350-601 Compute Practice Test 6 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A Cisco Intersight managed UCS domain has a policy that requires all firmware updates to be applied within 30 days of release. An engineer needs to check compliance for a specific server. Which Intersight feature should be used?

Accepted Answer

Compliance and drift management. Compliance and drift management in Intersight continuously monitors the firmware versions of managed UCS servers against the defined baseline policies. When a policy requires updates within 30 days of release, this feature automatically detects servers that are out of compliance and reports the drift, allowing the engineer to verify compliance for a specific server without manual checks.

Answer

Software repository

Answer

Actions tab with pending updates

Answer

Firmware update policy

Question 2

A data center engineer is configuring a Cisco UCS C-Series server with a hardware RAID controller. The server will host a critical database. The RAID controller supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, and 10. Which RAID level should be chosen to provide the best combination of performance and fault tolerance?

Accepted Answer

RAID 10. RAID 10 (striping of mirrors) provides the best combination of performance and fault tolerance for a critical database workload. It offers high read/write performance through striping and full redundancy via mirroring, allowing up to one disk failure per mirrored pair without data loss. This is ideal for a Cisco UCS C-Series server with a hardware RAID controller where both I/O throughput and availability are paramount.

Answer

RAID 6

Answer

RAID 5

Answer

RAID 0

Question 3

A UCS administrator needs to update the firmware on a UCS 5108 chassis that contains eight B-Series blades. The firmware update must be performed with minimal downtime. Which update method should be used?

Accepted Answer

User Acknowledged update with a maintenance policy that reboots blades sequentially. Option C is correct because the User Acknowledged update method, combined with a maintenance policy that reboots blades sequentially, allows the firmware update to proceed blade by blade with minimal downtime. This approach ensures that only one blade is offline at a time, while the remaining blades continue to serve traffic, making it ideal for a chassis with eight B-Series blades where service continuity is critical.

Answer

Fast-Impact update

Answer

Non-Impactful update with a forced reboot

Answer

System-Impactful update with a single reboot

Question 4

A Cisco HyperFlex cluster is experiencing performance issues during peak hours. The cluster uses a 4-node all-flash configuration. The engineer notices that the vSphere DRS cluster is heavily imbalanced. Which HyperFlex feature should be used to improve performance by balancing the storage load across nodes?

Accepted Answer

Enable the IOPS-based workload rebalancing feature. Option B is correct because the IOPS-based workload rebalancing feature in Cisco HyperFlex automatically redistributes storage I/O load across cluster nodes based on real-time IOPS metrics. This directly addresses the performance issue during peak hours by ensuring no single node becomes a storage bottleneck, which is the root cause of the vSphere DRS imbalance in a HyperFlex environment.

Answer

Enable Storage DRS on the HyperFlex datastore

Answer

VM vMotion to move VMs to less busy nodes

Answer

Adjust the deduplication and compression settings to reduce write amplification

Question 5

A UCS administrator is configuring a service profile for a VMware ESXi host. Which TWO of the following configuration items must be included to enable Fibre Channel SAN boot?

Accepted Answer

WWPN pool for vHBA. For Fibre Channel SAN boot on a UCS-managed VMware ESXi host, the service profile must include a WWPN pool for the vHBA (Option B) to assign unique World Wide Port Names, and a SAN boot policy specifying the target WWPN (Option E) to define the storage target from which the host boots. These two elements are essential because the vHBA requires a WWPN for fabric login, and the boot policy directs the host to the correct LUN on the SAN.

Answer

QoS policy for vHBA

Answer

vNIC with MAC pool

Answer

FCoE VLAN configuration

Question 6

A company is planning to deploy Cisco Intersight to manage a hybrid environment including on-premises UCS domains and AWS EC2 instances. Which THREE of the following are required components for integrating AWS with Intersight?

Accepted Answer

An Intersight account with appropriate licenses. Option A is correct because a valid Intersight account with the appropriate licenses (e.g., Intersight Essentials or Premier) is required to enable the AWS integration feature. Without the proper license tier, the Intersight account cannot access the cloud orchestration or management capabilities needed to connect and manage external cloud providers like AWS.

Answer

An Intersight Virtual Appliance deployed in AWS

Answer

A VPN tunnel between the on-premises network and AWS

Question 7

A UCS domain is configured with two fabric interconnects in end-host mode. The engineer needs to ensure that traffic from a specific VLAN is load-balanced across both uplinks to the upstream network. Which THREE of the following are valid methods to achieve load balancing on the uplink ports?

Accepted Answer

Fabric port channel with LACP. Option C is correct because a Fabric Port Channel with LACP allows multiple uplink ports to be aggregated into a single logical link, providing load balancing across the physical links based on a hash algorithm (e.g., source/destination MAC or IP). This is a standard method for distributing traffic from a specific VLAN across both uplinks to the upstream network in a UCS domain configured with two fabric interconnects in end-host mode.

Answer

VLAN load balancing using the pin-groups

Answer

Configure SPAN on the uplink ports

Question 8

An engineer notices that after a reboot of one UCS fabric interconnect (FI-A), the server traffic fails over to FI-B but never fails back to FI-A even after FI-A is fully operational. Which configuration change would ensure automatic failback?

Accepted Answer

Change the 'Backup Link' policy to 'Active/Active'. The 'Backup Link' policy in UCS determines how uplink ports behave during failover and failback. Setting it to 'Active/Active' allows both FIs to actively forward traffic, and when the failed FI recovers, the server traffic automatically fails back because the policy does not designate a permanent primary or standby role. This ensures symmetric traffic flow without manual intervention.

Answer

Change the 'Backup Link' policy to 'Primary/Secondary'

Answer

Change the 'Backup Link' policy to 'Active/Standby'

Answer

Change the 'Backup Link' policy to 'Failover Only'

Question 9

Which best practice should be followed when creating a UCS service profile template for stateless computing?

Accepted Answer

Assign MAC and WWN addresses from pools. Stateless computing in UCS requires that all server identity information, such as MAC addresses and WWNs, be abstracted away from the hardware and assigned dynamically from pools. This allows the service profile to be applied to any compatible blade or rack server without manual reconfiguration, enabling rapid provisioning and seamless hardware replacement. Defining these addresses directly in the profile or using static assignments would break the stateless model by tying the profile to specific hardware.

Answer

Use local storage on each server for boot images

Answer

Configure Windows Server NIC teaming for all vNICs

Answer

Define MAC addresses directly in the service profile

Question 10

A data center engineer is designing a UCS Manager solution that requires VLAN segmentation across multiple fabric interconnects. The network team requires that each VLAN is assigned a unique native VLAN ID per fabric. Which pool configuration supports this requirement?

Accepted Answer

Create separate VLAN pools for each fabric with non-overlapping ranges. Option B is correct because UCS Manager allows separate VLAN pools to be assigned per fabric interconnect, enabling unique native VLAN IDs per fabric. By creating non-overlapping VLAN pools for each fabric, the engineer ensures that each fabric has its own native VLAN ID without conflict, meeting the requirement for VLAN segmentation across multiple fabric interconnects.

Answer

Use derived VLAN pools based on chassis location

Answer

Create a single VLAN pool that includes all required VLANs

Answer

Configure VLANs directly in the service profile using inline pools

Question 11

A UCS C-Series rack server with a boot from SAN policy fails to discover the LUN during POST. The HBA is correctly zoned with the storage array. Which step should be taken to troubleshoot the issue?

Accepted Answer

Review the SAN boot target configuration in Cisco IMC. Option C is correct because when a UCS C-Series rack server with a boot-from-SAN policy fails to discover the LUN during POST, the most direct troubleshooting step is to review the SAN boot target configuration in Cisco IMC. The HBA is already correctly zoned, so the issue likely lies in the boot target parameters (e.g., WWPN, LUN ID, or target name) configured in the IMC's SAN boot settings, which the HBA uses during the BIOS-level boot process. Verifying these settings ensures the HBA can properly address and log into the storage target.

Answer

Verify VSAN membership on the fabric interconnect

Answer

Update the server firmware to the latest version

Answer

Check the service profile association in UCS Manager

Question 12

Which statement describes how firmware management works for UCS B-Series blade servers?

Accepted Answer

Firmware is managed through host firmware packages in service profiles. In Cisco UCS Manager, firmware for B-Series blade servers is managed through host firmware packages that are included in service profiles. These packages define the exact firmware versions for components like the BIOS, adapter, storage controller, and CIMC, and are automatically applied to the blade when the service profile is associated. This ensures consistent firmware levels across blades without manual intervention on each server.

Answer

Firmware must be manually upgraded on each blade individually

Answer

Firmware is automatically updated via Cisco TAC

Answer

Firmware is stored on the fabric interconnect and loaded directly to the server

Question 13

An organization deploys compute resources using both UCS B-Series blades and C-Series rack servers. The network uses Cisco ACI. Which approach ensures consistent connectivity policies across both compute types?

Accepted Answer

Use a single EPG with appropriate encapsulation for both. Option A is correct because Cisco ACI allows a single Endpoint Group (EPG) to span both UCS B-Series blades and C-Series rack servers by using the appropriate encapsulation (e.g., VLAN or VXLAN) and associating the EPG with both a physical domain (for blades connected via Fabric Interconnects) and a VMM domain (for rack servers managed by VMware vCenter). This ensures consistent connectivity policies, such as contracts and QoS, are applied uniformly across all compute types without requiring separate EPGs.

Answer

Create separate EPGs for blade and rack servers

Answer

It is not possible to have consistent policies between blade and rack

Answer

Use a physical domain for blades and a VMM domain for rack servers

Question 14

A UCS B-Series blade server shows high CPU latency when processing network I/O. The engineer suspects a bottleneck in the I/O subsystem. Which metric in UCS Manager should be examined first?

Accepted Answer

Fabric port error counts. Fabric port error counts directly reflect physical-layer issues (e.g., CRC errors, alignment errors, link flaps) that cause retransmissions and backpressure, leading to high CPU latency on the blade server. In UCS Manager, these counters are the first place to check when suspecting an I/O subsystem bottleneck because they pinpoint problems in the fabric interconnect or cabling before examining higher-layer metrics.

Answer

vNIC utilization percentage

Answer

Memory usage statistics

Answer

Power consumption per server

Question 15

Which TWO UCS components are part of the unified fabric architecture?

Accepted Answer

Fabric Interconnect. The Fabric Interconnect (A) is the core switching component in Cisco UCS, providing both network and storage connectivity over a unified fabric, typically using Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) to consolidate LAN and SAN traffic. The I/O Module (IOM) (C) connects blade servers to the Fabric Interconnects, extending the unified fabric by aggregating traffic from the chassis and forwarding it to the Fabric Interconnects, thereby eliminating the need for separate network and storage switches.

Answer

Storage Array

Answer

Control Plane

Answer

Blade Server