Nutanix Certified Professional (NCP) NCP-DB Nutanix Study Notes

 Nutanix Era can be upgraded using the Offline Upgrade and One-click Upgrade methods. The Offline Upgrade method involves manually downloading the software update and applying it to the Era instance. The One-click Upgrade method allows you to upgrade Era directly from the Era management console with a single click, provided that the Era instance has internet connectivity and can reach the Nutanix software update portal1.

Nutanix Database Service (NDB) uses software profiles for database patching to keep your databases secure and optimized1. When a new database is provisioned, it will be on your current environment’s database version to maintain consistency and stop version sprawl1. Therefore, after an administrator has applied an Oracle security patch to a database server VM registered in Era, the change can be made available to other existing database instances by creating a new software profile in Era from the patched VM1.

The NDB GUI allows an administrator to set the schedule interval for a database log catch up, which is the process of collecting transaction logs periodically from the source databases and storing them in the time machine. The shortest possible value for this interval is 15 minutes, as per the NDB documentation1. This means that the NDB time machine will capture the database logs every 15 minutes and use them for backup, restore, clone, and refresh operations. References: Nutanix Database Management & Automation (NDMA), page 29; Nutanix Support & Insights, section “Log Catch-up”

 NDB supports two modes of log backup management for Microsoft SQL databases: NDB-managed and 3rd-party managed. In the NDB-managed mode, NDB takes full control of the log backups and stores them in the Cerebro log location. In the 3rd-party managed mode, NDB allows the use of external backup tools to backup the logs from the database log destination. However, NDB still needs to capture the logs for its own operations, such as point-in-time recovery, clone refresh, and log catch-up. Therefore, NDB will periodically scan the database log destination and copy the logs to the Cerebro log location. This process requires that the log catch-up begins before the logs get backed up by the 3rd-party tool, otherwise NDB will miss some logs and the operations will fail. If the 3rd-party tool grants exclusive access to the logs, then NDB will not be able to capture them at all, and the operations will not be supported. References:

• Nutanix Database Management & Automation (NDMA) course, Module 5, Lesson 5.2 - Log Backup Management
• Nutanix Support & Insights, Nutanix NDB User Guide v2.5, Log Backup Management