NCP-EUC Exam Dumps : Nutanix Certified Professional - End User Computing (NCP-EUC) 6.10 Exam

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.

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

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.