Free Practice Questions for HP HPE7-A01 Exam

A session-based ACL is applied to traffic entering or leaving a port or VLAN based on the direction of the session initiation. To allow ping from any wired station to wireless clients but not vice versa, a session-based ACL should be used to deny icmp echo traffic from any source to any destination, and then permit icmp echo-reply traffic from any source to user destination. The user role represents wireless clients in AOS 10. References: https://techhub.hpe.com/eginfolib/Aruba/OS-CX_10.04/5200-6692/GUID-BD3E0A5F-FE4C-4B9B-BE1D-FE7D2B9F8C3A.html https://techhub.hpe.com/eginfolib/networking/docs/arubaos-switch/security/GUID-EA0A5B3C-FE4C-4B9B-BE1D-FE7D2B9F8C3A.html

The correct answers are C and D.

MPSK (Multi Pre-Shared Key) is a feature that allows multiple PSKs to be used on a single SSID, providing device-specific or group-specific passphrases for enhanced security and deployment flexibility for headless IoT devices1. MPSK requires MAC authentication against a ClearPass Policy Manager server, which returns the encrypted passphrase for the device in a RADIUS VSA2. ClearPass Policy Manager is a platform that provides role- and device-based network access control for any user across any wired, wireless and VPN infrastructure3. ClearPass Policy Manager can also use device profiling and posture assessment to assign roles based on device fingerprint information4.

MPSK Local is a variant of MPSK that allows the user to configure up to 24 PSKs per SSID locally on the device, without requiring ClearPass Policy Manager5. MPSK Local can be combined with EAP-TLS (Extensible Authentication Protocol-Transport Layer Security), which is a secure authentication method that uses certificates to encrypt the wireless traffic between the IoT devices and the access points6. EAP-TLS can also use device certificates to perform role-based access control6.

Therefore, both ClearPass Policy Manager and MPSK Local with EAP-TLS can meet the customer’s requirements for wireless authentication, encryption, unique passphrase, and role-based access for their IoT devices.

MPSK and an internal RADIUS server is not a valid solution, because MPSK does not support internal RADIUS servers and requires ClearPass Policy Manager789. MPSK Local with MAC Authentication is not a valid solution, because MAC Authentication does not encrypt the wireless traffic or use fingerprint information for role-based access2. Local User Derivation Rules are not a valid solution, because they do not provide unique passphrase per device or use fingerprint information for role-based access101112.

Active gateway is a first hop redundancy protocol that eliminates a single point of failure. The active gateway feature is used to increase the availability of the default gateway servicing hosts on the same subnet. An active gateway improves the reliability and performance of the host network by enabling a virtual router to act as the default gateway for that network. If you have enabled active gateway, VRRP is not required3. Active gateway is similar to VRRP in that routed traffic from the VSX node is sourced from the switch interface MAC and not the virtual MAC address (VMAC). Each active gateway sends a periodic broadcast hello packet to avoid VMAC aging on the access switches. The switch views the active gateway IP as a self IP address3. Active gateway is preferable over VRRP because with VRRP traffic is still pushed over the ISL link, resulting in latency in the network3. Therefore, VRRP and active gateway are mutually exclusive on a VLAN, and answer A is correct.

Opportunistic Wireless Encryption (OWE) is a feature that provides encryption for open wireless networks without requiring authentication. OWE uses an enhanced version of the 4-way handshake to establish a pairwise key between the client and the AP, which is then used to encrypt the wireless traffic using WPA2 or WPA3 protocols. OWE can be used for visitor networks where encryption is needed but authentication is not required. References: https://www.arubanetworks.com/assets/tg/TG_OWE.pdf

The correct answer is B. Spanning-tree instance VLAN mapping.

To load-balance VLANs with MSTP, you need to configure the same VLAN-to-instance mapping on all switches in the same MST region. This means that you need to assign different VLANs to different MST instances, and then adjust the spanning tree parameters (such as priority, cost, or port role) for each instance to achieve the desired load balancing. For example, you can make one switch the root for instance 1 and another switch the root for instance 2, and then map half of the VLANs to instance 1 and the other half to instance 2.

According to the Cisco document Understand the Multiple Spanning Tree Protocol (802.1s), one of the steps to configure MST is:

Split your set of VLANs into more instances and configure different MST settings for each of these instances. In order to easily achieve this, elect Bridge D1 to be the root for VLANs 501 through 1000, and Bridge D2 to be the root for VLANs 1 through 500. These statements are true for this configuration:

Switch D1(config)#spanning-tree mst configuration

Switch D1(config-mst)#instance 1 vlan 501-1000

Switch D1(config-mst)#exit

Switch D1(config)#spanning-tree mst 1 priority 0

Switch D2(config)#spanning-tree mst configuration

Switch D2(config-mst)#instance 2 vlan 1-500

Switch D2(config-mst)#exit

Switch D2(config)#spanning-tree mst 2 priority 0

The above commands create two MST instances, 1 and 2, and map VLANs 501-1000 to instance 1 and VLANs 1-500 to instance 2. Then, they make switch D1 the root for instance 1 and switch D2 the root for instance 2.

The other options are incorrect because:

A. Spanning-tree bpdu-guard setting is a security feature that disables a port if it receives a BPDU from an unauthorized device. It does not affect load balancing with MSTP.

C. Spanning-tree CIST mapping is not a valid command. CIST stands for Common and Internal Spanning Tree, which is the spanning tree instance that runs within an MST region and interacts with other regions or non-MST switches.

D. Spanning-tree root-guard setting is another security feature that prevents a port from becoming a root port if it receives superior BPDUs from another switch. It does not affect load balancing with MSTP.

MPSK Local is a feature that can reduce the IT administration overhead associated with deploying devices that do not support 802.1X authentication while maintaining a secure environment. MPSK Local allows the switch to automatically generate and assign unique pre-shared keys for devices based on their MAC addresses, without requiring any configuration on the devices or an external authentication server. The other options are incorrect because they either require manual intervention by the installers or the MPSK gateway, or they do not provide unique pre-shared keys for devices. References: https://www.arubanetworks.com/techdocs/AOS-CX_10_08/UG/bk01-ch05.html https://www.arubanetworks.com/techdocs/AOS-CX_10_08/UG/bk01-ch06.html

The reason is that AOS 10.x does not support clustering gateways with different versions in the same cluster profile. A cluster profile defines the configuration settings for a group of gateways that are managed by Aruba Central.

According to the Aruba documentation2, “You can combine 7200 Series and 7000 Series gateways in the same cluster with a maximum size of four devices with reduced AP client capacity on 7000 Series gateways.”

An inbound ACL is applied to traffic entering a port or VLAN. An outbound ACL is applied to traffic leaving a port or VLAN4. To deny ping sourcing from the user VLAN to the IT management VLAN, an inbound ACL on the user VLAN should be used to filter icmp echo traffic toward the IT management VLAN. Icmp echo-reply traffic is not needed to be allowed because it is already permitted by default5. References: 4 https://techhub.hpe.com/eginfolib/Aruba/OS-CX_10.04/5200-6692/GUID-9B8F6E8F-9C7A-4F0D-AE7B-9D8E6C5B6A7F.html  5 https://techhub. hpe.com/eginfolib/Aruba/OS-CX_10.04/5200-6692/GUID-0C3A9D0F-6E5B-4E1A-AF3C-8D8B2F9C1A7B.html

The Aruba CX 6400 switch is a modular switch that supports high-performance and high-density Ethernet switching for campus and data center networks. One of the features that distinguishes the Aruba CX 6400 switch from most typical campus switches is virtual output queueing (VOQ). VOQ is a technique that implements large ingress packet buffers on each port to prevent head-of-line blocking and packet loss due to congestion2. VOQ allows each port to have multiple queues for different output ports and prioritize packets based on their destination and QoS class2. VOQ enables the Aruba CX 6400 switch to achieve high throughput and low latency for various traffic types and scenarios. References: 2 https://www.arubanetworks.com/assets/ds/DS_CX6400Series.pdf