Section 1 – Customer Consultation

Knowledge:

Requirements
Gather specific, measurable, traceable, and concise business, technical, functional, and non-functional requirements from the customer
Risks
Identify risks to solution success; and create a high-level impact analysis and/or risk mitigation plan
Constraints
Identify constraints that influence the solution and create a high-level impact analysis
Assumptions
Identify assumptions that influence the solution and create a high-level impact analysis
Operational Readiness
Complete a high-level organizational readiness assessment and make recommendations for training or organizational changes as required
Migration & Transition
Formulate a low-risk migration strategy and discuss a roll-back strategy
Section 2 – Conceptual Logical Design

Knowledge:

Scalability
Identify and explain options for scaling Nutanix solution including application layer. Demonstrate an understanding of relationships between scalability, performance, and resilience
Resiliency
Identify failure scenarios and domains and provide traceability to SLAs limited to infrastructure (SLAs, RTO, RPO)
Performance
Show how customer requirements have been met and demonstrate an understanding of performance/validation tools such as FIO, IOMeter, JetStress. De-scribe what can be tuned in the platform and when/when not to change default settings.
Manageability & Control Plane Architecture
Explain of how management components interact and minimize complexity. Describe the “business as usual” activities such as patching, upgrades, and configuration management
Data Protection & Recoverability
Explain how the solution’s data protection and recoverability was designed and validated at a high-level and how RPO/RTO requirements are met
Logical Sizing and Capacity Planning
Defend and validate that the design meets capacity requirements
Compliance & Security
Explain how compliance, security, and risk requirements were met; Identify and provide understanding of where industry-standard security and compliance frameworks such as PCI DSS, STIG, HIPAA, EUGDPR, ISO 27001 apply
Virtual Machine Logical Design
Provide explanation of virtual machine logical specifications, interoperability, and configuration
Third Party Product Integration
Provide explanation of how third-party integrations provide costeffective solutions that meet customer requirements
Section 3 – Physical Design

Knowledge:

Hardware Sizing
Justify sizing rationale based on calculations and demonstrate how the application working set size was obtained
Storage Infrastructure
Explain impact and implications of protocols, IO sizes and patterns, and data transforms; Explain combined storage infrastructure design decisions
Platform Selection
Justify selection of components in a node and cluster configuration
Networking Infrastructure
Identify configuration options and explain how the chosen network topology meets customer requirements
Virtual Machine Physical Design
Identify necessary physical virtual machine components such as type of scsi adaptor and system network adaptor configuration
Management Component Design
Provide explanation and justification of management component configuration (e.g., patching, monitoring, updating, upgrading, sizing) such as automated patching, RHN satellite, spacewalk, PRISM Central, and Acropolis
Data Center Infrastructure – Environmental & Power
Provide specifications for space, power usage, heat output and show how the solution conforms to the resources available in the chosen location(s)