NCP-CI-AWS Leak Questions

Amazon CloudWatch is the service that enables the monitoring of key metrics on various AWS services, including EC2, EBS, and VPC, for NC2 cluster deployments.

Amazon CloudWatch:

Amazon CloudWatch provides monitoring for AWS cloud resources and applications. It collects and tracks metrics, collects and monitors log files, and sets alarms.

Specifically, for NC2 deployments, CloudWatch can be used to monitor key metrics such as CPU utilization, disk I/O, network I/O for EC2 instances, EBS volume performance, and VPC network traffic.

Features:

Metrics Monitoring: Collects and visualizes operational data in the form of metrics, including utilization, performance, and health.

Logs Monitoring: Collects log data, monitors it in real-time, and triggers alarms based on predefined thresholds.

Alarms: Notifies when operational performance thresholds are breached.

Integration with NC2:

By setting up CloudWatch, administrators can ensure they have visibility into the performance and health of their Nutanix clusters on AWS, aiding in proactive management and troubleshooting.

References:

Amazon CloudWatch Documentation

Nutanix Cloud Clusters on AWS Administration Guide

AWS Monitoring Best Practices

To protect workloads on an NC2 cluster on AWS, deploying strategies that ensure high availability and disaster recovery are essential. The two valid options are:

Create a Second NC2 Cluster in a Different Availability Zone:

High Availability: Deploying a second NC2 cluster in a different availability zone ensures that workloads can be quickly recovered in case of an availability zone failure.

Disaster Recovery: This setup enables asynchronous replication between clusters, providing a robust disaster recovery solution.

Use an Existing On-Prem Nutanix Cluster as a Disaster Recovery Target:

Hybrid DR: Leveraging an existing on-premises Nutanix cluster for disaster recovery provides a cost-effective and efficient DR solution.

Replication: Set up replication policies to ensure data is consistently copied from the NC2 cluster on AWS to the on-premises cluster.

Why Not Other Options:

One-node cluster in another availability zone: Not a valid DR solution as a single-node cluster cannot provide the required resilience and high availability.

Deploy a cluster across two availability zones: While this can enhance availability, it is not a typical approach for Nutanix clusters which are designed to operate within a single availability zone for simplicity and performance reasons.

References:

Nutanix Cloud Clusters on AWS Administration Guide

Nutanix Disaster Recovery Best Practices

AWS Availability Zones and Disaster Recovery Documentation

To control network traffic at the individual User VM (UVM) subnet level, creating a custom security group is the appropriate action. This approach allows for fine-grained control over inbound and outbound traffic rules that can be applied to specific subnets or individual instances within those subnets.

Custom Security Group:

Custom security groups enable administrators to define specific traffic rules tailored to the needs of individual subnets or VMs. This includes specifying allowed IP ranges, ports, and protocols.

By applying these custom security groups to the UVMs, the organization can control access and enhance security according to their policies and requirements.

Steps to Create a Custom Security Group:

Navigate to the AWS Management Console and go to the VPC service.

Select "Security Groups" under the "Security" section.

Click on "Create Security Group" and define the name, description, and VPC.

Add inbound and outbound rules according to the desired traffic control policies.

Attach the custom security group to the UVMs or subnets in question.

References:

Nutanix Cloud Clusters on AWS Administration Guide

AWS Security Group Documentation

Nutanix Best Practices for Security Groups

Gateway Endpoint:

A Gateway Endpoint in AWS allows you to connect to supported AWS services privately without going through the public internet. This setup provides secure and efficient connectivity directly from the corporate VPC to the required AWS services.

Gateway Endpoints support services such as Amazon S3 and DynamoDB and are ideal for scenarios where private connectivity to these services is needed.

References:Refer to the AWS documentation on VPC endpoints, specifically Gateway Endpoints, and the Nutanix documentation on configuring private connectivity for NC2 deployments.