Pass the HP Aruba Certified Professional - Campus Access HPE7-A07 Questions and answers with CertsForce

When configuring Virtual Switching Extension (VSX) in a campus topology for link aggregation across two aggregation switches, it is important to synchronize Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation Group (MC-LAG) interfaces. The command "vsx-sync mclag-interfaces" ensures that the state and configuration of MC-LAG interfaces are synchronized between the two VSX-linked switches, providing consistent link aggregation and preventing any loops or mismatched configurations that might occur if the interfaces were not in sync.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract of HPE Aruba Networking Switching:

In AOS-10 wireless deployments, HPE Aruba Networking supports the configuration of Primary and Secondary Gateway Clusters in the SSID profile to ensure high availability, redundancy, and load distribution. This configuration follows Aruba’s gateway clustering best practices, where access points (APs) attempt to establish tunnels with their Primary Gateway Cluster first. If the AP cannot reach the primary cluster (due to reachability, latency, or network topology), it automatically connects to the Secondary Gateway Cluster.

When both gateway clusters are active and reachable but some APs cannot reach the primary cluster—for example, due to Layer 3 routing, firewall restrictions, or network segmentation—those APs will associate with the secondary cluster instead. This results in an approximately equal split of APs across both clusters, even though the primary cluster is operational.

Exact Extract from HPE Aruba Networking Switching and AOS-10 Gateway Documentation:

“Access Points attempt to form tunnels with the Primary Gateway Cluster first. If the primary cluster is unreachable or fails to respond within the defined timeout, the AP establishes a tunnel with the Secondary Gateway Cluster.”

“When the primary and secondary gateway clusters are both up but APs are distributed across separate routed networks or VLANs, APs may select the gateway cluster that is most reachable at that time, resulting in an even or partial split of AP distribution.”

“This is expected behavior when APs in different subnets cannot reach the same primary cluster due to network topology. The secondary cluster provides redundancy and connectivity continuity.”

Therefore, the equal split of 260 APs is explained by the fact that while the primary cluster is active, a subset of APs cannot reach it due to routing or segmentation and thus join the secondary cluster—this behavior aligns with Aruba’s gateway redundancy mechanism.

Why the Other Options Are Incorrect:

A. The statement reverses the cause: APs that cannot reach the primary connect to the secondary—not the other way around. The secondary cluster’s reachability does not affect AP selection when the primary is available and reachable.

“APs first attempt the primary cluster; only failure to reach it triggers fallback to secondary.”

B. Secondary cluster is homogeneous:Cluster homogeneity refers to identical hardware/software versions between gateways; it does not influence AP distribution or equal load split.

“Homogeneity is a software version consideration, not an AP load-balancing factor.”

C. Secondary cluster is heterogeneous:Heterogeneity (mixed hardware types) is unsupported or discouraged; it does not cause AP distribution behavior.

“Heterogeneous gateway clusters are not a cause of AP distribution variation; cluster type does not dictate AP split.”

References of HPE Aruba Networking Switching Documents or Study Guide:

ArubaOS 10 Gateway and AP Deployment Guide – “Primary and Secondary Gateway Cluster Configuration and AP Association Logic.”

Aruba High Availability and Clustering Best Practices Guide – “Gateway Cluster Failover, Redundancy, and AP Selection.”

Aruba Central Cloud Management and Monitoring Guide – “SSID Profile Configuration: Primary and Secondary Gateway Clusters.”

Aruba Campus Wireless Design Guide (AOS 10.x) – “Cluster Reachability, Redundancy, and Role Propagation Across Gateways.”

The show ata endpoint output lists the AP’s AP Tunnel Agent (ATA) state transitions with a given gateway.

Key state/result fields:

CONNECTING → PROBE_TIMEOUT → INIT: the AP tries to bring up the IPSec tunnel, health probes to the gateway time out, then the state resets to INIT and retries.

TUN_RECV_TIMEOUT: the AP stops receiving tunnel keepalives/packets from the gateway within the expected interval.

SURVIVING indicates the AP is maintaining service with an already-up tunnel while control connectivity is impaired; it is not the state shown at the end here.

In the log, AP-01 repeatedly cycles through CONNECTING → PROBE_TIMEOUT → INIT, with intermittent TUN_RECV_TIMEOUT. This pattern is the documented symptom of the gateway being unreachable or down (no response to probes/keepalives), rather than a Central/orchestrator outage or PMTU problem.

Therefore, the correct conclusion is that the gateway at 192.168.1.92 is offline or not reachable.

A is incorrect: the final/recurring state is not SURVIVING.

C is incorrect: a Central/orchestrator issue would show SURVIVING (existing tunnel continues) rather than repeated probe timeouts to the gateway.

D is incorrect: PMTU issues do not generate recurring PROBE_TIMEOUT/TUN_RECV_TIMEOUT cycles; they appear as ESP/IKE negotiation problems, not persistent probe loss.

In WLANs, multicast frames are transmitted at the lowest basic rate, so a single multicast stream can consume significant airtime and slow the entire BSS, impacting clients that did not even join the group.

Dynamic Multicast Optimization (DMO) converts multicast streams to per-client unicast, allowing the AP to use the highest supported unicast data rate and reliable retransmission—this prevents the low-rate multicast airtime penalty.

Multicast Transmission Optimization (MTO) raises the transmit rate for any remaining multicast/broadcast that must still be sent as multicast, further reducing airtime.

The captures show multicast sent as 802.11 data at a low rate; enabling DMO + MTO addresses exactly this symptom in Aruba deployments.

AOS-CX BGP community advertisement control:

“For each BGP neighbor and address-family you can control the advertisement of community attributes using the send-community command. The options are standard, extended, and both. When both is configured, the neighbor is sent both the standard and extended community attributes with the NLRI updates.”

“BGP accepts community attributes received from a neighbor by default; the send-community setting governs outbound advertisement. The configuration does not require resetting the peering session.”

These extracts establish that adding send-community both under the IPv4 unicast address-family for neighbor 10.2.0.3 makes R1 include community attributes with its UPDATEs and that the choice both covers standard and extended communities. Because BGP already accepts communities on receive, this effectively enables the exchange of communities in both directions when the peer is similarly capable. This matches B (exchange with NLRI in and out) and D (standard and extended communities are included).

Why A is incorrect:

“The term type-1/type-2 is used in EVPN route types and is not the nomenclature for BGP communities. The send-community command does not reference EVPN route types; it controls standard/extended community attributes.”

Thus, A references the wrong concept.

Why C is incorrect:

“Changing send-community for a neighbor is applied dynamically in the address-family context and does not require tearing down the BGP session.”

Therefore, enabling send-community both will not “bounce” the peering.

References of HPE Aruba Networking Switching documents or Study Guide:

AOS-CX BGP Configuration Guide — “Neighbor policy controls per address-family: send-community {standard | extended | both}; communities accepted on receive by default; change does not reset the session.”

AOS-CX Route Policy and Attributes Reference — “Community attributes (standard and extended) and how they are attached to NLRI in UPDATE messages.”

In a VXLAN environment, unknown unicast traffic, such as ARP requests from H1, which does not have a specific destination MAC address learned by the switch A2, will be flooded out of all interfaces. This flooding behavior is necessary because A2 needs to ensure that the ARP request reaches its intended destination, which might be on any of the interfaces. It's a part of the standard behavior of switches to handle ARP traffic when the destination hardware address is unknown.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract of HPE Aruba Networking Documentation

Multicast frames over Wi-Fi are traditionally transmitted at the lowest basic data rate, making them slow and unreliable, particularly outdoors where environmental RF effects are more significant.

Aruba provides a feature designed for this scenario:

✅ Dynamic Multicast Optimization (DMO)

Converts multicast streams into unicast transmissions per associated client

Allows the AP to use the highest possible unicast data rate supported

Significantly improves reliability, throughput, and range for critical multicast applications

HPE Aruba documentation statement:

“Dynamic Multicast Optimization increases the reliability of multicast traffic by converting multicast frames to unicast and allows transmissions using higher data rates.”

This directly supports the requirement in the question:

✅ increase reliability

✅ use the highest possible data rate

Why the Other Options Are Incorrect

Option

Reason Incorrect

A. Increase basic rate

Raising basic rates often reduces coverage range and can disconnect distant outdoor clients

B. Multicast Transmission Optimization

This older mode still transmits multicast over the air, not at highest rate

D. Enable WMM

WMM is for QoS prioritization, not for increasing multicast PHY rates or reliability

✅ Final Verified Answer: C. Dynamic Multicast Optimization

???? Reference Sources (HPE Aruba Official Materials):

Aruba Mobility and WLAN Optimization Guides — Dynamic Multicast Optimization operation and benefits

Aruba Outdoor Wi-Fi Deployment Best Practices — Multicast performance enhancements

ACMP (Aruba Certified Mobility Professional) Study Material — Multicast Optimization for IoT and GPS Applications