Nutanix NCP-DB Practice Questions

Explanation:
According to the Nutanix Database Automation (NCP-DB) learning documents, to configure Era to send alert notifications to email recipients, you need to go to the Administration section, select Era Service, then go to the configure notification widget. From there, you can update the SMTP server configuration1. This allows Era to use the SMTP server to send alert notifications to the specified email recipients1.

Explanation:
NDB HA is a feature that provides high availability and resilience for the NDB service and its components. NDB HA creates a cluster of API server VMs, repository VMs, and HAProxy VMs across multiple Nutanix clusters. Each component has a leader and a set of followers that are synchronized and can take over the leader role in case of a failure. NDB HA also monitors the health and status of the NDB components and performs automatic failover and recovery actions when possible.
However, some failure scenarios may require manual intervention from the administrator to restore the NDB service. One such scenario is when more than one API server VM is down. The API server VMs are responsible for handling the requests from the NDB UI and CLI, as well as communicating with the repository VMs and the HAProxy VMs. If more than one API server VM is down, the NDB service may become unavailable or unstable, and the administrator will need to manually restart or redeploy the affected API server VMs.
The other options do not require manual interaction for the recovery, as NDB HA can handle them automatically. If one repository VM is down, NDB HA will fail over to another repository VM that has the latest data. If more than one HAProxy VM is down, NDB HA will route the traffic to the remaining HAProxy VMs. If the NDB server process is down, NDB HA will restart the process or fail over to another API server VM.

Explanation:
When provisioning a PostgreSQL HA Instance using NDB, the minimum and maximum number of DB server VMs that can be deployed in a cluster are 2 and 4, respectively. A PostgreSQL HA Instance is a database instance that provides high availability and fault tolerance for PostgreSQL databases using the Patroni framework. Patroni is a Python-based tool that manages PostgreSQL configuration and performs automatic failover and switchover operations. Patroni relies on a distributed consensus store, such as etcd, Consul, or ZooKeeper, to store and synchronize the cluster state and leader information. NDB supports etcd as the consensus store for PostgreSQL HA Instances. NDB allows the administrator to provision PostgreSQL HA Instances with different sizes and configurations, such as small, medium, large, or custom. The size of the PostgreSQL HA Instance determines the number of DB server VMs, the number of etcd nodes, the CPU, memory, and disk resources, and the replication factor of the database. The minimum number of DB server VMs for a PostgreSQL HA Instance is 2, which corresponds to a small size instance. This configuration provides one leader and one follower DB server VM, and one etcd node. The maximum number of DB server VMs for a PostgreSQL HA Instance is 4, which corresponds to a large size instance. This configuration provides one leader and three follower DB server VMs, and three etcd nodes. The other options are not valid for a PostgreSQL HA Instance, as they either do not provide enough redundancy or exceed the supported limit of DB server VMs.

Explanation:
In the Nutanix Database Automation (NCP-DB) process, when a database administrator is tasked with creating a new clone of a running SQL database and there are no authorized servers available, the administrator should click the Action icon to authorize one or more database server VMs1. This is because the Nutanix Database Service (NDB) requires authorized servers to perform operations such as cloning1. The authorization process allows the NDB to manage and perform operations on the database server VMs1.

Explanation:
Nutanix Era is a database management solution that automates and simplifies database administration tasks such as provisioning, patching, cloning, and backup. In the event of a database crash, the most effective way to minimize data loss and reduce restore time is to perform a restore of the source database by selecting the most recent point in time and including the Tail log Backup12.
The Tail log Backup includes all the transactions that have occurred since the last transaction log backup, which helps to minimize data loss. By selecting the most recent point in time for the restore, the administrator ensures that the database is restored to the state it was in just before the crash, thereby reducing the amount of data that needs to be reprocessed or reentered12. This approach aligns with the Nutanix Era’s capabilities and best practices for database recovery12.

Explanation:
NDB supports two modes of log backup management for Microsoft SQL databases: NDB-managed and 3rdparty managed. In the NDB-managed mode, NDB takes full control of the log backups and stores them in the Cerebro log location. In the 3rd-party managed mode, NDB allows the use of external backup tools to backup the logs from the database log destination. However, NDB still needs to capture the logs for its own operations, such as point-in-time recovery, clone refresh, and log catch-up. Therefore, NDB will periodically scan the database log destination and copy the logs to the Cerebro log location. This process requires that the log catch-up begins before the logs get backed up by the 3rd-party tool, otherwise NDB will miss some logs and the operations will fail. If the 3rd-party tool grants exclusive access to the logs, then NDB will not be able to capture them at all, and the operations will not be supported.