A cloud provider is redesigning its data center fabric to support east-west traffic between thousands of virtual machines. The network team must minimize the number of hops between any two servers while ensuring that adding a new rack does not require reconfiguring existing switches. Which topology should the team implement?

Traditional three-tier core-aggregation-access with equal-cost multipath

Partial mesh with redundant links only between pairs of top-of-rack switches

Spine-and-leaf with every leaf switch connected to every spine switch

Full mesh where every top-of-rack switch connects to every other top-of-rack switch

A small financial firm runs a critical trading application across five servers. The network architect wants maximum fault tolerance so that the failure of any single link or switch does not isolate any server. The budget is limited, so the design must use the fewest links that still meet this requirement. Which topology should be used?

Star topology with a redundant switch and dual homing for each server

Partial mesh with each server connected to at least two other servers

Bus topology with a backup cable

Full mesh connecting all five servers directly to each other

What is a common limitation of a star topology?

Single point of failure at the central device

High cabling cost compared to mesh

Difficulty in adding new devices

In a spine-and-leaf topology, what is the role of the leaf switches?

To interconnect all leaf switches

To connect to servers and other end devices

To provide routing between different data centers

CompTIACloudNetX

Domain 1Objective 2

Network Architectures CNX-001 Practice Questions (Page 1)

Part of the Network architecture design domain, which accounts for 31% of the CNX-001 exam. CompTIA does not publish an official question count, but from its 165-minute exam (~65–110 total, ~20–34 in this domain), expect 4–7 from this objective — we provide 23 practice questions to prepare you well beyond it. (estimate)

23questions here

5free pages

6concepts

31%of the exam

Questions 1–5

1application · medium
A cloud provider is redesigning its data center fabric to support east-west traffic between thousands of virtual machines. The network team must minimize the number of hops between any two servers while ensuring that adding a new rack does not require reconfiguring existing switches. Which topology should the team implement?
Select an answer first
2application · medium
A small financial firm runs a critical trading application across five servers. The network architect wants maximum fault tolerance so that the failure of any single link or switch does not isolate any server. The budget is limited, so the design must use the fewest links that still meet this requirement. Which topology should be used?
Select an answer first
3foundation · easy
What is a common limitation of a star topology?
Select an answer first
4application · easy
A network team is designing a mesh topology for a cluster of 8 servers. The team wants to ensure that the failure of any single link does not isolate any server. What is the minimum number of links required for each server to meet this requirement?
Select an answer first
5foundation · easy
In a spine-and-leaf topology, what is the role of the leaf switches?
Select an answer first

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Network Architectures CNX-001 Practice Questions (Page 1)

Questions 1–5

What is a common limitation of a star topology?

A network team is designing a mesh topology for a cluster of 8 servers. The team wants to ensure that the failure of any single link does not isolate any server. What is the minimum number of links required for each server to meet this requirement?

In a spine-and-leaf topology, what is the role of the leaf switches?

Keep studying — Network architecture design