Netapp NetApp Storage Installation Engineer - ONTAP Professional Exam NS0-185 Exam Dumps: Updated Questions & Answers (February 2026)

Within ONTAP SAN concepts, logical interfaces (LIFs) are assigned specific roles, and each role has predefined networking and security behaviors. Among all LIF types, thecluster LIFis unique because it has afixed firewall policythat cannot be modified by administrators.

Cluster LIFs are used exclusively forinternal cluster communication, including replication of configuration databases, cluster heartbeat traffic, and distributed data access coordination. Because of their critical role, NetApp enforces a fixed firewall policy to protect cluster integrity and prevent accidental or malicious changes that could disrupt cluster operations.

Data LIFs, cluster management LIFs, and intercluster LIFs all allow configurable firewall policies. Administrators can adjust these policies to permit or restrict protocols such as NFS, SMB, iSCSI, HTTPS, SSH, or SnapMirror traffic depending on deployment requirements.

By contrast, cluster LIF firewall settings are locked to ensure that only cluster-related traffic is permitted. This design ensures predictable behavior and prevents misconfiguration during installation or troubleshooting.

Therefore, the only LIF with a fixed firewall policy is thecluster LIF, makingCthe correct answer.

The exhibit represents aMetroCluster IPconfiguration, which uses Ethernet switches to provide redundant connectivity between sites. In this architecture, the Ethernet switches are responsible for transportingNVRAM replication traffic using iWARP (RDMA over TCP/IP). This enables synchronous replication of write logs between HA partners across sites.

Additionally, the switches supportSyncMirror replication, which maintains mirrored aggregates across sites to provide continuous data availability in the event of a site failure.

SnapMirror Synchronous and cluster management traffic do not use these switches directly in this configuration. Therefore, the correct answers areC and D.

Using breakout cables disables paired ports on the same ASIC. This is expected behavior.

Understanding hardware components is a core requirement within ONTAP SAN concepts. The exhibit highlights several key components on a FAS9000 system that are essential to system operation and high availability.

The large central components shown are the controllers, which house the CPUs, memory, and network interfaces responsible for data processing and cluster operations. Adjacent to the controllers are the NVRAM modules, which are critical for write caching and data integrity. NVRAM ensures that incoming write operations are safely logged and protected in the event of power loss or controller failover.

The exhibit also highlights the serial ports, which are used for low-level system access during installation, troubleshooting, or recovery scenarios. Serial ports are especially important during initial setup or when network access is unavailable.

Finally, the highlighted FlashCache modules provide read caching functionality. FlashCache accelerates read-intensive workloads by caching frequently accessed data on flash memory, improving overall system performance.

Other options are incorrect because they either include components not highlighted in the exhibit (such as power supplies or USB ports) or misidentify the flash modules. Therefore, the correct set of components shown in the exhibit is NVRAM-Module, Controller, Serial-Port, FlashCache-Module.

This scenario is about iSCSI SAN path visibility after cluster expansion. ONTAP usesSelective LUN Map (SLM)concepts so that hosts do not automatically see every LUN through every node, which would create unnecessary paths. ONTAP documentation explains that with SLM, when a LUN map is created, the LUN is accessible through paths on the node that owns the LUN and its HA partner, and this behavior is controlled through thereporting-nodeslist.

If you wantadditional paths(including non-optimized paths) from newly added nodes, you must ensure the new nodes can be included in the reporting scope for those LUN mappings. ONTAP provides an explicit mechanism for this: the lun mapping add-reporting-nodes command is used before or after data mobility events to add nodes to the reporting-nodes list for a LUN mapping. This directly matches optionC (reporting nodes).

However, even if reporting-nodes is expanded, hosts only gain usable iSCSI access if the target LIFs are reachable/allowed. ONTAP documentation describes thatportsetscan be used with SLM to further restrict access, and when using SLM with portsets, LUNs are accessible on the set of LIFs included in the portset (on the owning node and its HA partner). Therefore, to “allow non-optimized paths from the AFF A250 nodes,” you must verify whether portsets are being used and that the appropriate new iSCSI LIFs are included (or that no restrictive portset blocks them). That makes optionA (port sets)the second correct configuration item.

Option B (switch zoning) applies to FC fabrics, not iSCSI. Option D (failover groups) affects NAS/management LIF failover behavior and does not control SAN LUN reporting visibility in the way SLM/reporting-nodes and portsets do.

Cluster interconnect switches must be connected to each other with Inter-Switch Links (ISLs) to maintain resilient cluster networking and to ensure that cluster LIFs on different switches can communicate properly. In the Broadcom BES-53248 cluster switch documentation, the base configuration explicitly reserves switch ports55–56as “100GbE cluster Inter-Switch Link (ISL) ports, base configuration.”

The fact thattwo specific portsare designated as ISL ports in the base configuration strongly indicates that the expected minimum ISL design istwo ISLs—one per port—between the switch pair. This matches standard NetApp validated cluster switch designs, where redundant ISLs provide resilience against a single ISL failure and help maintain cluster connectivity under maintenance or partial link faults. In installation practice, this is part of “robust and operational” cluster design: redundant paths are preferred/required to avoid single points of failure in the cluster network fabric.

Option A (1 ISL) would create a single point of failure: if that ISL fails, inter-switch cluster connectivity can be compromised. Options C and D are not the “minimum” in the base configuration context; while some architectures may support multiple ISLs for additional bandwidth, the base configuration callout clearly highlights two dedicated ISL ports.

Therefore, in a base configuration for BES-53248 cluster interconnect switches, the minimum number of supported ISLs between the two switches is2.

Alternate Control Path (ACP) is a recommended butoptionalfeature in ONTAP installations. Config Advisor flags ACP-related warnings when ACP is partially cabled or not detected, but this does not automatically place the system in an unsupported state.

NetApp installation policy requires that when customers choose not to deploy ACP, the decision must beexplicitly acknowledged and documented. This ensures the customer understands the operational implications and accepts responsibility for reduced out-of-band shelf management visibility.

Additionally, installation best practices require that this decision becommunicated to the sales team or account team. This ensures alignment across NetApp stakeholders and prevents future support disputes.

The system does not become unsupported solely because ACP is not used, provided the customer acknowledgment process is followed. Therefore, options implying an unsupported or nonfunctional state are incorrect.

The correct answers areB and C.

Within ONTAP SAN implementation and configuration, SNMP is commonly used to send event notifications to external monitoring systems. To successfully send SNMP traps to a named host such asOVERWATCH01, two foundational configuration requirements must be met.

First,an SNMP community string must be configuredon the cluster. The community string defines the authentication mechanism for SNMP communication and determines which monitoring systems are authorized to receive SNMP data. Without a configured community string, ONTAP will not generate or send SNMP notifications.

Second,DNS must be configured on the cluster. The trap destination is defined using a hostname rather than an IP address. ONTAP requires DNS name resolution to translate the hostnameOVERWATCH01into an IP address. Without DNS configuration, the cluster cannot resolve the trap host and therefore cannot deliver SNMP notifications.

While configuring a trap host is also required in practice, the question asks whichtwo statements are correct, not which actions complete the entire workflow. The critical dependencies that enable SNMP trap delivery to a named host are the SNMP community string and DNS resolution.

Firewall policies for SNMP are predefined and enabled by default in ONTAP for management traffic, so manual firewall configuration is not required during standard installation scenarios.

Therefore, the correct answers areA and B.

In ONTAP SAN concepts, SAN LIFs (used for iSCSI, FC, NVMe/FC) behave differently from NAS LIFs. SAN access relies on multipathing at the host level, not LIF failover within the storage system. Because of this architectural design, SAN LIFs are configured with a failover policy of disabled.

When a SAN LIF goes offline, ONTAP does not move the LIF to another port. Instead, the host multipathing software (such as ALUA for iSCSI or FC multipath drivers) redirects I/O to another available path. This design ensures predictable path behavior and avoids unexpected changes that could confuse host multipathing logic.

Failover policies such as broadcast-domain-wide or local-only are valid only for NAS or management LIFs. The system-defined option is not a valid failover policy value.

Therefore, the only valid failover policy for a SAN LIF is disabled, making A the correct answer.