Free F5 F5CAB2 Practice Exam with Questions & Answers

In BIG-IP LTM, apool member statedirectly affects how traffic is handled at the data plane level. When a pool member ismanually disabled, BIG-IP changes the member’s availability state todisabled, which has specific and predictable traffic-handling consequences.

According to BIG-IP Administration Data Plane Concepts:

Adisabled pool member:

Doesnot accept new connections

Continues to processexisting non-persistent connectionsuntil they naturally close

Isremoved from load-balancing decisions, including persistence lookups

Most importantly for this question:

Persistent connections(such as those created using source-address persistence, cookie persistence, or SSL persistence) arenot honoredfor a disabled pool member

BIG-IP willnot send new persistent trafficto a disabled member, even if persistence records exist

Therefore, when a pool member is manually disabled, itstops processing persistent connections, while allowing existing non-persistent flows to drain gracefully.

Why the Other Options Are Incorrect:

B– Persistent connections are not honored for a disabled pool member

C– Existing connections are not immediately terminated when a pool member is disabled

D– Only the disabled pool member stops accepting new connections, not all pool members

Key Data Plane Concept Reinforced:

Manually disabling a pool member is agraceful administrative actionthat prevents new and persistent traffic from reaching the member while allowing existing connections to complete, which is critical for maintenance and troubleshooting scenarios.

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In a BIG-IP environment, load balancing and persistence work together but serve different purposes. While a load balancing method likeLeast Connectionsattempts to distribute traffic based on current connection counts, apersistence profileoverrides this logic for returning clients.

Persistence Overrides Load Balancing:When a persistence profile (such as Source Address or Cookie persistence) is applied to a Virtual Server, the BIG-IP system tracks which client was sent to which backend member.

Sticky Sessions:If a client with a valid persistence record returns, the BIG-IP will send that client to thesame pool memberit was previously assigned to, regardless of the load balancing algorithm's current preference.

Uneven Distribution:If certain clients generate significantly more traffic or stay connected longer than others, the persistence table will "lock" those high-volume flows to specific members, resulting in an uneven distribution of connections across the pool.

In BIG-IP, atrunkis a Layer 2 network object used to aggregate multiple physicalinterfacesinto a single logical link. This aggregation providesincreased bandwidthandlink resiliency, commonly in conjunction with LACP.

Key concepts that apply here:

Trunks are managed under the/net trunktmsh hierarchy

Physical interfaces are added or removed using themodifycommand

Thecreatecommand is used only when defining a brand-new trunk, not when updating an existing one

Because the trunk already exists and the goal is toadd interfaces, the correct operation is:

tmsh modify /net trunk trunk_A interfaces add {1.3 1.4}

This command:

Modifies the existing trunk named trunk_A

Adds interfaces 1.3 and 1.4 to the trunk

Immediately increases available bandwidth and redundancy

Why the Other Options Are Incorrect

Buses the /sys hierarchy, which is not used for trunks

Cattempts to create a trunk that already exists

Duses an incorrect hierarchy and an incorrect operation

This question focuses onconnection behavior when pool members transition from down to up, which is a classic data plane consideration in BIG-IP environments.

What problem is being solved?

When a pool member:

Recovers from a failure

Is enabled after maintenance

Transitions frominactivetoactive

…it can suddenly receive alarge burst of new connections, especially when using load-balancing methods such asLeast Connections. This sudden surge can overload the server.

Why Slow Ramp Time is the correct solution:

Slow Ramp Timeis a pool-level setting that:

Gradually increases the number of connections sent to a newly available pool member

Prevents sudden spikes in traffic

Allows the server to warm up (application cache, JVM, DB connections, etc.)

From BIG-IP Administration Data Plane Concepts:

Slow Ramp Time controls therate at which BIG-IP increases loadto a pool member that has just become available

During the ramp period, BIG-IP artificially increases the member’s connection count, making it appear “busier” and therefore less attractive for new connections

This directly satisfies the requirement toavoid overloading pool members when they become active.

Why the Other Options Are Incorrect:

B. Different Ratio for each member

Ratios controlrelative distributionunder normal operation

They do not prevent a sudden surge when a member becomes active

C. Action On Service Down to Reselect

Controls persistence behavior when a member goes down

Has no impact on connection ramp-up when a member comes back online

D. Same Priority Group to each member

Affects failover logic between priority groups

Does not control connection rate or ramp-up behavior

Key Data Plane Concept Reinforced:

To protect backend servers during recovery events, BIG-IP providesSlow Ramp Time, ensuringgraceful reintroduction of trafficand preventing connection storms that can occur during high-load scenarios.

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In a High Availability (HA) environment, a failover event occurs when the active BIG-IP system stops processing traffic and the standby unit takes over. This transition can cause a brief disruption in network traffic because the surrounding switches need to update their ARP tables to associate the Virtual IP (VIP) and floating Self-IPs with the MAC address of the new active unit.

MAC Masquerade Functionality:To minimize this impact, an administrator can configureMAC masquerading. This feature allows the administrator to assign a unique, "shared" MAC address to a traffic group.

Seamless Transition:When a failover occurs, the new active unit begins using this shared MAC address immediately. Since the MAC address for the traffic group remains the same regardless of which physical device is active, the upstream switches do not need to update their ARP tables or learn a new MAC-to-port mapping.

Packet Loss Reduction:By maintaining a constant MAC address, MAC masquerading significantly reduces the time it takes for traffic to resume, effectively eliminating the "gratuitous ARP" dependency and minimizing packet loss during the handover.

Why other options are incorrect:

External monitors:These are used for advanced health checking of pool members and do not directly impact the speed or smoothness of a device-level failover.

OneConnect profile:This is a performance optimization tool that aggregates multiple client-side requests into a single server-side TCP connection; it is not a failover mechanism.

Clone pool:This is used to replicate traffic for IDS or monitoring purposes and has no role in high availability or failover optimization.

In anActive/StandbyBIG-IP design, application availability during failover depends on both units havingequivalent data-plane connectivityfor the networks that carry application traffic. Specifically:

VLANs are bound to specific interfaces (and optionally VLAN tags).

Floating self IPs / traffic groupsmove to the new Active device during failover.

For traffic to continue flowing after failover, the new Active device must have thesame VLANs available on the correct interfacesthat connect to the upstream/downstream networks.

What the symptom tells you:

Traffic works when Device A is Active

Traffic fails when Device B becomes Active

Failback immediately restores traffic

This pattern strongly indicates theStandby unit does not have the VLAN connected the same way(wrong physical interface assignment), so when it becomes Active, it owns the floating addresses but cannot actually pass traffic on the correct network segment.

WhyInterface mismatchis the best match:

If theActiveunit is already working, its interface mapping is correct.

The fix is to make theStandbyunit’s VLAN/interface assignment match the Active unit.

That corresponds tochanging the Standby device interface to 1.1.

Why theTagoptions are less likely here (given the choices and the exhibit intent):

Tag issues can also break failover traffic, but the question/options are clearly driving toward the classic HA requirement:consistent VLAN-to-interface mapping on both devicesso the data plane remains functional after the traffic group moves.

Conclusion:To avoid an outage on the next failover, the BIG-IP Administrator must ensure the Standby device uses thesame interface (1.1)for the relevant VLAN(s) that carry the application traffic, so when it becomes Active it can forward/receive traffic normally.

In this scenario, two specific High Availability and Persistence requirements must be met to ensure session continuity during a failover.

Persistence Mirroring:By default, persistence records (which map a client to a specific server) exist only on the memory of the active BIG-IP. If a failover occurs, the standby unit has no knowledge of these sessions and will re-load-balance the client, likely to a different server. EnablingPersistence Mirroringensures that the persistence table is synchronized in real-time to the standby peer.

Match Across Services:The requirement specifies that the session must persist across bothHTTPandFTP. These are different Virtual Servers (and likely different ports). TheMatch Across Servicessetting in the persistence profile allows the BIG-IP to use the same persistence record for any Virtual Server that shares the same IP address and pool, regardless of the service port.

In BIG-IP LTM,health monitorsare used to determine the availability of pool members and directly influence traffic flow decisions in the data plane.

Key characteristics of thedefault HTTP monitoraccording to BIG-IP Administration Data Plane Concepts:

Sends an HTTP request (typically GET /)

Expects an HTTP response code of200 OK

Any responseother than 200is treated as amonitor failure

A failed monitor causes the pool member to be markedoffline (down)

In this scenario:

Two pool members return404 Not Found

A 404 response indicates that the requested object was not found

This doesnotmeet the success criteria of the default HTTP monitor

These two members are therefore markedoffline

One pool member returns200 OK

This matches the expected response

The member is markedonline

Resulting Pool Member Availability:

2 members: Offline

1 member: Online

Why the Other Options Are Incorrect:

B– 404 responses are not considered healthy by the default HTTP monitor

C– At least one member responds with the expected 200 OK

D– Members returning 404 responses fail the monitor and cannot be marked online

Key Data Plane Concept Reinforced:

BIG-IP health monitors makebinary availability decisionsbased strictly on configured success criteria. For HTTP monitors, response codes matter—404 is a failure, even if the service is technically reachable.

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In BIG-IP high availability (HA) deployments, one of the primary causes of traffic disruption during failover isLayer 2 and Layer 3 relearningby upstream network devices (switches and routers). When traffic groups move from the Active device to the Standby device, the network must quickly associate the IP addresses with the new device.

Why MAC Masquerading Minimizes Failover Impact:

MAC masqueradingallows a traffic group to use afloating, shared MAC addressfor its Self IPs. This MAC address moves with the traffic group during failover.

Key benefits:

TheMAC address does not changewhen failover occurs

Upstream switches donot need to relearn ARP entries

Traffic resumes almost immediately after failover

Dramatically reduces packet loss and connection interruption

From BIG-IP Administration Data Plane Concepts:

MAC masquerade is specifically designed to providefast failover

It is a best practice for HA pairs, especially in environments sensitive to latency and connection loss

Why the Other Options Are Incorrect:

A. External monitors

Used to check the availability of external resources

Do not reduce network convergence or failover disruption

B. Clone pool

Used for traffic mirroring or security analysis

Has no impact on failover behavior

C. OneConnect profile

Optimizes server-side TCP connections

Does not address ARP or MAC relearning during failover

Key HA Concept Reinforced:

To minimize failover impact on live traffic, BIG-IP administrators should ensureLayer 2 continuity.MAC masqueradingis the primary mechanism that enables near-instant failover by preventing ARP and MAC table reconvergence delays.

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MAC Masquerade allows a traffic group to use a shared MAC address to speed up failover. When the system DB variable tm.macmasqaddr_per_vlan is enabled, the BIG-IP generates a unique MAC address for each VLAN by algorithmically modifying the base MAC address using theVLAN ID.

The calculation forVLAN 1501works as follows:

Base MAC:The administrator set the base to 02:12:34:56:00:00.

VLAN ID Conversion:The decimal VLAN ID (1501) must be converted into hexadecimal.

$1501 \div 16 = 93$ remainder13(Din hex)

$93 \div 16 = 5$ remainder13(Din hex)

$5 \div 16 = 0$ remainder5

Result: $1501$ (Decimal) =05DD(Hex).

Substitution:The BIG-IP replaces the last two octets of the base MAC address with the hexadecimal representation of the VLAN ID.

Final Result:02:12:34:56:05:dd.