Free F5 F5CAB4 Practice Exam with Questions & Answers | Set: 2

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From BIG-IP Administration Control Plane Administration do38cuments: While HA state is managed under "Device Management," the specific failover behavior of a traffic object is linked to its configuration. A Virtual Address must be associated with a "Traffic Group" (usually traffic-group-1) to fail over. This association and the resulting floating status can be verified by viewing the Virtual Server or Virtual Address list under Local Traffic > Virtual Servers.

The User Configuration Set (UCS) is a flexible tool designed by the Control Plane to handle various lifecycle management scenarios, including upgrades and hardware migrations.

Version Compatibility (Option B): TMOS is designed to be backward compatible. The Control Plane can ingest a UCS file created on an older version of software and automatically upgrade the configuration objects to match the current, later version during the restore process.

Platform Portability (Option C): While a UCS archive contains platform-specific information, the BIG-IP system allows for "platform-independent" restores. This is a vital procedural concept for migrating from one hardware model to another or from physical hardware to a Virtual Edition (VE).

Management of State: When restoring to a different platform or a later version, the administrator often uses specific flags (such as no-license or platform-migrate in later versions) to ensure that only the portable configuration data is applied while preserving the new platform's unique identifiers.

In a High Availability pair, the "Force to Standby" action is a Control Plane command used to trigger a manual failover. This option is only logical and available on the device that is currently in the Active state. If the button is greyed out, it indicates that the administrator is already logged into the Standby unit, which has no active traffic groups to relinquish.

A BIG-IP device group cannot be deleted if it still contains device members, even if one of those devices has already been decommissioned or is unreachable. Before deleting the device group, the administrator must explicitly remove the decommissioned device from the device group configuration.

Once the removed or unreachable device is deleted from the device group membership, the BIG-IP system allows the remaining administrator to successfully delete the device group.

Why the other options are incorrect:

A. Remove all members from the device groupThis is not required; the key requirement is removing the decommissioned device, not all members.

B. Make sure all members are in syncSynchronization status does not prevent device group deletion.

D. Disable the device groupDevice groups cannot be disabled; they must be modified or deleted.

Therefore, the correct prerequisite action is to remove the decommissioned device from the device group, making C the correct answer.

===========

Restoring system states from backups is a fundamental Control Plane administrative task2. When a User Configuration Set (UCS) archive is created with encryption, it requires the correct passphrase to be decrypted and loaded during the restoration process.

UCS Command Structure: The tmsh load /sys ucs command is the specific utility for restoring these comprehensive configuration archives.

Encrypted Restores: If the archive was encrypted during creation, the passphrase argument must be appended to the command followed by the actual password used to encrypt the file.

Comparison with Other Options:

load /sys config file is used for loading text-based configuration files (like bigip.conf), not full UCS archives6.

The no-license flag is used when you want to restore a configuration without overwriting the existing license (common during RMA replacements), but it does not provide the mechanism for entering an encryption passphrase.

watch-devicegroup-device shows (among other columns) the commit ID (cid.id / shown here as clu_id), the originating device for that commit (cid-orig / shown here as cl_orig), and the time the configuration change was made (cid.time / shown here as cl_time). The highest/newest commit ID and its time represent the most recent configuration change seen among the devices. (clouddocs.f5.com)

bigip_a has the latest configuration (A) because it shows commit ID 3273 at 14:27:00, which is newer than commit ID 1745 at 13:52:34 on bigip_b and bigip_c. (clouddocs.f5.com)

Two devices are out of date (B) because bigip_b and bigip_c are still on the older commit ID 1745, so they do not match the latest commit shown on bigip_a. (clouddocs.f5.com)

Why the other options are not supported by this output:

C is not supported: bigip_c is not showing a newer commit than the others; it’s on the older commit (1745), so it’s not the source of the most recent change. The output’s cid-orig column is what tells you where the change was made. (clouddocs.f5.com)

D/E are incorrect logic: matching cid.time between two devices only indicates they share the same change timestamp/commit, not that it is the correct or latest configuration. The “latest” is indicated by the newest commit ID/time (here, bigip_a). (clouddocs.f5.com)

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From BIG-IP Administration Con10trol Plane Administration documents: Placing a device in the FORCED_OFFLINE state is a critical procedural concept for HA maintenance111213. 1415Unlike simply being 'Standby16', the FORCED_OFFLINE state ensures tha17t the Control Plane will not participate in failover selection, effectively preventing the device from becoming 'Active' even if the peer fails18. This state also allows the administrator to terminate existing connections to ensure no traffic is being processed during the maintenance window19.

Time synchronization is a critical component of Control Plane management, as it ensures that logs are accurately timestamped and that High Availability (HA) trust relationships remain valid1.

Configuration Location: The list of configured NTP (Network Time Protocol) servers and their status is managed under System > Configuration > Device > NTP .

Procedural Importance: If the system clock drifts significantly between two devices in an HA pair, the Control Plane may experience a "Time Delta" error33. This drift often causes a failure in device trust, preventing the ConfigSync process from functioning correctly.

System Integrity: Accurate time is also essential for the validity of SSL/TLS certificates used for both administrative management access and high availability communication.

Verification: Administrators can use this section of the Configuration Utility to confirm that the BIG-IP is communicating with its designated upstream time sources and that the local clock is correctly synchronized to the network environment .

In the BIG-IP Configuration Utility, all system backup and restore operations—including UCS (User Configuration Set) file restoration—are performed from the Archives section.

The correct navigation path is:

System > Archives

From this location, the administrator can:

Upload UCS files

Restore UCS backups

Manage system archive files used for backup and recovery

Why the other options are incorrect:

A. System > Configuration is used for general system settings, not backup restoration.

C. Local Traffic > Virtual Servers is used for application traffic objects.

D. Local Traffic > Policies manages traffic policies, not system backups.

Therefore, the correct section to restore a UCS file using the Configuration Utility is System > Archives.

===========

When troubleshooting a BIG-IP system where a partition is reported as full (100% utilization), identifying and removing large or unnecessary files is the immediate next step for restoration of system stability.

Symptoms of Full Partitions: If a file system (such as the root / or /var) becomes full, it can result in unpredictable system behavior, failure to save configurations, and the inability to log in to the Web UI.

The Root (/) Partition: This partition is intentionally kept small on F5 systems. It is highly sensitive to the storage of third-party software or diagnostic files that should ideally be stored in the /shared or /var directories.

Procedural Resolution: To resolve 100% disk usage, administrators should check for large files on the affected partition using CLI commands like du -ah or find / -xdev -type f -exec du {} \; | sort -rn | head -20.

Common Culprits: Large files typically causing these issues include old core files, tech support bundles, large diagnostic logs (packet diags), or temporary files created during administrative tasks.

Diagnostics vs. Remediation: While tests like the EUD (End User Diagnostics) or platform diagnostics are useful for hardware verification, they do not resolve file system exhaustion issues that have already reached a critical 100% state.