SISE Architecture And Deployment Practice Test 2 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company is deploying Cisco ISE in a distributed architecture with a Primary Policy Administration Node (PAN), a Secondary PAN, and two Policy Service Nodes (PSNs). The security team wants to ensure that if the Primary PAN becomes unavailable, the Secondary PAN automatically takes over administrative functions. Which configuration is required to achieve this automatic failover?

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

Accepted Answer

Enable PAN Auto-Failover on the Primary PAN and register the Secondary PAN as a standby.. PAN Auto-Failover allows the Secondary PAN to automatically become the Primary PAN if the Primary fails. This requires enabling the feature on the Primary PAN and having a registered Secondary PAN. The other options do not provide automatic failover for administrative functions.

Answer

Enable the Monitoring persona on the Secondary PAN to allow it to take over.

Answer

Configure the Secondary PAN as a standalone node and manually promote it when needed.

Answer

Set up a load balancer in front of the PANs to distribute administrative traffic.

Question 2

An administrator is setting up a new Cisco ISE deployment and wants to ensure that the Policy Service Nodes (PSNs) can handle authentication requests even if the Primary Policy Administration Node (PAN) goes down. What is the recommended deployment practice?

Accepted Answer

Deploy at least two PSNs and ensure they are configured with the same policy set and have a Secondary PAN for redundancy.. For high availability, it is recommended to deploy multiple PSNs and a Secondary PAN. PSNs cache policies and can continue to authenticate endpoints if the PAN is unavailable. The Secondary PAN ensures administrative redundancy. This design minimizes downtime for both authentication and administration.

Answer

Deploy a Secondary PAN and ensure that PSNs are registered to both PANs for policy updates.

Answer

Deploy at least two PSNs and configure them to use the Secondary PAN for policy retrieval.

Answer

Deploy multiple PSNs and ensure they have network connectivity to the PANs and to each other.

Question 3

A network engineer is deploying Cisco ISE in a distributed setup with one Primary PAN, one Secondary PAN, and three PSNs. The engineer wants to ensure that the PSNs can authenticate endpoints even if both PANs are unavailable for an extended period. Which statement about PSN behavior is correct?

Accepted Answer

PSNs will continue to authenticate using cached policies until they are restarted or the cache expires.. PSNs cache policies locally and can continue to authenticate endpoints even if the PANs are unavailable. The cache persists until the PSN is restarted or manually cleared, allowing for uninterrupted authentication during extended PAN outages. This is a key aspect of ISE's distributed architecture.

Answer

PSNs will stop authenticating endpoints after 24 hours if they cannot reach a PAN.

Answer

PSNs will reject authentication requests until a PAN becomes available again.

Answer

PSNs will automatically promote one of themselves to take over the PAN role.

Question 4

A network administrator is planning to deploy Cisco ISE in a distributed architecture. The administrator needs to ensure that the deployment supports high availability and scalability. Which two statements about the roles of the Primary PAN and Secondary PAN are true? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

The Primary PAN is responsible for configuration changes and policy management.. The Primary PAN manages configuration and policies, while the Secondary PAN synchronizes this data to provide redundancy. The Secondary PAN does not handle authentication or MnT functions by default. These roles ensure high availability of the administrative plane.

Answer

The Secondary PAN can be used for monitoring and troubleshooting (MnT) functions.

Answer

The Secondary PAN can be used to offload some of the authentication load from the Primary PAN.

Answer

The Primary PAN also acts as a PSN by default.

Question 5

A customer is planning a large campus deployment with 50,000 concurrent endpoints. Which persona should be dedicated to handle the authentication load to ensure high performance?

Accepted Answer

Policy Service Node (PSN). Policy Service Nodes (PSNs) are the workhorses of an ISE deployment — they handle all authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) requests from network devices via RADIUS. For 50,000 concurrent endpoints, the deployment must scale PSNs horizontally (typically in a dedicated PSN persona) so authentication load is distributed and no single node becomes a bottleneck.

Answer

Policy Administration Node (PAN)

Answer

Standalone Node

Answer

Monitoring and Troubleshooting Node (MnT)

Question 6

When configuring a load balancer for a group of PSNs, what is the best practice for handling RADIUS traffic?

Accepted Answer

Source-IP affinity (persistence). RADIUS is a UDP-based protocol where the NAS and PSN maintain session state across the Access-Request/Access-Challenge/Access-Accept exchange. If a load balancer distributes successive packets from the same client to different PSNs, the challenge/response state is lost and authentication fails. Source-IP affinity (persistence) ensures all RADIUS packets from a given NAS or endpoint land on the same PSN for the duration of the session.

Answer

SSL-offloading

Answer

Active-passive failover only

Answer

Round-robin without persistence

Question 7

You are configuring a new ISE node for your deployment. What is the correct sequence to join a secondary node to the existing deployment?

Accepted Answer

Initiate registration from the Primary PAN under Administration > System > Deployment. In Cisco ISE, the Primary PAN is the authoritative node that maintains the deployment database and controls node registration. To add a secondary node, you log into the Primary PAN, navigate to Administration > System > Deployment, and use the 'Register an ISE node' action to initiate the join. The secondary node must already be installed and reachable, but the registration workflow is always driven from the Primary PAN, not the joining node.

Answer

Configure the Secondary node as an standalone node and merge databases

Answer

Run the join command from the secondary node's CLI

Answer

Create a cluster via the ISE CLI setup wizard

Question 8

Which license type is required to enable advanced profiling and posture services on Cisco ISE?

Accepted Answer

ISE Advantage. Cisco ISE Advantage is the highest-tier license and is required for advanced profiling and posture services. Profiling collects endpoint attributes to classify devices, while posture assesses endpoint compliance (e.g., antivirus, OS patches) before granting access. These features are exclusive to the Advantage license; lower tiers like Essentials or Premier do not include them. The Device Admin license is for TACACS+ device administration, not for profiling or posture.

Answer

ISE Premier

Answer

Device Admin License

Answer

ISE Essentials

Question 9

When designing an ISE deployment across WAN links, what is the primary recommendation regarding MnT nodes?

Accepted Answer

Keep the MnT node in the same high-speed network as the PAN. Cisco recommends keeping the MnT (Monitoring and Troubleshooting) node in the same high-speed network as the PAN (Policy Administration Node) because MnT stores and processes large volumes of logging and session data, and it frequently communicates with the PAN for policy and configuration synchronization. Placing MnT across a WAN link introduces latency and potential replication issues.

Answer

Distributed MnTs across all WAN sites

Answer

Always place MnT in the cloud

Answer

Disable logging for remote sites

Question 10

You are deploying a distributed ISE architecture and need to ensure that the Policy Administration Node (PAN) maintains configuration integrity. Which mechanism is used to synchronize configuration changes from the Primary PAN to all secondary nodes?

Accepted Answer

Distributed Configuration Synchronization via HTTPS. In a distributed ISE deployment, the Primary PAN synchronizes configuration changes to all secondary nodes using a secure HTTPS-based mechanism called Distributed Configuration Synchronization. This ensures that all nodes have a consistent view of policies, identities, and other configuration data. The synchronization occurs automatically when changes are made on the Primary PAN, and it uses TLS to protect the data in transit.

Answer

Rsync over SSH

Answer

RADIUS Change of Authorization (CoA)

Answer

SNMPv3 Trap propagation

Question 11

Which menu path is used to view the status of all nodes in an ISE deployment?

Accepted Answer

Administration > System > Deployment. In Cisco ISE, the status of all nodes in a deployment is viewed under Administration > System > Deployment. This page lists every node, its persona (PAN, PSN, MnT), role (Primary/Secondary), and operational status, allowing administrators to monitor node health and synchronization.

Answer

Operations > Reports

Answer

Administration > Maintenance

Answer

Policy > Policy Elements

Question 12

In a distributed environment, if the Primary PAN goes offline, what happens to the Secondary PAN?

Accepted Answer

It remains in Secondary mode until manually promoted. In a Cisco ISE distributed deployment, the Secondary PAN does not automatically take over the Primary role. The Secondary PAN remains in a standby state and must be manually promoted via the ISE CLI (application configure ise) or GUI before it can serve as the active Primary PAN. This design prevents split-brain scenarios where two nodes simultaneously believe they are Primary.

Answer

It disconnects from the PSNs

Answer

It stops accepting configuration changes

Answer

It automatically assumes the Primary role

Question 13

Which specific ISE process is responsible for managing the communication between the PAN and PSNs?

Accepted Answer

ISE Messaging Service. The ISE Messaging Service is the internal process that handles communication between the Policy Administration Node (PAN) and the Policy Service Nodes (PSNs). It uses a messaging bus to propagate policy configuration, session data, and administrative changes across the deployment.

Answer

Application Server

Answer

Radius Core

Answer

Monitoring Service

Question 14

When adding a secondary PAN, what is the consequence if the time synchronization (NTP) differs significantly between nodes?

Accepted Answer

The registration process will fail. When adding a secondary PAN to a Cisco ISE deployment, time synchronization is critical for certificate validation and secure communication. If NTP differs significantly between nodes, the secondary PAN will fail to register because the certificate exchange and authentication processes require synchronized clocks. This is a common requirement in distributed systems to prevent replay attacks and ensure log integrity.

Answer

The node will operate in read-only mode

Answer

The node will join but logs will be out of order

Answer

Only TACACS+ services will be impacted

Question 15

What is the default persona of a newly installed Cisco ISE appliance before any configuration changes?

Accepted Answer

Standalone. A newly installed Cisco ISE appliance defaults to the Standalone persona, meaning it performs all roles (Policy Administration Node, Policy Service Node, and Monitoring Node) on a single node. This is the out-of-box state before any distributed deployment configuration is applied. Administrators must explicitly promote or register nodes to change personas.

Answer

PSN

Answer

Monitoring node

Answer

Primary PAN