PCNSE Securing Traffic and App-ID Practice Question
A company has a Palo Alto Networks firewall in a high-availability active/passive setup. After a failover event, the new active firewall is not correctly identifying some custom applications. The custom application objects and signatures are synchronized via Panorama. What is the most likely cause?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to assume Panorama synchronization covers all configuration elements, but locally created objects (not pushed from Panorama) are not synced to the HA peer, leading to identification failures after failover.
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 custom application objects were created locally on the previous active firewall and not pushed from Panorama.
Custom application objects created locally on the previous active firewall are not automatically synchronized to the peer in an active/passive HA pair. Even though Panorama is used for centralized management, local objects are not pushed from Panorama unless they were originally created and pushed via Panorama. After a failover, the new active firewall lacks these locally defined objects, causing it to fail to identify the custom applications.
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 application override rules are not synchronized.
Why it's wrong here
Application override rules are part of the configuration and should synchronize.
- ✗
The security policy rules referencing the custom applications are not present.
Why it's wrong here
Security rules should sync as well.
- ✓
The custom application objects were created locally on the previous active firewall and not pushed from Panorama.
Why this is correct
Correct: Local objects are not shared via Panorama, so they would be missing on the new active firewall.
- ✗
The custom application signatures are not committed on the new active firewall.
Why it's wrong here
If synchronized via Panorama, the commit should include them unless there is a commit failure, but the issue is more likely a missing object.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PCNSE 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 PCNSE exam.