3.0 Storage Network
Free Implementing Cisco Data Center Core Technologies practice — 6 questions on 3.0 Storage Network, with explanations. No sign-up. Full 12-question mixed test →
Two Cisco MDS 9000 switches are connected via an E_port ISL in VSAN 100. Both switches have a zone named 'ZONE_DB01' in their active zone database, but the member pWWN lists differ between the two switches. When the ISL comes up and the switches attempt to merge zone databases, what is the result?
Cisco NX-OS zone merge rules state that if the same zone name exists in both switches' active zonesets with different member lists, the merge fails and the interface is isolated in that VSAN (VSAN merge failure due to zone conflict), completely blocking traffic on that link for the VSAN until the administrator resolves the discrepancy.
A Cisco Nexus switch is configured as an FCoE Fibre Channel Forwarder (FCF) and assigns MAC addresses to FCoE-enabled end devices during FIP fabric login. Which MAC address addressing mode does Cisco NX-OS use for this purpose?
Cisco NX-OS FCoE implementations exclusively use FPMA, where the FCF derives a unique MAC address for the FCoE virtual interface based on the FC-MAP value and the assigned FCID during FLOGI/FDISC. This is a mandatory exam fact since Cisco platforms do not support SPMA.
An NPV edge switch currently has four active NP uplinks to an NPV core switch, each servicing multiple host FLOGIs. An administrator adds a fifth NP uplink for additional bandwidth and issues the command 'npv auto-load-balance disruptive' to rebalance server logins across all five uplinks. What is the immediate effect on the existing host sessions?
The 'disruptive' keyword in 'npv auto-load-balance disruptive' is specifically designed to force immediate rebalancing of all existing FLOGI sessions across all NP uplinks, including the newly added one, which causes a momentary traffic hit to previously connected hosts as they are logged out and back in.
An ISL between two Cisco MDS switches is configured as an E_port trunk. Switch A has 'switchport trunk allowed vsan 10,20,30' configured on the interface, while Switch B has 'switchport trunk allowed vsan 10,20' configured on its corresponding interface. What is the resulting operational state of this trunk link?
Cisco NX-OS trunk negotiation only brings up VSANs that are common to the allowed-vsan lists on both ends of the ISL. VSANs present on only one side (VSAN 30 here) are simply excluded from that trunk instance, while the common VSANs (10 and 20) remain fully operational — this is a partial trunk, not a total failure.
A data center security team wants to prevent any unauthorized switch from joining a Fibre Channel fabric or being assigned a domain ID in a specific VSAN, even if that switch could otherwise pass FC-SP authentication. They need to explicitly bind a set of authorized switch WWNs to specific VSANs so no other switch can merge into the fabric. Which Cisco MDS/NX-OS feature should be configured?
Fabric binding is the Cisco NX-OS feature designed specifically to restrict which switches (identified by WWN) are permitted to be part of a fabric and to be assigned domain IDs within a VSAN, providing switch-level fabric access control independent of end-device authentication.
A VSAN has in-order delivery (IOD) enabled (the default) and two ISLs between the same pair of switches are configured as separate parallel E_ports (not combined into a port channel). One of the individual ISLs fails due to a physical link issue. What is the expected behavior regarding frame delivery during the FSPF path recalculation?
With IOD enabled, when a parallel (non-port-channeled) ISL fails and FSPF must recompute the path, NX-OS enforces the in-order delivery guarantee by dropping frames that would otherwise arrive out of order and holding new traffic for the IOD drop/hold timer before using the new path — this is precisely why Cisco recommends combining parallel ISLs into a port channel, since port channel member failures are transparent to FSPF and do not trigger this drop/hold behavior.
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