. This can be achieved by setting the VLAN ID using the IPMI Tool on the AHV.

C. SSH to AHV and change the IP address using IPMI tool: If the IPMI IP addresses were initially set in a different subnet that is not routable in the new network configuration, the administrator would need to change the IPMI IP addresses to match the new network configuration. This can be done by SSHing to the AHV and using the IPMI Tool to change the IP address.

The correct answer is C. The VLAN was not created on the upstream switches.

A VLAN (virtual local area network) is a logical segmentation of a physical network that allows devices on the same VLAN to communicate with each other, regardless of their physical location. A VLAN also isolates the devices on different VLANs from each other, unless there is a router or a layer 3 switch that can route traffic between VLANs. To create a VLAN, the administrator needs to configure the network devices that are involved in the VLAN, such as switches, routers, and hosts. The administrator also needs to assign a unique VLAN ID to each VLAN, which is a number between 1 and 4094 that identifies the VLAN1.

In Nutanix AHV, the administrator can create a Nutanix managed network with a specific VLAN ID for guest VMs. This network can be assigned to VM NICs using Prism Element or Prism Central. However, creating a Nutanix managed network does not automatically create the VLAN on the upstream switches that connect the AHV hosts. The administrator needs to manually configure the upstream switches to allow the VLAN traffic on the ports that connect to the AHV hosts. The administrator also needs to ensure that the upstream switches are interconnected physically or virtually and can forward traffic between different VLANs if needed2.

Therefore, if an administrator has created a Nutanix managed network with a VLAN ID of 512 and notices that the VMs on that network can only communicate with other VMs on the same host, but not with VMs on different hosts in the cluster, the most likely cause of this issue is that the VLAN was not created on the upstream switches. This means that the switches are dropping or blocking the traffic with VLAN ID 512 and preventing it from reaching other hosts or VMs. To resolve this issue, the administrator should create the VLAN on the upstream switches and allow it on the ports that connect to the AHV hosts3.

https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documen ts/details/?targetId=Prism-Central-Guide-Prism-v510:mul-alert-policies-user-defined-configure-pc-c.html

A constrained VM is one that does not have enough resources for the demand and can lead to performance bottlenecks. A VM is considered constrained when it exhibits one or more of the following baseline values, based on the past 21 days: CPU usage > 90% (moderate), 95% (severe) CPU ready time > 5%, 10% Memory usage > 90%, 95% Memory swap rate > 0 Kbps1. To provide adequate host resources, resize (increase) the constrained VMs1.

According to the web search results, one recommended configuration change to improve throughput for a custom backup application that requires a 2TB disk and runs on Windows is to span the 2TB disk across four vDisks. Spanning is a technique that allows you to create a single logical disk from multiple physical disks. Spanning can improve throughput by distributing I/O requests across multiple disks and reducing contention5. To span a disk across four vDisks, the administrator should create four vDisks of equal size (500 GB each) and attach them to the VM. Then, in Windows Disk Management, create a spanned volume from the four vDisks and format it as NTFS6.

In Nutanix AHV, when creating a virtual switch and trying to add network interfaces (NICs) to it, the NICs must be connected to the network before they can be selected and assigned to the switch. If the interfaces are showing as disconnected, the system will not allow them to be added to a virtual switch because it cannot verify their operational status or the presence of a live network connection.

It is a standard requirement for the interfaces to have physical connectivity (i.e., network cables plugged in and connected to a live switch port) so that the AHV host can detect the link status as up. Once the interfaces are connected and recognized by the host, they can then be added to a virtual switch in the Nutanix AHV.

It's important to note that while the command-line interface (CLI) is indeed a powerful tool for managing network configurations on AHV hosts, and some configurations do indeed require CLI, the inability to select disconnected interfaces is not specifically a limitation that requires the use of CLI to overcome. The focus should be on ensuring that the physical connectivity is established for the interfaces in question.

This behavior is consistent with networking best practices and Nutanix's network configuration guidelines, as detailed in the Nutanix AHV Networking Guide. This guide explains the requirements and procedures for configuring virtual switches and managing NICs in a Nutanix AHV environment.

https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/solutions/details/?targetId=BP-2029_AHV:BP-2029_AHV

Administrators can use Acropolis with IPAM to deliver a complete virtualization deployment, including network management, from the unified Prism interface. This capability radically simplifies the traditionally complex network management associated with provisioning VMs and assigning network addresses. To avoid address overlap, be sure to work with your network team to reserve a range of addresses for VMs before enabling the IPAM feature.

The Acropolis master assigns an IP address from the address pool when creating a managed VM NIC; the address releases back to the pool when the VM NIC or VM is deleted.

According to the web search results, Distributed Storage Fabric (DSF) is the scale-out storage technology that makes HCI and cloud possible45. DSF pools the storage devices that are directly attached to a cluster of servers and presents them to applications across a variety of storage protocols4. DSF also manages and protects data by a fine-grained, distributed metadata system that ensures uniform distribution of data throughout the cluster to eliminate hot spots and speed up rebuilds

This will allow the administrator to quickly identify VMs that are overprovisioned or underutilized based on their performance metrics.

https://www.nutanix.com/support-services/training-certification/certifications/certification-details-nutanix-certified-professional-multicloud-infrastructure-6_5

when you create a custom alert policy, you can choose between two types of thresholds: Static Threshold and Behavioral Anomaly. Static Threshold allows you to set a fixed value for the metric that triggers the alert. Behavioral Anomaly allows you to use machine learning to detect abnormal behavior based on historical data.

If you select Behavioral Anomaly as the threshold type, you cannot set a warning level for the alert. You can only set a critical level that indicates how much deviation from normal behavior is considered an anomaly3. Therefore, the Alert warning if field is greyed out when you select Behavioral Anomaly.

The correct answer is D. VM Storage Controller Bandwidth.

VM Storage Controller Bandwidth is a metric that measures the amount of data that a VM is reading and writing to the storage fabric. The storage fabric is the network of storage controllers (CVMs) that provide distributed and fault-tolerant storage services to the VMs on the Nutanix cluster. The VM Storage Controller Bandwidth metric shows the read and write bandwidth in megabytes per second (MBps) for each VM. The higher the bandwidth, the more data the VM is transferring to and from the storage fabric1.

The administrator can use Prism Central to view the VM Storage Controller Bandwidth metric for each VM in a chart or a widget. The administrator can also use Prism Central to view other metrics related to the VM’s storage performance, such as VM Storage Controller IOPS, VM Storage Controller Latency, and VM Disk Usage2.

Categories are key-value pairs that can be used to tag entities such as VMs, images, networks, and projects in Prism Central. Categories can be used to create dynamic groups of entities based on their attributes, and assign roles and permissions to those groups3. In this case, a category such as OS=Linux can be used to group all Linux VMs and grant access rights to the Linux administration team.

According to the Nutanix Support & Insights, IPAM enables AHV to assign IP addresses automatically to VMs using DHCP. You can configure each virtual network and associated VLAN with a specific IP subnet, associated domain settings, and group of IP address pools available for assignment.

A native VLAN is a VLAN that is assigned to untagged traffic on a trunk port of a switch. A trunk port can carry traffic from multiple VLANs, but it needs to have a native VLAN to handle traffic that does not have a VLAN tag. The native VLAN is usually VLAN 1 by default on most switches, but it can be changed to any other VLAN number2. When creating a network profile on Nutanix, the administrator needs to specify the VLAN ID that matches the VLAN configuration on the physical switch. However, if the network profile uses the same VLAN ID as the native VLAN on the switch, it will cause network connectivity issues for the VMs connected to that network profile. This is because Nutanix AHV uses 802.1Q tagging for all network traffic, including traffic in the native VLAN. The switch will expect untagged traffic in the native VLAN and will drop any tagged traffic in that VLAN3. To fix this issue, the administrator needs to change the VLAN field from vlan. 1 to vlan. 0 in the network profile on Nutanix. This will tell Nutanix AHV to send untagged traffic for that network profile and match the native VLAN configuration on the switch4.

Flow Networking is a feature that enables software-defined networking for AHV clusters. It allows users to create and manage virtual private clouds (VPCs), subnets, and network services such as NAT, DHCP, routing, and VPN. Flow Networking also supports service insertion and chaining, which enables integration with third-party network functions such as firewalls and load balancers. Flow Networking is built on top of the microservices infrastructure (MSP) in Prism Central, which provides the platform for running various Nutanix services such as Calm, Karbon, and Objects. Therefore, to enable Flow Networking, the MSP must be enabled first on Prism Central1. The MSP can be enabled from the Prism Central settings page or from the command line interface (CLI) of the Prism Central VM2. Enabling the MSP will also enable Flow Microsegmentation, which is another feature that provides network security and visibility for AHV clusters.

This is because Nutanix uses a distributed storage fabric (DSF) that replicates data across multiple nodes and drives to ensure data resiliency. When a drive fails, the cluster detects the failure and initiates a data rebuild process to restore the replication factor (RF) of the affected containers. The data rebuild process does not affect the availability or performance of the VMs, as they can still access their data from other replicas on other nodes or drives. Therefore, there is no need to wait for 60 minutes, use a shared volume group, or trigger an HA event.

An agent VM is a special type of VM that is used for running services or applications that are not affected by high availability (HA) events or host maintenance. An agent VM is never migrated to any other host in the cluster. If an HA event occurs or the host is put in maintenance mode, agent VMs are powered off and are powered on on the same host once that host returns to a normal state. This behavior is different from regular VMs, which are migrated to another host in the cluster if possible, or restarted on the same host if not possible1.

Therefore, during an AHV upgrade, an administrator may find that a critical VM was powered off rather than migrated to another host if the VM was marked as an agent VM. This can be done either from the Prism web console by selecting the Use this VM as an agent VM option in the Update VM dialog box, or from the aCLI by using the vm.create or vm.update commands with the agent_vm=true parameter2. To avoid this situation, the administrator should ensure that any critical VMs are not marked as agent VMs before starting the AHV upgrade.

According to the Nutanix Prism Central Guide, Prism Central allows you to apply storage policies on a per VM basis using Category, so that the VM uses the storage configuration defined in the storage policy. Using a storage policy, you can manage parameters of VMs, such as encryption, type of or lack of data compression, and IOPS or Throughput throttling values to be applied to the entities.

Answer: A. VM-VM anti-Affinity policy

A VM-VM anti-Affinity policy is a rule that ensures that two or more VMs don’t run on the same AHV host. It’s useful when an application provides HA and an AHV host can’t be an application’s single point of failure1. In this case, the SQL cluster VMs should have a VM-VM anti-Affinity policy configured to prevent them from running on the same host and causing an outage if that host fails. A VM-VM anti-Affinity policy can be created using the aCLI commands2. The other options are not relevant for this scenario.

References: 1: Affinity Policies - Nutanix Support & Insights 2: Affinity Policies Help | Nutanix Community

According to the Nutanix Support & Insights web search result2, VM NICs on AHV can operate in two modes: Access and Trunked. Access NICs are the default, and allow one VLAN on the NIC. Trunked NICs allow multiple VLANs on a single NIC for VMs that are VLAN aware. If you must use trunked NICs, follow the steps described in the web search result2. Therefore, the most efficient way to have a VM on an AHV cluster with access to multiple VLANs is to update a vNIC on the VM to operate in trunked mode for all desired VLANs.

A bond is a logical interface that combines two or more physical interfaces on an AHV host. A bond provides high availability and load balancing for the network traffic of the host and its VMs. A bond can have different modes that determine how the traffic is distributed and how the bond handles failures of the physical interfaces. The most common bond modes are active-backup, active-active, and LACP1.

Nutanix recommends including at least two physical interfaces in every bond to ensure high availability and redundancy. If one of the physical interfaces fails or is disconnected, the other interface can take over the traffic without affecting the connectivity of the host or its VMs. Having at least two physical interfaces in a bond also allows for maintenance operations such as firmware upgrades or cable replacements without downtime2.

Nutanix does not recommend including NIC models from different vendors in the same bond, as this may cause compatibility issues or performance degradation. Nutanix also does not recommend using only one physical interface in a bond, as this provides no redundancy or load balancing benefits3.