Architecture, Design, Virtualization

Question 1

What are the 5 characteristics of a cloud service as defined by NIST?

Answer 1

• On-Demand Self-Service
• Broad Network Access (available anywhere in the world)
• Resource Pooling (shared compute resources)
• Rapid Elasticity
• Metered Service (pay by usage)

Question 2

What are the three primary cloud service models?

Answer 2

IaaS - Infrastructure as a service (VM level)
PaaS - Platform as a service (
SaaS - Software as a service

Question 3

What is a public cloud?

Answer 3

A cloud deployment model where a company’s VMs and/or platforms and software are running in a cloud vendor’s datacenter. (Azure, AWS, Google)

Question 4

What is a private cloud?

Answer 4

When the datacenter is on-premise for a company. However, the datacenter needs to comply with the 5 NIST-defined characteristics of cloud service to be truly considered a private cloud.

Question 5

What is a hybrid cloud?

Answer 5

When an on-premise datacenter is connected to a public cloud provider and certain apps or VMs may reside in either place. This is becoming the most popular deployment model.

Question 6

What is a community cloud?

Answer 6

Where organizations collaborate to create their own cloud services and share resources. This typically happens with universities or government entities.

Question 7

What product/service does Cisco have that could provide On-Demand Self-Service to a Private cloud?

Answer 7

Cisco UCS Director

Question 8

What software enables per-application selection of the destination cloud platform in a Hybrid Deployment?

Answer 8

Cloud Brokering Software

Question 9

What is the difference between a Type 1 and a Type 2 Hypervisor?

Answer 9

Type 1 hypervisor is installed directly onto the hardware and acts as the OS. Type 2 hypervisor is installed inside of the OS.

Question 10

What is a VNF?

Answer 10

Virtual Network Function - a generic term that can refer to any virtualized network device or service such as virtual router, firewall, WAN accelerator, etc.

Question 11

What is Cisco ENFV?

Answer 11

Cisco Enterprise Network Functions Virtualization - Cisco’s solution for virtualizing network devices.

Question 12

What are the key benefits to Cisco ENFV?

Answer 12

• save space at branch locations
• reduces need for hardware issues
• simplifies operations
• centralized management (DNA Center)
• leverage virtualization features like snapshots and migrations
• supports SD-WAN cEdge and vEdge
• supports third-party VNF

Question 13

What are the four main functions of Cisco ENFV?

Answer 13

• Management and Orchestration (DNA Center)
• VNFs
• Network Functions Virtualization Infrastructure Software (NFVIS)
• Hardware Resources

Question 14

What Cisco VNFs are supported on Cisco ENFV?

Answer 14

• Virtual ISRs (ISRv)
• Adaptive Security Virtual Appliance (ASAv)
• Firepower Next-Gen Firewall virtual (NGFWv)
• Viptela vEdge
• cEdge
• virtual Wide Area Application Services (vWAAS)
• virtual Wireless LAN Controllers (vWLC)

Question 15

What third-party VNFs are supported on Cisco ENFV?

Answer 15

• ThousandEyes
• Fortinet
• PaloAlto
• InfoVista
• CTERA
• Windows Server
• Linux Server

Question 16

What Components make up the NFVIS function of Cisco ENFV?

Answer 16

• Linux OS
• Hypervisor
• vSwitch (Open vSwitch)
• VM lifecycle management
• Plug and play
• Orchestration
• HTTPS web server
• Device Management
• Role-Based Access Control

Question 17

What protocols do not run on a vSwitch?

Answer 17

Spanning Tree Protocol (STP)

In lieu of STP, vSwitches use “pinning” of MAC addresses

Question 18

What is one thing that two vSwitches cannot share?

Answer 18

A Physical NIC connection

Question 19

What are the two types of vSwitches and what is the difference?

Answer 19

1.) Standard vSwitch
2.) Distributed vSwitch (DVS)

A Distributed Virtual Switch covers multiple virtual hosts to consolidate the management of vSwitches across hosts.

Question 20

What functions can be virtualized with NFV (Network Function Virtualization)?

Answer 20

• Firewalls
• Switches
• Routers
• Wireless LAN Controllers

Question 21

Describe the components and characteristics of the Cisco ENCS 5000

Answer 21

• Enterprise Network Compute System
• Built specifically to virtualize network functions (run virtual network devices)
• Network Modules (NIM) can be installed to support different physical interfaces such as Voice connections

Question 22

What technology can logically group 2 or more switches into a single switch?

Answer 22

VSS - Virtual Switching System

Question 23

What is the name of Cisco’s Spanning Tree implementation?

Answer 23

PVST+ (Per VLAN Spanning Tree +)

Question 24

In a Two-Tier Network design, what are the different deployment types?

Answer 24

• Collapsed Distribution-Access
• Collapsed Core-Distribution

Question 25

In a three tier Data Center topology, what are the three tiers?

Answer 25

- Core - Aggregation - Access

Question 26

What is the newer data center topology called and what is its major characteristic?

Answer 26

Spine-Leaf - this is basically a collapsed Core-Aggregation topology where all the Layer 3 services reside on the Leaves and the Spine is just responsible for moving packets as quickly as possible.

Question 27

What is OVS-DPDK?

Answer 27

Open Virtual Switch Data Plane Development Kit - an I/O technology in virtual switches that reserves one core of a CPU for processing and bypasses the kernel.

Question 28

What is PCI Passthrough?

Answer 28

A virtual switching technology that does a one-to-one mapping of physical NIC to virtual NIC to improve performance.

Question 29

What is SR-IOV?

Answer 29

An enhancement of PCI passthrough that allows a single pNIC to be shared by emulating PCIe devices on the hypervisor.