The NCP-AII blueprint concentrates 64% of the exam in two domains that mirror a real deployment: bringing systems up, then proving they work. The remaining three domains cover the control plane that manages the cluster, the troubleshooting that keeps it alive, and the physical-layer features that carve it up for tenants. This article walks all five topic by topic at the depth the exam expects.
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How to read the weights
At 70-75 questions, one percentage point is roughly one question. Cluster Test and Verification contributes around 24 questions, System Bring-up around 22, Control Plane around 14, Troubleshooting around 9, and Physical Layer around 4. Prioritize accordingly.
Domain 1: Cluster Test and Verification (33%)
The largest domain covers the acceptance phase: after assembly, prove the cluster meets spec before production handoff.
Single-node stress testing and burn-in. New systems run sustained load before joining the cluster, because marginal components fail early under stress. Know the role of dcgmi diag levels (from quick software checks up to the long hardware diagnostic), GPU burn-in workloads, and what thermal and power behavior during burn-in indicates.
HPL benchmarking. HPL (High-Performance Linpack) is the standard cluster acceptance benchmark: a dense linear-algebra workload that stresses GPUs, NVLink, and the fabric simultaneously. The exam expects you to know why HPL validates more than raw FLOPS (a single slow node or degraded link drags the whole result), and that results are judged as efficiency against the reference architecture rather than absolute numbers.
NCCL testing. NCCL (NVIDIA Collective Communications Library) carries the gradient traffic in distributed training, and nccl-tests (especially all_reduce_perf) is how you validate multi-node GPU communication. Learn to read bus bandwidth output, and know the diagnostic meaning of common patterns: bandwidth that collapses beyond one node points at the inter-node fabric, while low single-node numbers point at NVLink or topology problems.
Link integrity and cable verification. NVLink status and per-link counters via nvidia-smi nvlink, InfiniBand link speed/width via ibstat, symbol-error counters that indicate marginal cables, and the discipline of verifying cabling against the topology plan before blaming software.
Fabric validation at cluster scale. ClusterKit and ibdiagnet sweep the whole fabric for bad links, misrouted cables, and counter anomalies. NVLink topology validation confirms every GPU sees the expected peers at the expected width.
Version confirmation. Firmware, driver, and software versions must match the qualified stack across every node. Version skew produces the subtlest failures in this domain's scenarios.
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Domain 2: System and Server Bring-up (31%)
This domain is the deployment sequence itself, and its questions probe order and verification.
Deployment sequencing. The canonical order: site readiness (power, cooling, floor loading), racking and cabling, out-of-band management (BMC), firmware and BIOS alignment, OS provisioning, driver and fabric software, then validation. Exam questions ask what must be true before a given step, so study transitions rather than isolated steps.
BMC, out-of-band, and TPM. The BMC (Baseboard Management Controller) is the always-on management processor you configure before any OS exists: IPMI/Redfish access, dedicated management network, credentials, and TPM (Trusted Platform Module) settings for secure boot requirements.
Firmware and BIOS. Firmware updates follow a qualified matrix (BMC, BIOS, GPU, NIC, NVSwitch versions that are tested together), and the exam cares that you update to the qualified set in the documented order before OS installation.
Power and cooling validation. DGX-class systems draw on the order of 10kW each, so rack power budgets, PDU capacity, inlet temperatures, and airflow validation are bring-up steps with hard numbers attached. Know that validation happens before load, under load, and per rack.
Physical installation and cabling. GPU seating and replacement procedures, NVLink bridge handling where applicable, InfiniBand cable bend radius and seating, port-to-port cabling against the topology map, and labeling discipline that later makes fabric validation tractable.
Network topology design. Compute, storage, and management traffic ride separate networks in the reference designs. Know why the compute fabric is non-blocking while management tolerates oversubscription, and how rail-optimized designs map GPUs to leaf switches (covered in depth in our NCP-AIN domains breakdown, since the two exams share this territory).
Domain 3: Control Plane Installation (19%)
Base Command Manager (BCM). BCM is the cluster manager that provisions and manages nodes from a head node. Understand the head-node installation flow, how node categories and images work, and how BCM pushes a consistent software stack across the cluster.
PXE provisioning. Compute nodes boot over the network, receive their image from the head node, and install unattended. Know the PXE flow (DHCP, TFTP, image delivery) and where node-specific configuration gets injected.
GPU drivers and the container stack. Driver installation strategy (matching the qualified matrix), the NVIDIA container toolkit that exposes GPUs to containers, and NGC (NVIDIA GPU Cloud) as the registry for optimized containers, models, and Helm charts, including basic ngc CLI operations.
Slurm. The batch scheduler for training clusters: partitions, GPU scheduling through GRES (generic resources), and where Slurm sits relative to BCM (BCM deploys and manages it). Operations depth belongs to the NCP-AIO exam; here you need deployment-level understanding.
BaseOS images. Creating, customizing, and deploying node images, and why image-based provisioning beats per-node configuration for fleet consistency.
Deploy the stack once and the questions become recognition
Walk the operator chain from Helm release to DaemonSets to node labels to a schedulable GPU, then trace how each piece maps to the control-plane components the exam names.
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Domain 4: Troubleshoot and Optimize (12%)
Xid errors. The kernel-logged GPU error codes are this domain's core vocabulary. High-frequency examples: Xid 79 (GPU has fallen off the bus: hardware-level, often requires reseat or replacement), Xid 48 (double-bit ECC error), Xid 63/64 (row remapping activity on HBM), plus thermal slowdown and power brake events. Each code maps to a failure class and an action, and questions test the mapping.
DCGM health monitoring. DCGM (Data Center GPU Manager) provides health watches, background checks, and the dcgmi diag diagnostic ladder. Know which level to run for a quick triage versus a suspected hardware fault, and how DCGM policies trigger alerts on ECC, thermal, and PCIe events.
Component replacement. Identify-isolate-replace-revalidate: drain the node, confirm the faulty component (GPU, DIMM, NIC, cable), replace following the documented procedure, then re-run the relevant burn-in and validation before returning the node to service.
Thermal and power issues. Clock throttling causes and signatures (nvidia-smi -q throttle reasons), inlet temperature problems versus individual component failures, and power-brake events under transient load.
Storage and network diagnostics. Distinguishing a dataloader bottleneck from a storage bottleneck from a fabric problem, and the measurement order that avoids replacing healthy hardware.
Practice the diagnosis before the exam asks for it
Build a DCGM-based health watchdog with auto-remediation, then run a full observability pipeline from nvidia-smi to Prometheus. The troubleshooting questions reward exactly these reps.
Domain 5: Physical Layer Management (5%)
MIG (Multi-Instance GPU). Partitioning an H100/A100 into up to seven isolated instances with dedicated memory and compute slices. Know the geometry naming (for example 1g.10gb versus 3g.40gb profiles), when MIG beats time-slicing (hard isolation, predictable QoS), and that reconfiguring MIG requires the GPU to be idle.
vGPU. Software-mediated GPU virtualization for VDI and shared workstations, licensed per profile, contrasted with MIG's hardware partitioning. The exam mostly wants the when-to-use-which judgment.
BlueField DPU configuration. DPU operating modes (DPU mode where the Arm cores own the NIC versus NIC mode where it acts as a standard adapter), and the DPU's role in offloading infrastructure services from the host.
NVMe and interface configuration. Storage connectivity for local scratch and cache tiers, plus network interface configuration on multi-homed GPU nodes.
Working the Blueprint
Study the domains in weight order, but verify in mixed order: real exams interleave domains, and switching context is its own skill. Preporato's NCP-AII practice exams mirror this blueprint across 7 full-length tests and 455 explained questions with per-domain score tracking, which turns this breakdown into a measurable checklist. Then use the cheat sheet for review passes and the first-attempt guide for exam strategy.
Sources:
- NVIDIA NCP-AII Official Certification Page
- NVIDIA DGX Platform Documentation
- NVIDIA DCGM Documentation
- NVIDIA Base Command Manager Documentation
Last updated: July 9, 2026
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