50 QUESTIONS 90 MINUTES 3000 PASSING SCORE $100 EXAM FEE 4 SECTIONS Prepared by VMExam • www.vmexam.com Nutanix • Associate Level • NCA C E R T I F I C A T I O N G U I D E Recognize It, Navigate It, Pass It Inside the Nutanix Certified Associate certification (NCA) Four blueprint sections and all 64 objectives, laid out as a study checklist - plus the full exam fact sheet, what the 1000-6000 scaled score actually means, who Nutanix says the exam is for, what the work pays in 2026, a five-step route from first cluster to booked seat, and ten real sample questions with a complete answer key. www.vmexam.com Nutanix NCA Nutanix Certified Associate Certification (NCA) 1 SECTION 01 Exam Overview The Nutanix Certified Associate is the entry point to the Nutanix certification track, and it is deliberately an awareness exam rather than a build exam. Nutanix describes it as measuring whether you can recognise the purpose and use case of its products, navigate the Prism interface, read information out of it and carry out basic operational tasks. Everything below comes from VMExam’s NCA syllabus page. Certification Nutanix Certified Associate (NCA) Exam code NCA Exam version 7.5 Questions 50 multiple choice Duration 90 minutes Passing score 3000 on a scale of 1000-6000 Exam fee USD 100 per attempt Languages English and Japanese Recommended training Nutanix Hybrid Cloud Fundamentals (NHCF) Experience assumed About 3 to 6 months of general IT infrastructure work and equivalent Nutanix exposure Who it is for New IT employees, IT administrators, Tier 1 support staff and STEM students One number on that table needs unpacking. The passing score is 3000 on a scale that runs from 1000 to 6000 , which is a scaled score, not a percentage - it does not tell you how many of the 50 questions you have to get right, because scaled scoring adjusts for the difficulty of the particular form you sit. Treat it as a bar to clear, not a target to calculate against. Note also that the official certification page still carries a "v6-10" slug in its address while the page itself describes the 7.5 exam - the content is current, the URL is stale. SECTION 02 Who This Exam Is Built For Nutanix is unusually specific about who should sit this one: candidates with roughly three to six months of general IT infrastructure experience and equivalent Nutanix exposure. That points at three groups: New IT Administrators Tier 1 Support Staff Students and Career Changers www.vmexam.com Nutanix NCA Nutanix Certified Associate Certification (NCA) 2 There is no prerequisite certification. The recommended preparation is the Nutanix Hybrid Cloud Fundamentals (NHCF) course, the free fundamentals course, and the exam is available in English and Japanese. If you have hands-on time in a cluster, use it - the blueprint is phrased around things you look at and do in Prism, not around theory. SECTION 03 The Four Blueprint Sections Nutanix publishes the blueprint as four sections broken into topic areas and then into individual objectives, but no percentage weightings . What the list does show is where the volume sits: 37 of the 64 objectives are in the first two sections , and almost all of those are recognition and navigation rather than configuration. Recognize Nutanix Solutions and Tools 18 Describe Nutanix Platform Administration 19 Describe Cluster Configuration and Maintenance 13 Demonstrate and Understand of Platform Health and Monitoring 14 Objectives named per section on the VMExam syllabus. This is a proxy for emphasis, not an official weighting - Nutanix publishes none. Sixty-four objectives is a long list, but they are short and they group tidily. Section 1 is products and tools - NCI technologies, the wider portfolio, then the utilities (Move, NGT, Foundation, Witness, Self-Service Restore, X-Ray, Collector). Section 2 is day-to-day administration across VM tasks, virtual networking, storage and licensing. Section 3 covers cluster options and hardware and software maintenance. Section 4 is health checks, alerts, support cases and workload performance. One note on wording: the fourth section title below is reproduced exactly as Nutanix and VMExam publish it, including its grammar. 01. Recognize Nutanix Solutions and Tools (18 objectives) • Identify supported hypervisors for NCI. • Describe the core components included in NCI. • Identify core component-related configurations. • Identify common deployment scenarios of NCI. • Align an NCI component with its use case. • Identify Nutanix Unified Storage use cases and features. • Identify Nutanix Database Automation use cases and features. • Identify Nutanix Cloud Manager use cases and features. • Identify Nutanix Kubernetes Platform use cases and features. • Identify Nutanix Enterprise AI use cases and features. • Identify End-User Computing use cases and features. • Identify Move use cases and features. www.vmexam.com Nutanix NCA Nutanix Certified Associate Certification (NCA) 3 • Identify NGT use cases and features. • Identify Foundation/Foundation Central use cases and features. • Identify Witness Service/VM use cases and features. • Identify Self-Service Restore use cases and features. • Identify X-Ray use cases and features. • Identify Collector use cases and features. 02. Describe Nutanix Platform Administration (19 objectives) • Deploy, update, and configure a VM. • Configure storage for VMs. • Configure network attributes. • Assign categories. • Change vDisk Placement. • Take a snapshot. • Create subnet. • Identify types of networking. • Create vSwitch. • Describe network visualizer. • Monitor physical switches. • Identify storage optimizations. • Identify redundancy requirements. • Identify the different storage types. • Identify current license state. • Assign, reclaim, and unassign licenses. • Inspect available licenses. • Verify licensing expiration. • Identify correct license by use case. 03. Describe Cluster Configuration and Maintenance (13 objectives) • Verify DNS, SMTP, SNMP, and/or NTP configurations. • Discuss the cluster fault tolerance levels. • Validate Prism Central settings. • Identify security options. • Place a node into or out of maintenance mode. • Identify the node types for expansion. • Identify expansion capabilities within a node. • Identify use cases for OOB management. • Describe the process for performing an upgrade. www.vmexam.com Nutanix NCA Nutanix Certified Associate Certification (NCA) 4 • Perform LCM inventory. • Differentiate between dark sites and non-dark sites. • Describe software compatibility matrix. • Identify common software maintenance tasks. 04. Demonstrate and Understand of Platform Health and Monitoring (14 objectives) • Perform log collections. • Perform NCC Checks. • Determine the cluster status. • Demonstrate understanding of the difference in Metric and Entity Charts. • Verify Pulse Status. • Describe the benefits of Pulse. • Determine use cases for Custom Alert Policies. • Distinguish Alert Severity. • Given an alert, determine impact and plan a resolution. • Describe how to create a support case. • Identify the required documentation for support cases. • Identify the various Documentation types. • Leverage Insights for predictive health and support automation. • Based on Prism analytics/metrics, recognize potential oversubscription or contention issues, such as CPU contention, CPU ready, memory constraints and I/O latency. SECTION 04 What the Credential Is Worth NCA is an associate credential, so the honest comparison is the role it feeds rather than a specialist premium. PayScale puts the average base salary for a systems administrator in the United States at $73,021 for 2026, on 6,629 salary profiles last updated 13 July 2026, with the tenth to ninetieth percentile running from $53,000 to $100,000. Why this exam, specifically • It is the only Nutanix certification you can reach with a few months of experience, and it opens the NCP track above it. • Prism skills transfer: half the exam is reading a management interface and knowing what the numbers mean. • The portfolio objectives in Section 1 are the vocabulary of every Nutanix conversation - NCI, NUS, NDB, NCM, NKP, Enterprise AI, EUC. • Hyperconverged infrastructure keeps showing up in job specs for infrastructure and support roles that are otherwise generalist. www.vmexam.com Nutanix NCA Nutanix Certified Associate Certification (NCA) 5 What the certificate buys at this level is not a raise on its own - it is a signal that you can be put in front of a cluster without supervision, which is exactly the gap most junior infrastructure CVs cannot evidence. It is also the cheapest step on the ladder at USD 100, and it is the prerequisite habit for the professional-level exams, where the money actually changes. SECTION 05 Getting Certified, Step by Step 1 Take the fundamentals course first Nutanix Hybrid Cloud Fundamentals is the course the blueprint is written against. Work through it before you touch the objective list, so the product names in Section 1 mean something. 2 Get into Prism and look at everything Open the VM details page, the Analysis dashboard, the Health dashboard, the Licensing page, the network visualizer. Half the sample questions are "where do you look for X", and the answer is almost always a specific page in Prism. 3 Learn the portfolio by use case, not by name Eighteen objectives in Section 1 are "identify the use cases and features of" something. Build a one-line answer for each: what problem does Move solve, what does Collector collect, when do you need a Witness. 4 Practise the maintenance workflow end to end Place a node into maintenance mode and take it out, run an LCM inventory, run NCC checks, collect logs, raise a test support case. Section 3 and Section 4 are mostly these motions. 5 Rehearse against the clock, then book 50 questions in 90 minutes is just under two minutes each, which is generous - the risk is not time, it is the multi-select questions, where partial knowledge scores nothing. For step five, VMExam’s NCA practice exam mirrors the real format, including the multi-answer questions, so you can find the gaps before the exam does. SECTION 06 Nutanix NCA Sample Questions These ten questions come from VMExam’s NCA sample questions page, presented here in shuffled order. Note the ratio: five of the ten ask for two answers , which is the single most useful thing this set tells you about the real paper. The source labels them inconsistently - "(Select TWO)" on some, "(Select two)" on others - and that is reproduced verbatim below. The answer key is at the end of the section. Q1. What is the primary difference between managed and unmanaged networks in Nutanix? a) Managed networks are controlled by Prism b) Unmanaged networks do not support VLANs c) Managed networks require external switches d) Unmanaged networks cannot be used by VMs www.vmexam.com Nutanix NCA Nutanix Certified Associate Certification (NCA) 6 Q2. Which characteristics describe a two-node Nutanix cluster? (Select TWO) a) Requires an external witness b) Supports unlimited node failures c) Designed for edge or ROBO use cases d) Eliminates the need for CVMs Q3. Which factor directly influences whether higher replication or redundancy settings can be enabled? a) Number of virtual machines b) Snapshot frequency c) Storage container size d) Cluster node count Q4. Where can an administrator view CPU, memory, and storage configuration details for a virtual machine? a) Health Dashboard b) VM details page in Prism c) Alerts page d) Support Portal Q5. What is the primary difference between metric charts and entity charts in the Analysis Dashboard? a) Metric charts display logs, entity charts display alerts b) Metric charts show performance data, entity charts show object-specific details c) Metric charts are cluster-only, entity charts are VM-only d) Metric charts require Prism Central, entity charts require Prism Element Q6. What steps are involved in updating a Nutanix cluster license through the Support Portal? (Select two) a) Manually copy the license file to each Controller VM b) Download the new license file from the Nutanix Support Portal c) Restart all cluster nodes after applying the license d) Apply the new license through the Prism Licensing page Q7. When should an administrator configure Affinity VM rules in a Nutanix environment? (Select two) a) To limit network bandwidth consumption by specific VMs b) To ensure that certain VMs always run on the same node c) To prevent specific VMs from running on the same node for redundancy d) To enforce CPU pinning for better performance www.vmexam.com Nutanix NCA Nutanix Certified Associate Certification (NCA) 7 Q8. How can an administrator check the current Nutanix cluster license level? a) By running ncli cluster info on the CVM b) By reviewing the license file stored on the Controller VM c) By logging into the Nutanix Support Portal d) By checking the Licensing page in Prism Q9. Which statements correctly describe differences when using LCM in Prism Central versus Prism Element? (Select TWO) a) Prism Element requires Nutanix Cloud Manager to run LCM b) Prism Central replaces Prism Element during updates c) Prism Central can manage LCM across multiple clusters d) Prism Element manages LCM for a single cluster only Q10. An administrator wants to check a VM’s CPU and memory allocation. What are the best ways to do this? (Select two) a) Use Prism Element to view VM configuration b) Use Prism Central to analyze VM performance trends c) Open a terminal on the CVM and run the top command d) Review the cluster BIOS settings for CPU configuration Answer key Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q7 Q8 Q9 Q10 a a, c d b b b, d b, c d c, d a, b SECTION 07 Where to Go Next Nutanix runs its own community, and for an associate studying alone it is the most useful free resource there is - the Nutanix Next community has certification threads, study groups and the kind of "why is my cluster saying this" posts that teach the alert objectives better than any slide. Quick reference • Official certification page — nutanix.com • Recommended course (NHCF) — nutanix.com/training • Exam syllabus + practice test — vmexam.com/nutanix • Registration — university.nutanix.com Before you book — the guide in one card Exam code NCA (version 7.5) Passing score 3000 of 1000-6000 Questions 50 multiple choice Duration 90 minutes www.vmexam.com Nutanix NCA Nutanix Certified Associate Certification (NCA) 8 Exam fee USD 100 per attempt Languages English, Japanese Sections 4 Objectives 64 Largest section Solutions and Tools (18) Smallest Cluster Config and Maintenance (13) Weightings None published Prerequisite None Good luck - and keep the exam’s own framing in mind while you study: it is not asking you to build a Nutanix cluster. It is asking whether you would know what you were looking at if someone sat you in front of one. Guide prepared by VMExam. Exam facts and the four blueprint sections follow VMExam’s NCA syllabus page and the Nutanix certification detail page; Nutanix publishes no percentage weightings for this exam, so the chart counts objectives and says so. Section and objective wording is reproduced as published, including the fourth section title. The pay figure is PayScale’s and is cited inline; sample questions are reproduced from VMExam’s sample set. Verify the current exam details and fee with Nutanix before you book.