350-601 Practice Test 17 — 15 Questions

Question 1

An engineer notices that a Fibre Channel link between two Cisco MDS 9000 series switches is flapping every few minutes. The interface counters show a high number of CRC errors. What is the most likely cause of this issue?

Accepted Answer

Faulty SFP or optical cable. CRC errors on a Fibre Channel link indicate physical-layer corruption of frames, typically caused by faulty optics, dirty or damaged fiber cables, or marginal signal integrity. Flapping occurs because the link repeatedly fails to maintain proper synchronization due to excessive bit errors, triggering port reset or re-initialization. A faulty SFP or optical cable directly introduces noise or attenuation that corrupts the data stream, leading to CRC errors and link instability.

Answer

NPV mode enabled on the switch

Answer

Incorrect zoning configuration

Answer

VSAN mismatch between switches

Question 2

A data center engineer is designing a Fibre Channel SAN for high availability. The design includes two MDS 9710 directors connected to multiple storage arrays. Which best practice should be followed when configuring NPV mode on the switches connecting the hosts?

Accepted Answer

Dual-home each NPV switch to two separate core switches for redundancy. Option D is correct because dual-homing each NPV switch to two separate core switches ensures that if one core switch fails, the NPV switch can still forward traffic through the other core switch. In NPV mode, the switch acts as a passthrough, and connecting to two separate core directors provides path redundancy without requiring the NPV switch to perform full Fibre Channel routing. This design aligns with high-availability best practices for Fibre Channel SANs.

Answer

Enable VSAN interop on the NPV switch to support multiple storage arrays

Answer

Connect each NPV switch to a single core switch for simplicity

Answer

Use FC trunking between NPV and core switches to increase bandwidth

Question 3

A server administrator reports that a newly provisioned application server cannot access its LUN on the storage array. The SAN zoning uses WWPNs. The administrator verifies that the server's HBA WWPN is correctly zoned with the storage port's WWPN. Which additional check should the engineer perform to isolate the issue?

Accepted Answer

Verify that the zone set is activated and that the zones are in the active zone set. Even if the WWPNs are correctly configured in the zone, the zone set must be activated for the zoning to take effect. Without activation, the zone configuration remains in the pending or offline zone set, and the Fibre Channel fabric will not enforce the access controls. The engineer should verify that the zone set is activated and that the zones appear in the active zone set using commands like 'show zoneset active' on the MDS switch.

Answer

Confirm that VSAN interop is enabled on the MDS switch

Answer

Ensure that the switch port is configured in F mode and local switching is enabled

Answer

Check whether FCIP is configured on the storage array

Question 4

An engineer notices that the LED of an FC interface is off on a Cisco MDS switch. The interface is up/up. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The link is up but the LED is disabled in software configuration.. On Cisco MDS switches, the interface LED can be administratively disabled via the `no led` command in interface configuration mode, even when the interface is fully operational (up/up). This allows operators to selectively turn off LEDs for troubleshooting or to reduce visual noise in a data center, without affecting traffic. The LED being off while the interface shows up/up directly points to this software-based LED disablement.

Answer

The port LED firmware is corrupted.

Answer

The interface is administratively down.

Answer

The SFP is faulty.

Question 5

An MDS switch is configured with VSANs 100 and 200. The engineer wants to isolate traffic between two storage arrays on the same physical fabric. Which best practice should be applied?

Accepted Answer

Place each array in a different VSAN.. Option B is correct because VSANs provide complete isolation of traffic at Layer 2, creating separate fabric topologies within the same physical infrastructure. Placing each storage array in a different VSAN ensures that Fibre Channel frames from one array never reach the other, even though they share the same MDS switch hardware. This is the recommended best practice for separating storage traffic that must not interact.

Answer

Use zones within the same VSAN to separate arrays.

Answer

Enable QoS to prioritize storage traffic.

Answer

Configure a port channel between the switches.

Question 6

Which TWO are required for FCoE communication on a Nexus switch configured as an FCF? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

A dedicated FCoE VLAN. In an FCoE FCF (Fabric Connect) configuration on a Nexus switch, a dedicated FCoE VLAN is required to carry FCoE traffic. This VLAN must be separate from standard Ethernet VLANs to prevent FCoE frames from being processed as regular Ethernet frames. Additionally, DCBX (Data Center Bridging Exchange) must be used to negotiate and enable Priority Flow Control (PFC) on the link, ensuring lossless behavior for FCoE traffic.

Answer

Jumbo frame support on the VLAN

Answer

VSAN configuration for the FCoE VLAN

Answer

NPV enabled on the switch

Question 7

An engineer needs to connect a new server to an existing FC SAN. The server is located 50 km away from the data center. Which technology should be used to extend the FC SAN over this distance?

Accepted Answer

FCIP. FCIP (Fibre Channel over IP) is the correct choice because it encapsulates Fibre Channel frames inside TCP/IP packets, enabling the extension of FC SANs over long distances (beyond the 10 km limit of standard optics) by leveraging existing IP WAN infrastructure. This allows the 50 km connection while preserving native Fibre Channel semantics and fabric services.

Answer

iSCSI

Answer

FCoE

Answer

Direct FC connection with 10km optics

Question 8

Based on the exhibited output, what is the status of the interface?

Accepted Answer

The interface is up but has no license.. The interface is up (line protocol is up) but the output shows 'license not installed' or similar, meaning the port is administratively up but lacks the required license for full functionality. In Cisco MDS/Nexus storage networks, interfaces can be in an 'up' state without a license, but they will not pass traffic or operate in the licensed mode until the license is installed.

Answer

The interface is in trunk mode and licensed.

Answer

The interface is operational and licensed.

Answer

The interface is down due to no license.

Question 9

A company wants to consolidate multiple physically separate Fibre Channel SANs into one switch infrastructure while keeping each SAN's traffic isolated. Which technology best achieves this?

Accepted Answer

Virtual SANs (VSANs). VSANs (Virtual SANs) allow multiple physically separate Fibre Channel SANs to be consolidated onto a single switch infrastructure by creating isolated virtual fabrics. Each VSAN maintains its own fabric services, such as name server and zone server, ensuring traffic isolation without requiring separate physical switches or cabling.

Answer

Reduce the number of switches by using a single director

Answer

Use a single VSAN with extensive zoning

Answer

Deploy separate physical cabling for each SAN

Question 10

A storage administrator notices that a newly deployed Fibre Channel initiator cannot log in to the SAN switch. The switch is configured for NPV mode. Which condition is most likely causing the issue?

Accepted Answer

NPIV is disabled on the upstream switch.. In NPV mode, the switch acts as a transparent proxy, forwarding FLOGI requests from initiators to the upstream NPIV-capable core switch. If NPIV is disabled on the upstream switch, it will reject the FLOGI because it cannot register multiple N-Port IDs on a single physical link, causing the initiator to fail login.

Answer

The initiator is not using a device alias.

Answer

The switch is configured for NPIV mode instead of NPV.

Answer

The switch port is configured as an E port.

Question 11

A storage administrator is troubleshooting a Fibre Channel SAN where initiators cannot log in to a target. The administrator verifies that the VSAN is configured correctly and that zoning is in place. Which two additional checks should be performed to resolve the issue?

Accepted Answer

Confirm that FCID persistence is not enabled with invalid static FCIDs.. In a Fibre Channel SAN, FCID persistence assigns a specific FCID to a device each time it logs in. If an invalid static FCID is configured (e.g., an FCID that conflicts with another device or is outside the allowed range), the initiator may fail to log in because the switch cannot assign the requested address. This is a common cause of login failures even when VSAN and zoning are correctly configured.

Answer

Ensure NPIV is enabled on the F-port.

Answer

Verify the FCoE VLAN ID matches on both ends.

Answer

Check that LUN masking has been applied on the target.

Question 12

A Cisco MDS switch is configured as an NPV switch to connect to a core switch. Which statement about NPV operation is true?

Accepted Answer

The NPV switch uses FDISC to register multiple N-Port IDs from a single physical link.. In N_Port Virtualization (NPV) mode, a Cisco MDS switch acts as a passthrough device that aggregates multiple end-device N_Ports onto a single uplink to a core Fibre Channel switch. The NPV switch uses the Fabric Discovery (FDISC) protocol to register multiple N_Port IDs (NPIV) from a single physical link, allowing each end device to obtain its own FC ID from the core switch. This is correct because NPV does not assign FC IDs itself but relies on the core switch for fabric login and address assignment.

Answer

The NPV switch allocates FC IDs to end devices from its own pool.

Answer

The NPV switch requires at least one VSAN to be defined as a fabric VSAN.

Answer

The NPV switch performs fabric login (FLOGI) on behalf of all attached end devices.

Question 13

A storage administrator notices that a host is unable to see a LUN after zoning is configured. The zone contains the host WWPN and the target WWPN. The LUN is not masked at the storage array. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

LUN masking is not configured on the storage array.. The host cannot see the LUN because LUN masking is not configured on the storage array. Even with correct zoning (host WWPN to target WWPN), the storage array must explicitly grant access to specific LUNs for a given initiator WWPN. Without LUN masking, the target will not present the LUN to the host, regardless of zone membership.

Answer

The host requires NPIV to be enabled.

Answer

The host is in a different VSAN.

Answer

The zone is incorrectly configured.

Question 14

An engineer is designing a SAN extension over a WAN link using FCIP. The link has high latency (50 ms RTT). Which configuration is most critical to maintain performance?

Accepted Answer

Configure a large TCP window size.. FCIP encapsulates Fibre Channel frames over TCP/IP. High latency (50 ms RTT) means the TCP sender must wait longer for acknowledgments, which can stall the connection if the TCP window is too small. A large TCP window size (e.g., using window scaling per RFC 1323) allows more data to be in flight before requiring an ACK, thereby maintaining throughput and preventing performance collapse on high-latency WAN links.

Answer

Enable compression on the FCIP tunnel.

Answer

Increase the buffer-to-buffer credits.

Answer

Reduce the TCP MSS to 512 bytes.

Question 15

A company is deploying a new storage array with dual controllers. Each controller has two 16 Gbps Fibre Channel ports. The engineer wants to connect each controller to two separate MDS switches for redundancy. What is the recommended port type configuration on the MDS switches for the storage-facing ports?

Accepted Answer

F port. Storage array ports typically operate as target ports, so the switch ports should be configured as F ports (fabric ports). Option A is correct. Option B (E port) is for ISL. Option C (NP port) is for NPV. Option D (auto) may work but not recommended.

Answer

Configure the port as auto to allow negotiation

Answer

NP port

Answer

E port