Question 1

An automation developer has been tasked with creating a Self-Service blueprint to deploy a
Windows Server VM for testing purposes. This blueprint will be called frequently by QA Testing
pipelines and will need to easily deploy the requested VMs with discrete names across all of the
deployment runs.
What should the developer enter in the VM Name field in the Blueprint to make sure there are no
naming collisions at deployment time?

Accepted Answer

C

Explanation: Nutanix Calm provides the macro @@{calmunique}@@, which expands to a system-generated character string that is guaranteed to be unique every time the blueprint is launched. By concatenating the static prefix “WNSRV” with @@{calmunique}@@ the developer assures that every VM name produced by repeated QA pipeline executions is distinct, eliminating any possibility of a naming collision during deployment.

Question 2

A Playbook is configured to auto-remediate high severity alerts, but no remediation actions are being Triggered. What is the most likely explanation?

Accepted Answer

C

Explanation: In Prism Central playbooks the Autopilot switch governs whether an action is executed automatically or only shown as a “Recommended Action.” If Autopilot is disabled the trigger is still evaluated and an alert is generated, but the remediation task is never run until a user approves it. Therefore, when a playbook that is supposed to auto-remediate high-severity alerts performs no action, the most common and intended cause is that Autopilot is turned off.

Question 3

An administrator is configuring a new Self-Service project. There is a Playbook targeting VMs with the
respective CalmProject category that automates post-deployment tasks (such as tagging, monitoring
and sending notifications).
After assigning the blueprint and users, the administrator wants to validate that the Project and
Playbook configurations are functioning as created before user deployment begins.
Which two steps should the administrator take to complete this task? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

B, D

Explanation: To be certain that both the Self-Service project scoping and the post-deployment Playbook work, the administrator should: • first manually fire the Playbook with “Execute on Behalf Of”, selecting a VM that carries the CalmProject category. This runs every task exactly as the Playbook would when it is later triggered automatically, validating its logic and variable resolution. • then deploy the blueprint from inside the same Project. The resulting VM(s) inherit the CalmProject category, so the Playbook should trigger automatically; observing this confirms that the Project/blueprint binding and Playbook trigger are correctly configured before opening access to users.

Question 4

When creating a playbook, which statement is true?

Accepted Answer

A

Explanation: In Prism Central X-Play a playbook can have only one trigger, but an Alert (or Event) trigger can include several alert definitions so a single playbook fires when any of those alerts occur. The UI provides “+ Add Another Alert” to add the additional alerts. This capability is unique to Alert/Event triggers; it is not related to the number of actions, which can be multiple for any trigger type. Therefore statement A is the only universally correct statement.

Question 5

Which tool provides a graphic visual representation of a Blueprint?

Accepted Answer

C

Explanation: In Nutanix Calm, every blueprint is created and modified in the Blueprint Editor. The editor presents the blueprint as a drag-and-drop canvas that graphically depicts all application tiers, services, dependencies, and actions. This visual topology allows designers to understand resource relationships at a glance and is the only interface in Calm that renders the blueprint in graphic form. Other blueprint-related tools (Showback, Configuration, Macros) provide text or tabular data only, not a visual diagram.

Question 6

An administrator created a Self-Service Project, including a blueprint that deploys a multi-tier
application and a Playbook to perform post-deployment automation (e.g., tagging, monitoring setup,
and email notifications).
However, during testing, users report that while the VMs are successfully deployed, the post-
deployment automation tasks are not executing as expected.
Which two steps should the administrator take to determine the cause of the issue? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

C, D

Explanation: If VMs build but automation does not run, first confirm whether the playbook actually fired and, if so, which task failed. Playbook Execution History (menu: Operations → Playbooks → History) records every trigger, status, and error log, allowing root-cause inspection. If no execution is recorded, the next step is to confirm the blueprint really invokes the playbook through the Post-Deploy (or other) action mapping. A mis-configured or missing action binding will prevent the playbook from launching even though the VM portion of the blueprint completes successfully.

Question 7

Which is a valid Endpoint in Self-Service?

Accepted Answer

B

Explanation: Within Prism Central Self-Service (Calm/Runbooks) an Endpoint object represents an external machine against which Calm can execute tasks. The product currently recognises only two operating-system types—Linux and Windows. An Endpoint type must therefore be defined generically as Windows (using WinRM/PowerShell) or Linux (using SSH). “Windows” is therefore a valid choice; the other names do not match any supported Endpoint type in Self-Service.

Question 8

An administrator is required to restore a long list of VMs from snapshot due to a security incident.
How could the administrator leverage Intelligent Operations to compile a list of VMs recovered from
snapshots?

Accepted Answer

A

Explanation: A snapshot-recovery operation generates a Prism Central event (for example, “VM Snapshot Restore Succeeded”). An Event-triggered Playbook can watch for this event and automatically apply an action such as Assign Category → “snapshot-recovered” to the affected VM. Because Categories are first-class searchable objects in Prism Central, the administrator can later filter or report on all VMs with the “snapshot-recovered” category, thereby obtaining the required list. Alert- or time-based Playbooks do not capture this recovery event, so they cannot reliably build the list.

Question 9

Which common network element is required for creating an AWS Self-Service Account?

Accepted Answer

B

Explanation: When Prism Central registers an AWS Self-Service (Calm) account it must reach the AWS public API endpoints (for example .amazonaws.com) over HTTPS. Those endpoints are referenced by hostname, so the Nutanix management network has to be able to resolve them. The official Nutanix Calm documentation therefore lists “working DNS resolution for AWS endpoints” as a mandatory prerequisite before the account can be created. Other services such as NTP or SNMP are not consulted during the registration workflow.

Question 10

An administrator is configuring Self-Service and would like to create fundamental building blocks that
help automate various processes within blueprints and runbooks.
Where would the administrator create these automation building blocks?

Accepted Answer

D

Explanation: In Calm-based Self-Service, an administrator first builds reusable automation components—called “library tasks”—and then drags them into blueprints or runbooks. These atomic tasks (Bash, PowerShell, Ansible, etc.) are created and stored in the Calm Library, making them centrally maintained and easily reused across multiple automations.

Question 11

An administrator's environment has a complex Sysprep script that must be applied to all new VMs. Which feature could be used to accomplish this?

Accepted Answer

C

Explanation: Prism’s Guest Customization function lets you attach a Sysprep answer file (unattend.xml) or cloud-init data when a VM is created or cloned. At first boot AHV injects the file and runs Windows Sysprep inside the guest, allowing any length or complexity of configuration to be executed automatically on every new VM. No other Prism feature directly delivers and runs Sysprep scripts.

Question 12

What is a category?

Accepted Answer

D

Explanation: In Nutanix Prism Central, a category is a user-defined tag built as a key-value pair (for example, “Environment=Prod”). You attach one or more of these key-value labels to entities—VMs, hosts, clusters, storage containers, etc.—to group them logically for policy enforcement, reporting, or RBAC. The construct is neither a database nor restricted to capacity or entity type; it is simply a flexible key-value grouping mechanism.

Question 13

Which Self-Service capability allows for Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC)?

Accepted Answer

D

Explanation: The Calm Self-Service Domain-Specific Language (DSL) lets administrators and developers define complete Calm blueprints in human-readable YAML/JSON files, version them in Git, and execute them from the CLI or CI/CD pipelines. Because every element of an application—VMs, networks, credentials, runbooks—is represented as code, the DSL provides true Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) capability inside Nutanix Self-Service. The other capability groupings focus on orchestration, marketplace catalogues, or modernization tooling, none of which intrinsically deliver IaC.

Question 14

An administrator would like to share an existing published Runbook across different Projects. What must the administrator do to accomplish this task?

Accepted Answer

A

Explanation: To make an already-published Runbook available to additional Projects you must “Publish to Marketplace” again, choose the new target Projects, and allow Calm to strip all credential and secret-type variable values before the item is saved. Calm automatically omits secrets when publishing; therefore the administrator must re-publish the Runbook as a Marketplace item without secret values and explicitly select the Projects that should see it.

Question 15

An administrator has recently completed creating all the necessary Playbooks for day-to-day
operations. The administrator is struggling to configure User Impersonation.
What must the administrator do to ensure that their username is not associated with running
Playbooks?

Accepted Answer

C

Explanation: Prism Central can impersonate only identities that already exist in its local database. That database entry is created the first time a user—local or directory-based—logs in to Prism Central. Until that initial login occurs, the account cannot be selected in the “Run As” list and the playbook will continue to execute under the creator’s username. Therefore the administrator must ensure the intended local user has logged into Prism Central at least once.

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