Nutanix NCP-MCA Exam Syllabus

Objective 1.1:  Determine and apply the steps required to automate a given manual process
Knowledge:
• Determine the logical steps in automating a process
• Determine how to use Calm to complete pre-provisioning steps

Objective 1.2:  Demonstrate an understanding of event-driven Playbooks
Knowledge:
• Demonstrate an understanding of how to create a Playbook by setting a trigger and
defining actions
• Demonstrate an understanding of how to correctly arrange Playbook steps using X-Play

Objective 1.3:  Define the components of X-Play
Knowledge:
• Define Playbook’s action gallery and plays
• Identify alerts and manual triggers

Objective 1.4:  Demonstrate an understanding of Categories
Knowledge:
• Demonstrate an understanding of how to create Categories
• Explain the effects of Categories
• Given a Category and a blueprint, infer is a policy will be applied to a VM

Objective 2.1:  Create a blueprint to deploy infrastructure and applications using Calm

Objective 2.2:  Demonstrate an understanding of Calm managed infrastructure
and applications
Knowledge:
• Demonstrate an understanding of how to scale out
• Demonstrate an understanding of how to retire a managed application
• Demonstrate an understanding of how to manage an application
• Demonstrate an understanding of how to run a task

Objective 2.3:  Apply typical configuration settings to a Calm deployment
Knowledge:
• Describe how to configure providers
• Describe how to configure a project
• Define user permissions and roles
• Recall the requirements for setting up environments within Calm to deploy to various
supported Clouds
• Define Marketplace capabilities

Objective 2.4: Identify common blueprint features
Knowledge:
• Identify built-in macros, tasks, and action/task dependencies
• Identify blueprint features to include authentication credentials in a cloudinit and sysprep
• Identify endpoints
• Describe how to execute Calm Runbooks within blueprints
• Recognize the syntax of a macro

Objective 2.5: Describe the features and requirements of Calm
Knowledge:
• Describe Calm requirements
• Define Calm use cases
• Define Calm
• Describe plugin use cases
• Demonstrate an understanding of how to execute deployment of MySQL, SQL,
MariaDB, Oracle, PostgreSQL, and single/clustered databases
• Illustrate zero-byte clones and obfuscation for dev test scenarios

Objective 3.1: Understand the typical causes of a blueprint deployment failure
Knowledge:
• Demonstrate an understanding of audit trails
• Given an error message, explain the cause of the issue

Objective 3.2: Describe where to find information to assist in validation
Knowledge:
• Given an issue with Calm, locate troubleshooting data and collect the logs
• Given an issue with Playbooks, locate troubleshooting data and collect the logs

Objective 3.3: Validate typical Playbook configurations
Knowledge:
• Interpret data/logs to determine the cause for a given issue
• Given a Playbook and symptom, explain a given issue

Objective 3.4: Understand the typical causes of issues associated with automation
Knowledge:
• Given a scenario, interpret a given issue
• Given a log, infer what type of issue may be present
• Explain how to optimize a workflow to align with best practices
• Given a scenario, explain how to triage and narrow down the possible root causes
of an issue

https://www.nutanix.com/viewer?type=pdf&path=/content/dam/nutanix/resources/support/ncp-mca-ebg.pdf