Nutanix Certified Associate Practice Exam

What is the main purpose of the Witness VM in a Nutanix cluster?

1. To perform data backups

2. To monitor cluster performance

3. To monitor Metro Availability configuration health

4. To increase the number of available nodes

The correct answer is: To monitor Metro Availability configuration health

The Witness VM plays a crucial role in ensuring the proper operation and health of a Nutanix cluster, particularly in configurations involving Metro Availability. Its main purpose is to serve as a tie-breaker between two sites in a stretched cluster scenario, ensuring that quorum is established and maintained in the event of a network partition or failure at one of the sites. By continuously monitoring the heartbeats and availability of both sites, the Witness VM can determine which site is operational and maintain high availability. This is vital for preventing split-brain scenarios, where both sites could erroneously assume they are the active site, leading to potential data inconsistencies. Choices related to data backups or monitoring performance, while important aspects of a Nutanix environment, do not capture the specific function of the Witness VM. Increasing the number of available nodes is also an entirely different concept, dealing more with cluster scalability rather than the monitoring and ensuring of configuration health. Thus, the focus and primary utility of the Witness VM distinctly center on its role in maintaining Metro Availability configuration health.