Nutanix Certified Associate Practice Exam

What is the likely cause of storage unavailability in a Nutanix cluster with five nodes and a Fault-Tolerance level of 1?

1. The genesis process is down on both Nodes D and E

2. The switch connecting Nodes D and E is down

3. The default gateway for CVMs and AHV hosts is down

4. Nodes D and E are in maintenance mode

The correct answer is: The switch connecting Nodes D and E is down

The cause of storage unavailability in a Nutanix cluster configured with five nodes and a Fault-Tolerance level of 1 can be attributed to the scenario where the switch connecting specific nodes is down. In a Nutanix environment, communication between nodes is critical for overall cluster health and storage accessibility. When nodes are unable to communicate with each other due to a network failure, such as a down switch, it can lead to storage unavailability. In this case, since the Fault-Tolerance level is set to 1, the cluster can tolerate the failure of one node. However, if the switch connecting two nodes—specifically Nodes D and E—is down, they might not be able to reach the rest of the cluster or the storage, resulting in a situation where data cannot be accessed or written. This highlights the importance of network connectivity in maintaining the performance and reliability of the Nutanix storage environment. Understanding the intricacies of how different components interact in a Nutanix cluster is essential for troubleshooting, as issues can often stem from communication failures rather than the individual health of any one node.