Aruba ClearPass APC study guide
Aruba ClearPass APC · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The Aruba Certified Professional (ACP) – ClearPass credential is a vendor certification for network and security engineers who design, deploy, and operate HPE Aruba Networking ClearPass Policy Manager as a network access control (NAC) platform. It suits administrators and consultants who already understand RADIUS, 802.1X, and basic identity concepts and now need to build policy, enforcement, and guest/onboarding workflows in ClearPass itself. The Aruba ClearPass APC study guide has 9 sections and about 3,074 words.
01ClearPass Fundamentals and Architecture
Aruba ClearPass Policy Manager is a network access control (NAC) platform. It authenticates users and devices, evaluates policy, and returns an enforcement decision (permit, deny, VLAN, role, downloadable role, or CoA).
383 words, about 2 min02ClearPass Deployment and Licensing
ClearPass can be deployed as a hardware appliance , a virtual appliance (VMware, Hyper-V, KVM), or in supported cloud environments. Candidates should know the publisher/subscriber cluster model: one publisher owns the configuration database and license; subscribers replicate config and can serve authentication.
364 words, about 2 min03Network Access Control and Enforcement
NAC controls who and what gets on the network and what they can reach. ClearPass supports 802.1X (supplicant-based), MAC authentication (device-based), and web authentication (captive portal).
352 words, about 2 min04ClearPass Policy Manager Configuration
Policy Manager configuration centers on services , authentication sources , role mapping policies , enforcement policies and profiles , and dictionaries . A service defines matching rules (which requests it handles) and references an authentication method and source.
366 words, about 2 min05Authentication Methods and Identity Sources
ClearPass supports PAP, CHAP, MS-CHAPv2, EAP-PEAP, EAP-TLS, EAP-TTLS, and EAP-FAST . The method must match what the supplicant and NAD negotiate.
337 words, about 2 min06Guest Access and Onboarding
ClearPass Guest provides visitor management: self-registration , sponsor approval , kiosk provisioning, and captive portal workflows. Guests authenticate via web auth or a guest account, and enforcement typically returns a guest role, VLAN, and bandwidth contract.
316 words, about 2 min07ClearPass OnGuard
OnGuard is the endpoint health/posture agent. It checks the endpoint (OS patches, antivirus, firewall, disk encryption, registry, processes) and reports posture to ClearPass.
298 words, about 1 min08Troubleshooting and Monitoring
ClearPass Insight provides dashboards, reports, and search over authentication and accounting data. Access Tracker is the primary troubleshooting tool: it shows each request's service match, authentication result, role mapping, and enforcement.
331 words, about 2 min09Integration with Aruba and Third-Party Infrastructure
ClearPass integrates with Aruba controllers, access points, and switches as RADIUS clients (NADs) . Aruba infrastructure supports roles , downloadable user roles (DUR) , and CoA .
327 words, about 2 min