350-601 Storage Network Practice Question
A company uses hard zoning based on World Wide Names (WWNs) to control access between servers and storage arrays. An administrator needs to add a new server with WWPN 50:00:00:00:00:00:01:23 to the zone. What is an advantage of hard zoning over soft zoning?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Hard zoning is enforced by the switch hardware and provides better security.
Hard zoning uses the FC address (or WWN) and is enforced by the switch ASIC, providing security even if a device spoofs its WWN? Actually, hard zoning by WWN uses the WWN to assign FC addresses and enforces zoning at the hardware level, while soft zoning relies on name server queries and can be bypassed. Hard zoning provides better security.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Hard zoning requires less configuration effort.
Why it's wrong here
Hard zoning based on WWNs does not reduce configuration effort compared to soft zoning; both require defining zone members, but hard zoning enforces access control at the fabric level by checking source and destination WWPNs in each frame, whereas soft zoning relies on name-server queries alone. This option is tempting because soft zoning often demands more administrative overhead to manage aliases and prevent unauthorised device discovery, making hard zoning appear less effortful, but in this scenario the administrator is simply adding a single WWPN, so the configuration workload is identical regardless of zoning type.
- ✗
Hard zoning allows devices to communicate across VSANs.
Why it's wrong here
Zoning is within a VSAN.
- ✓
Hard zoning is enforced by the switch hardware and provides better security.
Why this is correct
Hard zoning uses hardware enforcement, preventing traffic from devices not in the zone.
- ✗
Hard zoning prevents unauthorized devices from accessing the fabric even if they spoof a WWN.
Why it's wrong here
WWN spoofing can bypass hard zoning if the spoofed WWN is in the zone.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This 350-601 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Cisco certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the 350-601 exam.