101-01 Riverbed Certified Solutions Associate - WAN Optimization Practice Questions
Prepare for 101-01 with more than an answer.
- Exam fee
- $150 USD
- Level
- Associate
- Valid for
- 2 years
Domains covered on the exam 6
- SteelHead Deployment & SteelCentral Controller for SteelHead27.7%
- SteelHead Application Features18.5%
- SteelHead Mobile Client13.8%
- SteelHead Networking Features7.7%
- SteelHead CX (Cloud Acceleration)9.2%
- WAN Optimization Technology23.1%
- 1
A user with a SteelHead Mobile client installed on their laptop travels from the corporate headquarters to a branch office. Both locations have SteelHead appliances. The user connects to the branch office LAN. How does the SteelHead Mobile client behave in this scenario?
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Correct answer: B
SteelHead Mobile clients are location-aware. When a client detects that it is on a network behind a known SteelHead appliance (based on probing), it will automatically enter a disabled or passthrough state. This prevents double optimization and allows the more powerful branch appliance to handle the WAN optimization task.
- 2
An administrator observes that after enabling SSL optimization, traffic to an important internal web server is being passed through without optimization. The connection history log shows the reason as 'Untrusted Server Certificate'. The server is using a certificate issued by the company's internal Certificate Authority (CA). What is the corrective action?
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Correct answer: B
The 'Untrusted Server Certificate' error means the server-side SteelHead, acting as a client, does not trust the certificate presented by the web server. To resolve this, the root certificate of the internal CA that issued the server's certificate must be imported into the trust store of the server-side SteelHead. This allows the appliance to validate and trust the server's certificate.
- 3
A deployment engineer is setting up a SteelHead CX in an AWS VPC to optimize traffic between on-premises data centers and AWS services. The engineer needs to ensure traffic from on-premises is correctly routed to the SteelHead CX instance for optimization before reaching the application servers in AWS. Which AWS networking component must be modified to achieve this?
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Correct answer: D
To intercept traffic within an AWS VPC for an out-of-path device like a SteelHead CX, you must modify the VPC Route Table. The route table associated with the application server subnets needs to be updated to direct traffic destined for the on-premises network to the network interface of the SteelHead CX instance. This is analogous to using PBR in a physical network.
- 4
True or False: In a Riverbed deployment, Data Streamlining provides the most significant performance improvement for applications that are limited by bandwidth, whereas Transport Streamlining provides the most benefit for applications limited by latency.
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Correct answer: A
This statement is true. Data Streamlining (SDR and compression) reduces the amount of data sent over the WAN, which directly addresses bandwidth constraints. Transport Streamlining (TCP optimization) reduces the impact of latency by minimizing round trips and making TCP more efficient over long-distance links. Application Streamlining also addresses latency by reducing protocol chattiness.
- 5
An organization wants to implement DSCP marking for QoS on their SteelHead appliances to align with their corporate network policies. They need to ensure that optimized VoIP traffic is marked with 'EF' (Expedited Forwarding) and that this marking is preserved across the WAN. Where in the SteelHead configuration is this primarily configured?
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Correct answer: B
DSCP marking is configured within the QoS Classes settings. An administrator would define or edit a QoS class (e.g., a 'Real-Time' class for VoIP), and within that class definition, they would set the 'Outbound DSCP Marking' value to 'EF' (or its decimal equivalent, 46). Then, a QoS rule is created to map VoIP traffic (e.g., by port or application signature) to this class.
- 6
A financial services firm has deployed SteelHead appliances between its New York headquarters and a London branch office. They are optimizing CIFS traffic for accessing large financial models. After deployment, users report that while initial access to a file is slow, subsequent access to the same file by other users is significantly faster. However, if a small change is made to a large file, the entire file seems to be re-transmitted over the WAN. Which RiOS feature is most likely misconfigured or not being fully utilized?
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Correct answer: C
Scalable Data Referencing (SDR) works by breaking data streams into chunks and storing references. If a small change is made, only the new or modified chunks should be sent over the WAN. The described behavior suggests that the system is not effectively identifying and sending only the deltas, which points to an issue with how SDR is processing the CIFS traffic. While other features contribute to performance, the core issue of re-transmitting entire files after small changes is a classic symptom of sub-optimal SDR operation.
- 7
A network architect is designing a SteelHead deployment for a large enterprise with a complex, multi-vendor router environment. To ensure resilience and avoid creating a single point of failure, they want to redirect traffic to a cluster of SteelHead appliances without modifying client configurations or using Policy-Based Routing (PBR). Which deployment method is best suited for this requirement?
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Correct answer: D
WCCP is a Cisco-developed protocol that allows routers to transparently redirect traffic to other devices, such as a cluster of SteelHead appliances. It is ideal for this scenario because it provides load balancing and failover capabilities across multiple appliances and does not require changes to client configurations or complex PBR rules. It is widely supported and suitable for multi-vendor environments.
- 8
A system administrator is deploying a Virtual SteelHead (VSH) appliance on a VMware ESXi host that also runs several other critical business applications. To guarantee a minimum level of performance for WAN optimization, the administrator needs to ensure the VSH virtual machine receives a consistent amount of CPU resources, even when the host is under heavy load. Which VMware feature should be configured for the VSH virtual machine?
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Correct answer: C
A CPU Reservation in VMware guarantees a minimum amount of CPU resources for a virtual machine, regardless of the load from other VMs. This is the correct feature to use to ensure the Virtual SteelHead has the necessary processing power to perform WAN optimization effectively at all times. CPU Limit sets a maximum, and CPU Shares only defines relative priority during contention.
- 9
True or False: When using SteelHead Mobile with the 'Branch Warming' feature enabled, the SteelHead Mobile client's datastore is synchronized only with the server-side SteelHead appliance, not the local branch SteelHead appliance.
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Correct answer: B
The statement is false. The purpose of Branch Warming is to pre-populate the datastore of the local branch SteelHead appliance with data segments that the mobile client has already received. This allows other users in the branch to benefit from the data reduction, warming the branch appliance's cache. Therefore, data is populated in the client, the server-side SteelHead, AND the local branch SteelHead appliance.
- 10
A company has deployed SteelHead CX appliances to accelerate access to their SaaS applications, including Microsoft 365. An administrator needs to ensure that only authenticated Microsoft 365 traffic from their company's tenant is optimized, while blocking optimization for personal Microsoft 365 accounts. Which feature within the SteelHead CX configuration should be used to achieve this?
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Correct answer: C
The SaaS application Identity feature in SteelHead CX allows administrators to define specific tenant IDs or domains for supported SaaS applications like Microsoft 365. By configuring the company's tenant ID, the SteelHead CX can differentiate between corporate and personal traffic, applying optimization policies only to the authorized corporate tenant.
