NS0-175 Cisco and NetApp Flexpod Design Practice Questions
Prepare for NS0-175 with more than an answer.
- Exam fee
- $150 USD
- Level
- Specialist
- Valid for
- 3 years
Domains covered on the exam 4
- FlexPod Design35%
- Networking25%
- Security20%
- Tools20%
- 1
The cooperative support model for FlexPod is designed to streamline issue resolution. If a customer opens a case for a VM performance issue, who is initially responsible for diagnosing the problem and engaging other vendors if necessary? (Choose TWO.)
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Correct answer: A, B
- 2
True or False: A Cisco UCS Service Profile Template configured with 'Initial Template' policy allows for configuration changes to be pushed from the template to all derived Service Profiles simultaneously.
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Correct answer: B
An 'Initial Template' is used only for the initial creation of Service Profiles. Once created, the profiles are decoupled from the template, and changes to the template are not propagated. To maintain a persistent relationship where template changes are pushed to derived profiles, an 'Updating Template' must be used.
- 3
You are designing the physical cabling for a FlexPod with Cisco UCS 6454 Fabric Interconnects and Nexus 93180YC-FX switches. To achieve maximum bandwidth and redundancy for the appliance ports connecting the FIs to the SAN, what is the recommended configuration?
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Correct answer: B
To achieve both maximum bandwidth and redundancy, a Fibre Channel port-channel should be used. According to best practices, the member links of this port-channel should be distributed across the two redundant Nexus switches (or MDS switches in a traditional design). This ensures that the failure of a single link, port, or entire switch does not sever SAN connectivity from the Fabric Interconnect.
- 4
A customer is concerned about ransomware attacks. They want to ensure that their NetApp Snapshot copies, which are their primary recovery mechanism, cannot be deleted by an attacker who gains administrative credentials to the ONTAP cluster. Which NetApp feature should be implemented in the FlexPod design?
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Correct answer: B
SnapLock is NetApp's Write-Once-Read-Many (WORM) technology. When Snapshot copies are locked with SnapLock, they become immutable and cannot be deleted, even by an administrator, until the specified retention period expires. This provides a robust defense against ransomware attacks that attempt to delete recovery points. MFA is a preventative measure, but SnapLock protects the data even if credentials are compromised.
- 5
The command
New-Az____ -Name 'MyRG' -Location 'EastUS'is used in PowerShell to create a new Azure Resource Group.Show answer details
Correct answer: C
The correct PowerShell cmdlet to create a new Azure Resource Group is
New-AzResourceGroup. This is a foundational command for managing Azure resources and relevant for FlexPod professionals working with hybrid cloud solutions like NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP. - 6
A financial services client is designing a FlexPod Datacenter solution to support a high-frequency trading application. The primary requirements are sub-millisecond storage latency and deterministic network performance. The design uses Cisco UCS X-Series compute, NetApp AFF A900 storage, and Cisco Nexus 9336C-FX2 switches. Which protocol and network configuration should be prioritized to meet these stringent performance requirements?
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Correct answer: C
For sub-millisecond latency and deterministic performance required by high-frequency trading, NVMe/RoCEv2 is the optimal choice. RoCEv2 (RDMA over Converged Ethernet) requires a lossless network, which is achieved by enabling Data Center Bridging (DCB) features like Priority-based Flow Control (PFC) on the Nexus switches. This configuration minimizes latency by bypassing much of the traditional network stack. iSCSI and NFS, while performant, cannot match the low latency of an RDMA-based protocol.
- 7
During a security audit of a multi-tenant FlexPod environment, it was discovered that a compromised VM in Tenant A's VLAN was able to send management traffic to the NetApp SVM management LIF of Tenant B. Both tenants are on the same NetApp AFF cluster but use separate VLANs and SVMs. Which configuration error is the most likely cause of this security vulnerability?
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Correct answer: B
The default firewall policy for a LIF allows traffic from all subnets, which is insecure for a multi-tenant environment. If the management LIFs for both tenants used this default, and there was any L3 path between the VLANs, cross-tenant management access would be possible. Best practice is to create custom firewall policies for each SVM's management LIF that only permit access from authorized management subnets for that specific tenant. While being in the same IPspace or having an open export policy are issues, they don't specifically explain the cross-tenant management access.
- 8
An architect is designing a FlexPod solution for a distributed analytics workload that requires massive parallel processing across many compute nodes. The design must accommodate bursts of east-west traffic between nodes without creating bottlenecks. Which Cisco Nexus feature is most critical for providing a non-blocking, highly available network fabric between the UCS Fabric Interconnects and the core network?
graph TD subgraph Core Network CORE1 & CORE2 end subgraph FlexPod Nexus Layer NEXUS1(Nexus 9K A) NEXUS2(Nexus 9K B) end subgraph FlexPod Compute Layer FI_A(UCS FI-A) FI_B(UCS FI-B) end CORE1 & CORE2 -- L3 Routing --> NEXUS1 & NEXUS2 NEXUS1 -- vPC Peer Link --- NEXUS2 NEXUS1 -- vPC Port-Channel --> FI_A NEXUS2 -- vPC Port-Channel --> FI_A NEXUS1 -- vPC Port-Channel --> FI_B NEXUS2 -- vPC Port-Channel --> FI_BShow answer details
Correct answer: B
Virtual Port Channel (vPC) is the key technology used in FlexPod to provide a loop-free, active-active Layer 2 topology. It allows downstream devices like the UCS Fabric Interconnects to form a single port-channel across two separate physical Nexus switches. This doubles the available bandwidth and provides seamless failover if one Nexus switch fails, which is critical for the high-availability and high-bandwidth east-west traffic patterns of distributed analytics.
- 9
A customer wants to deploy a new FlexPod solution using Cisco Intersight Managed Mode (IMM) for the UCS B-Series servers. They also want to integrate their existing NetApp ONTAP cluster and VMware vCenter instance for unified monitoring within the Intersight dashboard. What component is required to facilitate this integration?
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Correct answer: C
Cisco Intersight Assist is a virtual appliance deployed on-premises that acts as a bridge between the cloud-based Intersight platform and on-premises endpoints like NetApp ONTAP and VMware vCenter. It enables Intersight to claim and monitor these third-party systems, providing a single pane of glass for the entire FlexPod stack, even when using Intersight Managed Mode for compute.
- 10
You are designing a FlexPod solution that will host a sensitive database requiring data-at-rest encryption. The corporate security policy mandates that encryption keys must be managed by a centralized, FIPS 140-2 compliant hardware security module (HSM) appliance. Which NetApp ONTAP feature and protocol must be configured to meet this requirement?
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Correct answer: C
The requirement for a centralized, FIPS 140-2 compliant HSM dictates the use of an external key manager. NetApp ONTAP integrates with external key managers using the Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP). NetApp Volume Encryption (NVE) is the feature that provides software-based data-at-rest encryption and can be configured to retrieve its keys from the external KMIP server, thus satisfying the security policy.
