350-601 Compute Practice Test 3 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A UCS domain has two fabric interconnects in end-host mode. The engineer needs to implement a policy that ensures all traffic from a specific vNIC is load-balanced across both uplinks to the upstream switches. Which type of policy should be used?

Choose an answer to begin — your selection is scored in the full session.

Accepted Answer

Pin group policy. In a UCS domain with fabric interconnects in end-host mode, a Pin Group policy is used to explicitly map a vNIC's traffic to specific uplink ports, ensuring load balancing across the upstream switches. This policy overrides the default MAC-based hashing and allows the engineer to control traffic distribution, which is critical for consistent performance and redundancy.

Answer

Link aggregation policy

Answer

QoS policy

Answer

Network control policy

Question 2

Refer to the exhibit. The blade server is unassociated. Which action is required to assign a service profile to this server?

Accepted Answer

Create a service profile and associate it with the server. A service profile defines the server identity, firmware, policies, and connectivity settings for a UCS blade server. When a server is unassociated, you must create a service profile and then associate it with the server to apply those configurations and bring the server into operation.

Answer

Configure the server's BIOS settings

Answer

Create a boot policy

Answer

Create a vNIC template

Question 3

Refer to the exhibit. An administrator notices the blade firmware is outdated. What is the recommended first step to update the blade firmware?

Accepted Answer

Create a firmware management policy to stage the update. Cisco UCS Manager uses firmware management policies to stage firmware updates across blades in a controlled, non-disruptive manner. Staging the update allows the administrator to schedule the activation during a maintenance window, ensuring all blades receive the same firmware version consistently without immediate impact on production traffic.

Answer

Upgrade the fabric interconnects first

Answer

Update each blade individually using the CIMC

Answer

Reboot all blades immediately

Question 4

Refer to the exhibit. A UCS manager profile is configured with two vNICs on separate fabrics. The server is failing to communicate with the default gateway on VLAN 100. Both vNICs are up. What is the most likely issue?

Accepted Answer

The VLAN 100 is not defined on the fabric interconnects. The most likely issue is that VLAN 100 is not defined on the fabric interconnects. In UCS Manager, even if the vNICs are up and the MAC pool is available, the server cannot communicate with the default gateway if the VLAN is not present on the fabric interconnect's VLAN database. The fabric interconnect must have VLAN 100 created and assigned to the appropriate uplink ports or port-channels for traffic to be forwarded.

Answer

The MAC pool is exhausted

Answer

The boot policy is missing

Answer

The server is using active-standby NIC teaming and the active vNIC is on a fabric that does not have the VLAN

Question 5

A Cisco UCS C-Series rack server requires remote management with KVM and virtual media. Which feature must be enabled?

Accepted Answer

CIMC. The Cisco Integrated Management Controller (CIMC) is the dedicated management interface on UCS C-Series rack servers that provides out-of-band remote management capabilities, including KVM console access and virtual media (vMedia) for mounting ISO images. Without CIMC enabled, these remote management features are unavailable, as they rely on its embedded web GUI, CLI, or API.

Answer

vMedia

Answer

BIOS

Answer

SOL

Question 6

An engineer is designing a UCS Mini deployment for a remote office. The chassis will contain four blade servers. Each server needs two 10GbE connections for data and one 1GbE for management. What is the minimum number of fabric interconnects required?

Accepted Answer

One. A single UCS Mini fabric interconnect (FI) can provide both data and management connectivity for up to eight blade servers in a single chassis. Each blade server requires two 10GbE data connections (from the integrated VIC) and one 1GbE management connection (from the Cisco Integrated Management Controller, or CIMC). The FI aggregates these connections internally, so one FI is sufficient for a four-server deployment, as UCS Mini supports a single FI configuration for non-redundant setups.

Answer

Three

Answer

Four

Answer

Two

Question 7

A UCS domain is experiencing intermittent storage connectivity. The storage admin confirms the SAN is properly zoned and the VSANs are configured. The UCS admin finds that the host interface (HBAs) are showing 'Link Down' intermittently. Which of the following is a likely cause?

Accepted Answer

Faulty SFP or cable. Intermittent 'Link Down' on HBAs, despite correct SAN zoning and VSAN configuration, strongly points to a physical-layer issue. Faulty SFPs or damaged cables cause intermittent link flaps, which manifest as sporadic HBA link-down events. This is the most common cause of such symptoms in UCS environments.

Answer

Incompatible HBA firmware

Answer

Mismatched fabric failover policy

Answer

Incorrect Fibre Channel interface mode on the FI

Question 8

A UCS administrator must ensure that a service profile can be updated without disrupting production traffic. Which two configuration options support this requirement? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Maintenance policy with 'User Ack' and 'Enable Fast Reboot'. A maintenance policy with 'User Ack' requires manual acknowledgment before the update proceeds, and enabling 'Fast Reboot' minimizes traffic disruption by reducing the reboot time. Option E is correct because a maintenance policy with 'On Next Boot' defers the update until the next scheduled reboot, allowing the administrator to control when the change takes effect and avoid impacting production traffic.

Answer

Use of a service profile template with 'Disruptive Update'

Answer

Maintenance policy with 'Immediate'

Answer

Use of a service profile template with 'Upgrade Policy'

Question 9

An engineer is configuring a UCS server for VMware ESXi. The service profile must support NPIV for virtual machine SAN connectivity. Which two conditions must be met? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

The WWPN must be unique per virtual machine. NPIV (N_Port ID Virtualization) requires each virtual machine to have a unique World Wide Port Name (WWPN) so that the SAN fabric can distinguish and manage each VM's storage traffic independently. This allows multiple virtual machines to share a single physical HBA while each appears as a separate initiator to the SAN.

Answer

The vHBA must be set to 'Fabric: A' only

Answer

The vHBA must be set to 'Fabric: dual' mode

Answer

The vHBA must be created with a fabric failover policy

Question 10

Which three components are required to boot a UCS blade server from SAN? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

SAN boot target LUN. A SAN boot target LUN is required because the UCS blade server needs a specific logical unit number (LUN) on the storage array from which to boot the operating system. Without a designated boot LUN, the server has no target storage device to load the OS from over the Fibre Channel (FC) or FCoE SAN fabric.

Answer

iSCSI adapter

Answer

vNIC

Question 11

An administrator needs to reset the CIMC password on a Cisco UCS C-Series server without physical access. Which method can be used?

Accepted Answer

Use the CIMC XML API. The CIMC XML API allows remote management of Cisco UCS C-Series servers, including password resets, without physical access. This API provides a programmatic interface to CIMC functions, enabling administrators to send authenticated XML requests over HTTPS to reset the CIMC password. Physical access is not required because the API operates over the network, making it the correct method for this scenario.

Answer

Use the front panel reset button

Answer

Use UCS Manager

Answer

Connect via serial console during boot

Question 12

A UCS domain is configured with multiple service profile templates. An engineer wants to ensure that when a template is updated, all associated service profiles are automatically updated. Which property must be enabled in the template?

Accepted Answer

'Update on deployment'. The 'Update on deployment' property, when enabled in a service profile template, ensures that any changes made to the template are automatically applied to all associated service profiles during the next deployment or re-deployment. This is the correct mechanism in Cisco UCS Manager to propagate template updates to existing service profiles without manual intervention.

Answer

'Auto update'

Answer

'Enforce consistency'

Answer

'Synchronize to templates'

Question 13

In a Cisco HyperFlex cluster, the management plane uses vCenter, but the data plane uses which protocol to replicate data across nodes?

Accepted Answer

HX Data Platform. In a Cisco HyperFlex cluster, the data plane replication across nodes is handled by the HX Data Platform, which is a distributed, log-structured file system that synchronously replicates data at the hypervisor level. This platform manages all I/O operations and ensures data consistency across the cluster without relying on external storage protocols like Fibre Channel or iSCSI.

Answer

Fibre Channel

Answer

NFS

Answer

iSCSI

Question 14

A company recently deployed Cisco UCS B-Series blades with a single Fabric Interconnect. During a maintenance window, the Fabric Interconnect must be upgraded. Which action ensures minimal disruption to running workloads?

Accepted Answer

Shut down all blades gracefully, upgrade the Fabric Interconnect, then power on blades.. In a single Fabric Interconnect domain, there is no redundancy. Disassociating service profiles while blades are running causes loss of management connectivity and potential network disruption. The only way to perform the upgrade without risking data corruption is to schedule a maintenance window: gracefully shut down all blades, upgrade the Fabric Interconnect, then power on the blades. This ensures workloads are safely stopped and restarted after the upgrade.

Answer

Disassociate service profiles from blades, upgrade the Fabric Interconnect, then re-associate the service profiles.

Answer

Use the UCS Manager GUI to migrate all service profiles to a second Fabric Interconnect.

Answer

Change the boot order of blades to boot from NFS image, then upgrade FI.

Question 15

An engineer notices that a UCS server with a service profile using a QoS policy for FC traffic experiences excessive latency during heavy workloads. The Fibre Channel fabric is configured for lossless operation. Which design issue is most likely causing the latency?

Accepted Answer

The QoS policy for FC traffic does not allocate enough buffer for the no-drop class.. The excessive latency during heavy workloads in a lossless Fibre Channel fabric is most likely due to insufficient buffer allocation for the no-drop class in the QoS policy. In UCS, the no-drop class (typically class-fcoe) must have adequate buffer space to prevent frame drops that trigger retransmissions and latency. Without enough buffer, the switch cannot absorb bursts, leading to congestion and increased latency even though the fabric is lossless.

Answer

The MTU on the Ethernet uplink from the FI is set to 1500 bytes.

Answer

Fibre Channel buffer-to-buffer credit recovery is disabled on the upstream switch.

Answer

The vHBA is configured for 16 Gbps but the upstream switch port is 8 Gbps.