PCNSA Device Management and Services Practice Question
A distributed enterprise has multiple firewalls at different sites. They want to map user IP addresses to usernames using the User-ID agent. The agent must be deployed in a way that minimizes unnecessary traffic and provides redundant coverage. What is the recommended deployment?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates assume a single agent per site (Option C) is sufficient for redundancy, but fail to recognize that without a redundancy group, a single agent failure at a site completely breaks user mapping for that site, whereas a redundancy group provides automatic failover and load sharing.
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
✓
Install multiple User-ID agents in a redundancy group, each serving multiple sites.
Deploying multiple User-ID agents in a redundancy group allows load balancing and failover across sites, ensuring continuous user-to-IP mapping without a single point of failure. Each agent can be configured to monitor specific domain controllers, minimizing cross-site polling traffic while providing redundant coverage. This aligns with best practices for distributed enterprises where centralized polling would create unnecessary WAN traffic and a single agent would lack resilience.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Install a single centralized User-ID agent that polls all domain controllers across sites.
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect: This generates excessive WAN traffic and creates a single point of failure.
- ✗
Use the built-in User-ID agent on each firewall and point it to local domain controllers.
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect: Built-in agent is suitable for small deployments but not for large distributed environments due to processing load.
- ✗
Install one User-ID agent at each site, each configured to communicate only with the local firewall.
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect: This provides no redundancy if an agent fails.
- ✓
Install multiple User-ID agents in a redundancy group, each serving multiple sites.
Why this is correct
Correct: Reduces WAN traffic by having agents local to sites, and redundancy groups ensure continuity.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PCNSA practice question is part of Courseiva's free Palo Alto Networks 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 PCNSA exam.