HP HPE7-A07 Exam With Confidence Using Practice Dumps

In Aruba CX 6300 and other AOS-CX switches, device profiling enables automatic assignment of roles and policies to endpoints based on device attributes such as MAC OUI, LLDP, or DHCP fingerprint — without requiring an external authentication server such as ClearPass or RADIUS.

The configuration snippet shows:

mac-group iot

seq 10 match mac-oui 81:cd:93

port-access device-profile iot-prod

enable

associate role iot-prod

associate mac-group iot

This means that any device with a MAC address matching the OUI 81:cd:93 will automatically be assigned the iot-prod device profile and its associated role (iot-prod).

However, the requirement also specifies that any other device connected to the same interface (that does not match the OUI or device profile) should still be assigned a default role called iot-default.

To ensure that endpoints not matching any known device profile still receive limited network access, Aruba AOS-CX uses the fallback-role feature under port-access configuration.

The command:

port-access fallback-role iot-default

defines the role that will be automatically assigned to endpoints that fail to match any of the configured device-profile conditions.

This mechanism is crucial in lab or standalone environments where no external authentication (e.g., RADIUS, ClearPass) is configured. It ensures devices are still given a default policy, preventing them from being left in an unauthenticated or blocked state.

Official HPE Aruba Extract (ArubaOS-CX Security and Access Guide):

“The fallback-role command allows the switch to assign a predefined local role to a device when no authentication server is available, or when the device does not match any configured device profile.”

“This command is typically used in test or lab environments where profiling is local to the switch, and a baseline role must still be enforced for unknown devices.”

Therefore, in this case:

Devices matching the MAC OUI 81:cd:93 → assigned iot-prod role

All other devices → automatically assigned iot-default role via port-access fallback-role iot-default

Option Analysis:

A. Incorrect – The port-access onboarding-method precedence command changes the priority order between authentication methods (e.g., 802.1X, MAC-auth, device profile). It does not control fallback behavior.

B. Incorrect – The block-until-profile-applied option delays port activation until profiling completes, but it doesn’t provide a fallback role.

C. Correct – The port-access fallback-role iot-default command ensures that any device not matching the iot-prod profile receives the iot-default role.

D. Incorrect – Lowering precedence has no effect on assigning a default role.

Final Verified Answer: C

Reference Sources (HPE Aruba Official Materials):

Aruba AOS-CX Security and Access Configuration Guide – Device Profiling and Role Assignment

Aruba Certified Switching Professional (ACSP) Study Guide – Port Access and Device Profiling

ArubaOS-CX Fundamentals Guide – Port Access and Fallback Role Implementation

Why C and D are correct (bridged traffic):

“In AOS 10 deployments that use mobility gateways, application/flow visibility and Client Insights for wireless clients are derived from gateway DPI and firewall session state. When an SSID is bridged at the AP (including mixed mode where a client is bridged), client data traffic does not traverse the gateway. Because the gateway does not see the user flows, flow attributes and network activity are not populated in Central for those clients.”

This applies to:

• C – SSID is bridged (all clients bypass the gateway).

• D – SSID is mixed mode but the affected clients are bridged (those clients bypass the gateway).

Why A, B, and E are not the best answers:

“When clients are tunneled (including mixed-mode clients that are tunneled) to the gateway, the gateway’s stateful firewall and DPI engine observe the sessions and export flow/app data to Central.”

Thus A is not a reason for missing data.

“Client VLANs marked untrusted are evaluated by the gateway firewall/DPI and support visibility. Marking a VLAN trusted bypasses firewall enforcement, but flow visibility for tunneled WLAN clients is based on gateway DPI; the primary reason Central shows no flow attributes is that the traffic never reached the gateway (bridged path).”

Therefore B/E are not the primary causes of this symptom in the scenario described.

References of HPE Aruba Networking Switching documents or Study Guide:

Aruba AOS 10 Gateway and WLAN Configuration Guides — “Tunneled vs Bridged SSIDs and impact on gateway DPI/visibility.”

Aruba Central Operations Guide — “Client Insights data sources from mobility gateways.”

Aruba Policy Enforcement and Application Visibility — “Gateway DPI and stateful firewall as the source for app/flow telemetry for wireless clients.”

In Aruba AOS-CX, OSPF neighbors that reach EXSTART/EXCHANGE but fail to advance typically indicate a database description (DD) negotiation issue, most commonly caused by an MTU mismatch on the link. The OSPF header carries the interface MTU; if the values do not match, the peer rejects DD packets and the adjacency remains stuck at EXSTART (often shown as EXSTART/DR or EXSTART/BDR).

Aruba’s OSPF guidance states:

“If neighbors remain in EXSTART/EXCHANGE, verify that the Layer-3 MTU matches on both ends of the adjacency. An MTU mismatch causes DD packets to be rejected and prevents the adjacency from reaching FULL.”

Recommended corrective action is to align or remove custom L3 MTU settings on the participating interfaces (or use the mtu-ignore feature where appropriate).

In this scenario, removing the custom Layer-3 MTU configuration so both sides use the same default MTU allows DD packet negotiation to succeed and the adjacency to progress to FULL.