This course is for those who are new to Nutanix and want a feature-focused introduction to AOS Storage, Nutanix’s scale-out storage technology, and Prism, Nutanix’s multicloud management interface.

NHCF explores the breadth and depth of Nutanix’s centralized management capabilities. Focused on getting you to explore and work with the Nutanix platform as quickly as possible, this introductory course starts by discussing key Nutanix products and cluster-related concepts.

Using the Prism Central and Prism Element unified control plane, you will learn how to monitor cluster health and performance, manage software versions, create and manage VMs, and perform basic management tasks on hardware, storage, and networks.

In addition to the associate-level NHCF course, Nutanix University also offers a professional-level course — Enterprise Cloud Administration (ECA). ECA covers similar topics to NHCF, providing more in-depth content regarding key administrative tasks (deployment, configuration, migration, reporting, and so on).

When you complete this course, you will understand:

• Hardware and storage concepts
• Networking
• Image Management
• VM Management
• Backup and Disaster Recovery Fundamentals
• Monitoring cluster performance and health
• Licensing and performing upgrades

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

Network and security operations center personnel who want to learn Nutanix fundamentals (Prism, AOS, AHV) virtualization and Cloud-related concepts.

Specific job roles that will benefit from the NHCF course:

• • Network Operations Center (NOC) operators
  • Security Operations Center (SOC) operators
  • Data Center Operations (DCO) Technician
  • IT project managers
  • IT staff new to Nutanix
  • Anyone seeking the Nutanix Certified Associate (NCA) certification.

The certification associated with this class is the Nutanix Certified Associate (NCA)