F5-CA F5CAB4 Exam Questions and Answers PDF

On BIG-IP systems, authentication and authorization events are logged in /var/log/secure. This includes:

Successful and failed SSH login attempts

Invalid user authentication attempts

PAM (Pluggable Authentication Module) authentication failures

Access denials related to secure services

Why the other options are incorrect:

/var/log/messages contains general system messages and service events, not detailed authentication failures.

/var/log/audit records administrative configuration changes (who changed what and when), not login attempts.

/var/log/ltm logs traffic-management (TMM) and application-related events.

Therefore, the correct log file for investigating unauthorized SSH login attempts is /var/log/secure.

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When BIG-IP is configured to use remote authentication (such as LDAP), all authentication and authorization attempts—including successes and failures—are logged to /var/log/secure.

For LDAP-based administrative login issues, /var/log/secure contains:

LDAP authentication failures

PAM authentication errors

Authorization and access-denied messages

Details explaining why a remote user could not log in

Why the other options are incorrect:

/var/log/user.log is not a standard BIG-IP log file for authentication.

/var/log/ltm logs traffic management events, not user authentication.

/var/log/messages contains general system messages but not detailed authentication failure information.

Therefore, the correct log file to troubleshoot LDAP administrative login failures is /var/log/secure.

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Reporting device status includes monitoring physical resource exhaustion, such as memory. The Control Plane provides both a command-line method via TMSH (show /sys memory) and a graphical method under Statistics > Module Statistics > Memory to report on how memory is allocated across TMM and the Linux host494949494949494949. This is essential for identifying potential "Aggressive Mode" triggers or hardware performance bottlenecks50.

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 .