Pure Storage Pure Certified Portworx Enterprise Professional (PEP) Exam Portworx-Enterprise-Professional Exam Dumps: Updated Questions & Answers (October 2025)

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Defragmentation in Portworx reorganizes storage blocks to reduce fragmentation caused by frequent write and delete operations. Scheduling defragmentation during low workload periods ensures minimal impact on application performance while improving storage efficiency and I/O throughput. This optimization leads to faster read/write operations and prolongs the lifespan of storage devices by minimizing random I/O. Portworx provides administrators the ability to define defragmentation windows and recurrence policies within cluster configurations to automate this process. The official Portworx documentation explains that carefully timed defragmentation is critical to maintaining optimal cluster performance without disrupting business-critical workloads, making it an essential part of ongoing cluster maintenance and operational health【Pure Storage Portworx Performance Guide†source】.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

The recommended approach to managing Portworx snapshots is to configure retention policies that automatically govern the lifecycle of snapshots, including their expiration and deletion. These policies ensure that snapshots are retained only as long as needed, preventing uncontrolled accumulation that can consume excessive storage and degrade performance. By setting retention rules, administrators can automate snapshot cleanup, enforce compliance requirements, and optimize resource usage. Manual deletion is error-prone and inefficient at scale, and retaining all snapshots indefinitely can lead to capacity exhaustion and management challenges. Portworx documentation provides detailed guidance on defining snapshot retention schedules, including time-based expiration and count limits, enabling administrators to maintain a balance between data protection and storage efficiency【Pure Storage Portworx Snapshot Management Guide†source】.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

To enable Portworx metrics exposure compatible with external Prometheus servers, administrators must set the exportMetrics flag inside the Prometheus monitoring section of the StorageCluster spec. The correct configuration is:

spec:

monitoring:

prometheus:

exportMetrics: true

This declarative configuration directs Portworx to expose its internal metrics on Prometheus endpoints, allowing external monitoring tools to scrape these metrics for observability, alerting, and dashboarding. The operator-managed Portworx cluster leverages this configuration for integration with cloud-native monitoring stacks, ensuring seamless visibility into cluster health, performance, and resource utilization. Using CLI commands alone is insufficient for operator-managed clusters since they don’t persist settings or integrate with Kubernetes manifests. The official Portworx observability guide and operator documentation endorse this method as the recommended approach for metrics exposure and integration with Prometheus-compatible systems【Pure Storage Portworx Monitoring Guide†source】.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

To view the status of only Portworx pods within the “portworx” namespace, administrators should use label selectors with kubectl. The command kubectl -n portworx get pods -l name=portworx filters pods by the label name=portworx, showing only pods related to the Portworx deployment. This is more precise than simply listing all pods with -o wide, which includes unrelated pods. Checking Portworx pods’ status is crucial for monitoring cluster health, identifying pod restarts, or troubleshooting failures. The Portworx installation manifests and documentation specify labels applied to Portworx pods, enabling operators to filter efficiently. Using this command supports focused operational monitoring and streamlined debugging within Kubernetes environments running Portworx【Pure Storage Portworx Kubernetes Guide†source】.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Portworx requires a minimum of 4 CPU cores per node to operate efficiently. This minimum ensures sufficient compute resources to handle storage management operations, volume I/O, replication, and metadata services without performance bottlenecks. While more cores can improve throughput and scalability, 4 cores is the documented baseline for supporting production workloads and maintaining cluster responsiveness. The Portworx system requirements specify this CPU baseline to guarantee stable operation alongside other Kubernetes node workloads. Deployments with fewer CPU resources may face degraded performance or instability. Official Portworx hardware requirements recommend 4 cores or more per node to meet performance and reliability objectives in typical enterprise environments【Pure Storage Portworx System Requirements†source】.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Telemetry in Portworx refers to the automated collection and reporting of cluster performance and health metrics to Pure1 or other monitoring services. To enable telemetry, the spec.telemetry.enabled flag must be set to true in the StorageCluster Custom Resource Definition (CRD). This setting activates the telemetry pod on each node, which collects data such as resource usage, storage capacity, and errors, then securely uploads it to Pure Storage’s management platform. Enabling telemetry helps administrators gain insights into cluster performance trends, preemptively identify issues, and optimize resource utilization. The Portworx operator respects this flag during installation and upgrades to ensure telemetry is consistently configured. Neither spec.autopilot.enabled (which controls the Autopilot feature) nor spec.csi.enabled (which controls CSI driver deployment) affects telemetry settings. Official Portworx documentation highlights this flag as critical for activating health monitoring and analytics features within Portworx clusters【Pure Storage Portworx Telemetry Guide†source】.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

The DriveStateChange alert in Portworx indicates that free disk space on a storage device has fallen below the recommended threshold of 10%. This alert warns administrators that storage capacity on a particular disk is critically low and that immediate action may be needed to avoid performance degradation or failures. Monitoring disk space is essential to maintain cluster health and prevent data loss. Portworx automatically generates this alert as part of its proactive monitoring system, providing early warning so operators can add capacity, remove unnecessary data, or re-balance workloads. The alert documentation advises maintaining sufficient free space to ensure optimal performance and data durability in the Portworx cluster【Pure Storage Portworx Alerting Guide†source】.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

To migrate data from an existing PVC backed by another storage provider to a new Portworx PVC, the administrator typically creates a temporary pod (often using a lightweight container like busybox) that mounts both the source and destination PVCs. Within this pod, standard Linux file commands such as cp or rsync are used to transfer data between volumes. This approach leverages Kubernetes volume mounting capabilities and avoids downtime by enabling data migration without removing the source volume immediately. Portworx does not provide a direct pxctl import command, nor does it use a DataExport Cluster Resource for PVC data migration. This manual method is widely documented and recommended for stateful data migration tasks involving Kubernetes PVCs across different storage backends【Pure Storage Portworx Data Migration Guide†source】.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

To create a StorageClass in Kubernetes for Portworx volumes that are encrypted and replicated twice, the correct parameters are encrypted: "true" to enable encryption and repl: "2" to specify two replicas. Option A accurately sets these parameters, ensuring volumes provisioned with this StorageClass will be encrypted at rest and maintain two replicas for data redundancy. Option B uses sharedv4: "true", which relates to NFS-like sharing, not encryption. Option C uses secure: "true", which is not the recognized parameter for enabling encryption in Portworx StorageClass definitions. The official Portworx StorageClass parameter documentation confirms encrypted as the correct flag for encryption and repl to specify replication factor, enabling administrators to enforce data security and availability policies declaratively through Kubernetes manifests【Pure Storage Portworx StorageClass Guide†source】.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

The spec.csi.enabled flag in the Portworx StorageCluster specification dictates whether the Container Storage Interface (CSI) driver is deployed within the Kubernetes environment. Setting this flag to false means that the CSI driver will not be installed or enabled, effectively disabling the CSI functionality. The CSI driver is responsible for dynamic volume provisioning, attachment, and lifecycle management in Kubernetes clusters. Disabling CSI might be necessary in environments relying on legacy volume plugins or specific operational requirements. When CSI is disabled, Portworx will not support dynamic provisioning or other CSI-dependent features, which could limit functionality for Kubernetes storage operations. Portworx operator documentation explicitly states that disabling CSI omits the CSI driver installation, advising users to carefully consider the impact before setting this flag to false, especially in production environments requiring CSI functionality【Pure Storage Portworx Operator Docs†source】.