Nutanix Certified Associate Practice Exam

The utilization of the iSCSI storage protocol for virtual machines (VMs) accessing their virtual disks on a newly created storage container in a Nutanix cluster is significant because iSCSI provides a flexible and efficient way to handle storage communications over IP networks. When a new storage container is created in a Nutanix environment, it is optimized to support various workloads, including virtual machine data access.

iSCSI stands out due to its ability to facilitate block-level storage access. This allows VMs to access their virtual disks as though they were directly connected to a physical disk, providing low-latency access and efficient data transfer. This capability is particularly beneficial in virtualized environments as it helps in efficiently handling multiple VMs and their storage demands.

In contrast, other protocols like NFS primarily operate at the file level, which can introduce additional overhead and may not be as optimal for VM storage performance. Fibre Channel (FC) is often used in enterprise storage solutions but is less common in the context of Nutanix clusters, which are designed to leverage software-defined storage technologies. SMB is generally associated with file sharing in Windows environments, making it less suitable for VM disk access where block-level storage is necessary.

Thus, iSCSI's characteristics align