350-601 Compute Practice Test 7 — 15 Questions

Question 1

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 2

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

Question 3

Which THREE of the following are valid UCS Manager RBAC roles?

Accepted Answer

Storage Administrator. All five options are built-in RBAC roles in UCS Manager. The roles are: Storage Administrator, Network Administrator, UCS Administrator, Operations Administrator, and Server Administrator. Each role provides specific administrative privileges within the UCS environment.

Question 4

Which TWO troubleshooting steps should be taken when a UCS blade server fails to discover during the initial discovery process?

Accepted Answer

Verify the physical cabling between the IOM and fabric interconnect. The initial discovery process relies on the IOM (Fabric Interconnect) establishing a link to the blade server through the chassis midplane. If the physical cabling between the IOM and the fabric interconnect is faulty, loose, or using incorrect transceivers, the discovery will fail. Verifying this cabling is a fundamental first step in troubleshooting discovery failures.

Answer

Immediately replace the blade server

Answer

Power cycle the chassis

Answer

Reset the fabric interconnect to factory defaults

Question 5

You are a data center engineer at a financial company. The production environment uses UCS B-Series blades with fabric interconnects in a clustered configuration. One of the blades (blade 3) is running a critical trading application. The server is associated with a service profile that boots from SAN using a single HBA path. During a routine network upgrade, the storage administrator reports that LUN 0 on the primary storage array is no longer accessible from blade 3. The server is still powered on, but the application is unresponsive. You check UCS Manager and see that the vHBA for blade 3 is in an 'Unavailable' state. The fabric interconnect ports show no errors. The storage array logs show that the target port is active. Which action should you take to restore connectivity with minimal downtime?

Accepted Answer

Unassign and reassign the vHBA's WWPN from the pool in the service profile. The vHBA being in an 'Unavailable' state while the fabric interconnect ports and storage target are healthy indicates a WWPN (World Wide Port Name) conflict or corruption at the fabric level. Unassigning and reassigning the vHBA's WWPN from the pool forces UCS Manager to generate a new WWPN and re-login to the SAN fabric, re-establishing the Fibre Channel session without requiring a server reboot or service profile re-association, minimizing downtime for the critical trading application.

Answer

Change the boot policy to use a secondary LUN on the same array

Answer

Reset the fabric interconnect to restore cluster state

Answer

Reboot the server to force re-initialization of the HBA

Question 6

You manage a UCS domain with two fabric interconnects (FI-A and FI-B) in an cluster. The domain contains 8 blade servers. After a power failure, both FIs come back online, but the cluster experiences a split-brain situation where both FIs claim to be primary. The subordinate FI (FI-B) shows all blades as 'Discovery' state. You suspect configuration mismatch. You have console access to both FIs. Which recovery procedure should be performed to restore a stable cluster?

Accepted Answer

On the subordinate FI (FI-B), enter the recovery mode and force a re-initialization, then reset the cluster. In a UCS split-brain scenario where the subordinate FI (FI-B) shows blades in 'Discovery' state due to a configuration mismatch, the proper recovery is to boot FI-B into recovery mode (using the 'recovery' boot option or pressing Ctrl+R at the appropriate prompt) and force a re-initialization, which resets its configuration to match the primary FI (FI-A). After re-initialization, resetting the cluster (via the 'cluster reset' command or equivalent) re-establishes the primary-subordinate relationship and synchronizes the configuration, restoring stable operation without affecting the primary FI's data or requiring a full factory reset.

Answer

Reset both FIs to factory defaults and reconfigure from backup

Answer

Boot the FIs into the EFI shell and clear the flash

Answer

Perform a stateful switchover (SSO) on both FIs

Question 7

A startup company is deploying a new web application on UCS B-Series blades. They want to use PXE boot for rapid provisioning. The network team has configured a DHCP server and a PXE server on the same VLAN as the UCS service profiles. The system administrator creates a service profile for a blade and sets the boot policy to 'PXE' as the first boot device, and local disk as second. However, when the blade powers on, it boots from the local disk instead of PXE. The PXE server logs show no request from the blade's MAC address. The DHCP server logs show no activity. The fabric interconnect is configured with a default VLAN. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The vNIC on the service profile is not configured with the correct native VLAN. PXE boot requires the vNIC to have an untagged native VLAN that matches the PXE/DHCP subnet. If the native VLAN on the vNIC is different, DHCP requests are not forwarded. Option B wrong because PXE boot order is usually correct. Option C wrong because it would cause different symptoms. Option D wrong because service profile association is fine.

Answer

The boot policy order lists local disk before PXE

Answer

The service profile is not properly associated with the blade

Answer

The fabric interconnect uplinks are not in trunk mode

Question 8

A UCS B-Series blade server (blade 5) has been running a database application for months. Recently, the storage team upgraded the SAN firmware. Since then, the blade experiences intermittent 'SCSI command timeout' errors in the system logs. The application performance degrades periodically. You check the UCS Manager performance data and see that the vHBA statistics show a high number of 'Link Reset' events. The storage array logs show no errors. The fibre channel cables are new. Which step should you take to resolve the issue?

Accepted Answer

Update the HBA firmware on the blade to match the SAN compatibility matrix. The SAN firmware upgrade likely introduced a change in the Fibre Channel protocol behavior (e.g., link initialization or error recovery) that is incompatible with the current HBA firmware on the blade. The high 'Link Reset' events indicate that the vHBA is repeatedly reinitializing the link, which directly causes SCSI command timeouts. Updating the HBA firmware to match the SAN compatibility matrix ensures the HBA can properly negotiate and interoperate with the upgraded SAN fabric, resolving the intermittent timeouts.

Answer

Delete and recreate the vHBA in the service profile

Answer

Replace the fibre channel cables between the IOM and storage

Answer

Rezone the SAN fabric to use a different target port

Question 9

Your company integrates UCS B-Series blades with VMware vSphere using UCS Manager and vCenter. You have configured a UCS service profile with a boot policy that boots from SAN. The virtual infrastructure administrator reports that a new ESXi host (blade 6) fails to meet host profile compliance for the 'Boot Device' policy. The host profile requires the boot LUN to be set to 'VMware LUN' but the UCS boot policy uses a generic 'SAN Target' setting. The ESXi host boots and runs, but compliance checks fail. You cannot modify the host profile because it is managed by a separate team. Which action should you take to resolve the compliance failure while maintaining boot functionality?

Accepted Answer

Change the UCS boot policy to use the 'VMware LUN' target type and ensure the LUN is presented correctly. The host profile compliance failure is caused by the UCS boot policy using a generic 'SAN Target' type instead of the 'VMware LUN' target type. By changing the boot policy to 'VMware LUN' and ensuring the correct LUN is presented, the ESXi host will boot from the same LUN but now the boot device name will match what the host profile expects, resolving the compliance check without affecting boot functionality.

Answer

Create a new vCenter cluster with a different host profile

Answer

Use a local disk boot policy and install ESXi locally

Answer

Request the host profile to be updated to accept generic SAN targets

Question 10

An engineer is configuring a Cisco UCS Manager deployment. The goal is to enforce the organization's security policy by limiting administrative access based on job roles. Which two actions should the engineer take? (Select two.)

Accepted Answer

Implement role-based access control using LDAP groups mapped to roles.. C is correct because integrating LDAP groups with RBAC allows the organization to enforce security policies by mapping directory groups to UCS roles, centralizing authentication and authorization. This approach ensures that administrative access is limited based on job roles without managing local users, aligning with the goal of role-based access control.

Answer

Disable the default password policy for all local users.

Answer

Use the default maintenance policy for all service profiles.

Answer

Create a local user with the admin role and assign it to all service profiles.

Question 11

An organization has deployed a Cisco UCS B-Series blade server with a Fabric Interconnect pair. The administrator is tasked with deploying a new server for a critical application. The administrator creates a service profile from an existing template that includes vNIC, vHBA, and storage policies. The blade is located in chassis 2, slot 1. The administrator attempts to associate the profile with this blade but fails with the error: 'No suitable compute resource available.' The administrator verifies that the blade's firmware is updated, that the blade is not already associated with another profile, and that it has sufficient memory and CPU. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The server pool policy is not assigned to the service profile template.. The error 'No suitable compute resource available' typically occurs when the service profile is configured to use a server pool, but no server pool policy is assigned to the service profile template. Without a server pool, the Fabric Interconnect cannot identify which blades are eligible for association, even if the blade itself is available and meets hardware requirements. Assigning a server pool policy to the template ensures that blades in the specified pool (e.g., chassis 2, slot 1) are considered as valid compute resources.

Answer

The blade's firmware version is incompatible with the service profile.

Answer

The blade is in the wrong chassis slot.

Answer

The vNIC/vHBA policies in the service profile have invalid MAC/WWN assignments.

Question 12

A data center engineer is using Cisco Intersight to manage a hybrid infrastructure that includes UCS servers and HyperFlex clusters. The engineer needs to deploy a new server profile to a UCS domain that is claimed in Intersight. The profile includes a firmware policy that specifies version 4.1(3c) for the motherboard and 5.0(3a) for the storage controller. The target server is a C-Series rack mount server currently running firmware version 4.0(2a) on the motherboard. After deploying the profile, the server goes into a 'Pending' state and does not become 'Selectable'. The engineer checks the UCS Manager and sees that the server is in 'Discovery Failed' state. The engineer has verified that network connectivity is fine and the CIMC is accessible. What should the engineer do to resolve this?

Accepted Answer

Update the firmware manually on the server using UCS Manager before deploying the profile.. When a firmware policy in Intersight specifies a version that is not compatible with the current firmware on the server, the server may enter a 'Discovery Failed' state. In this scenario, the motherboard firmware must be updated to a version that supports the storage controller firmware 5.0(3a) before the profile can be applied. Manually updating the firmware via UCS Manager ensures the server meets the prerequisite firmware baseline, allowing Intersight to complete the deployment.

Answer

Ensure that the firmware policy in Intersight is consistent with the current firmware on the server.

Answer

Remove the server from Intersight inventory and re-claim it.

Answer

Reset the server's CIMC to factory defaults and re-discover it.

Question 13

A large enterprise runs a Cisco HyperFlex cluster with three nodes, managed through Intersight. After a planned maintenance window, the administrator notices that one of the nodes is in a 'Degraded' state and the cluster is running in 'Read-Only' mode. The administrator checks the Intersight dashboard and sees that the node's disk status shows 'Missing' for one of the SSDs. The administrator also notices that the node's IP address is reachable and the ESXi host is still operational. The administrator reviews the cluster health and sees no other alerts. What is the most likely root cause and the recommended action to restore full cluster health?

Accepted Answer

The SSD failed due to a hardware fault; the administrator should replace the SSD and then use Intersight to rebuild the node's disk group.. A is correct because a missing SSD in a HyperFlex node triggers a 'Degraded' state and forces the cluster into 'Read-Only' mode to prevent data corruption. Since the node's IP is reachable and ESXi is operational, the issue is a hardware fault, not a network or CVM problem. Replacing the SSD and using Intersight to rebuild the disk group restores the node's storage capacity and cluster health.

Answer

The node lost connectivity to the cluster's internal network; the administrator should check the network switches and restore the VLAN configuration.

Answer

The node's controller VM (stCVM) is not running; the administrator should reboot the node and wait for the CVM to start.

Answer

The cluster has split-brain due to a partition; the administrator should force a cluster consensus by shutting down the other nodes.

Question 14

A data center engineer is configuring VLANs in a Cisco UCS domain. Which TWO statements are true regarding VLAN configuration?

Accepted Answer

Each vNIC must have a native VLAN specified for untagged traffic on that vNIC.. In a Cisco UCS environment, each vNIC must have a native VLAN specified to handle untagged traffic on that interface. The native VLAN is used for traffic that does not have an 802.1Q tag, and it must be explicitly defined in the vNIC configuration within the service profile to ensure proper handling of untagged frames.

Answer

VLANs can be created directly within a service profile without prior global definition.

Answer

VLANs can be created only through the CLI of UCS Manager.

Answer

Service profiles can override the VLAN ID of a global VLAN definition.

Question 15

Refer to the exhibit. An engineer is creating a service profile template in Cisco UCSM. What is the effect of setting the vnet to 'VM_Network' for vNIC_A?

Accepted Answer

The VM_Network VLAN must be previously defined in the global VLAN database.. In Cisco UCS Manager, when you assign a VLAN to a vNIC in a service profile template, that VLAN must already exist in the global VLAN database. The VM_Network VLAN is not automatically created; it must be pre-defined under the LAN > VLANs section. Option D correctly states this requirement.

Answer

The VM_Network VLAN is a pre-defined FCoE VLAN for storage traffic.

Answer

The vNIC_A will be placed in VLAN 1 (default) if VM_Network does not exist.

Answer

The VM_Network VLAN will be created automatically as a standard VLAN.