350-601 Compute Practice Question
A large enterprise is using Cisco UCS Manager to manage a chassis with 8 B-Series blades. The environment uses a combination of Ethernet and Fibre Channel traffic. The UCS fabric interconnect (FI) is configured in end-host mode with two uplinks to the core network. Recently, the engineering team deployed a new service profile for a high-performance computing workload that requires 40Gbps Ethernet per vNIC and 16Gbps Fibre Channel per vHBA. The server has two vNICs and two vHBAs. After deployment, the server's OS shows only 10Gbps connectivity on each vNIC. The engineer checks UCS Manager and sees that the vNIC templates are set to '10 Gbps' and the vHBA templates are set to '16 Gbps' but the actual link speed for vNICs is only 10Gbps. The fabric interconnect ports are configured as 40Gbps uplinks. The engineer has verified that the server adapter supports 40Gbps. What is the most likely cause of the speed mismatch?
⚠ Common exam trap
Cisco often tests the misconception that the physical adapter or uplink speed automatically determines the vNIC speed, when in fact the vNIC template's requested speed is the controlling parameter in UCS Manager.
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
✓
The vNIC template used in the service profile specifies a requested speed of '10 Gbps' instead of '40 Gbps'.
The vNIC template in the service profile defines the requested speed for the virtual NIC. If the template is set to '10 Gbps', the UCS Manager will allocate only 10 Gbps of bandwidth per vNIC, regardless of the physical adapter's capability or the uplink speed. Since the engineer verified the adapter supports 40 Gbps and the uplinks are 40 Gbps, the mismatch is directly caused by the template configuration.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
The fabric interconnect uplinks are configured as 40Gbps, but the port channel is not configured correctly, causing speed negotiation to fail.
Why it's wrong here
The uplinks are correct; the issue is at the vNIC template level, not the physical uplinks.
- ✓
The vNIC template used in the service profile specifies a requested speed of '10 Gbps' instead of '40 Gbps'.
Why this is correct
The vNIC template's speed setting determines the allocated speed; it must be set to 40Gbps.
- ✗
The server's adapter policy is set to 'Windows' mode, which limits Ethernet speeds to 10Gbps.
Why it's wrong here
Adapter policies affect the number of queues and capabilities, not the link speed.
- ✗
The QoS policy applied to the vNIC limits the bandwidth to 10Gbps.
Why it's wrong here
QoS policies shape traffic but do not change the negotiated link speed.
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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.