NSE7 Troubleshooting and Diagnostics Practice Question
A FortiGate administrator wants to quickly identify which process is consuming the most CPU on the device. Which CLI command should be used?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse 'get system performance status' (which shows aggregate CPU percentage) with the process-level detail needed, leading them to choose option D instead of the correct process-specific command.
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
✓
diagnose sys top
'diagnose sys top' displays a real-time list of running processes sorted by CPU usage, allowing the administrator to quickly identify the most CPU-intensive process. This command is the standard FortiGate CLI tool for live process-level CPU monitoring, similar to the Linux 'top' command.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
diagnose hardware sysinfo memory
Why it's wrong here
This command reports physical and swap memory usage, not per-process CPU consumption. It is tempting because it is a quick hardware diagnostic, but it would be the right choice when investigating memory exhaustion rather than identifying the top CPU-consuming process.
- ✓
diagnose sys top
Why this is correct
diagnose sys top lists running processes sorted by CPU consumption, refreshed live, so the administrator immediately sees which process is heaviest. This directly satisfies the stem's goal of quickly identifying the top CPU consumer on the FortiGate.
- ✗
diagnose debug application crashlog read
Why it's wrong here
This reads stored crash log entries for crashed applications; it does not sample live CPU usage per process. It is tempting as a troubleshooting command, but it would be correct when diagnosing why a specific daemon terminated unexpectedly, not for ranking current CPU consumers.
- ✗
get system performance status
Why it's wrong here
This displays overall system performance counters such as uptime, sessions and resource averages, but it does not list individual processes ranked by CPU. It is tempting as a general health check, yet it would be correct for a broad status overview, not per-process CPU identification.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This NSE7 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Fortinet 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 NSE7 exam.