Cisco DCCOR (350-601) key terms

The Cisco UCS chassis-based fabric device that provides LAN and SAN connectivity to servers and runs the fabric's management and switching software. It pairs with a second unit for high availability in a UCS domain.

Software-assigned roles for Fabric Interconnect ports: server ports connect to IOM uplinks, uplink Ethernet ports connect to LAN switches, uplink Fibre Channel ports connect to SAN switches, and appliance ports carry management or monitoring traffic.

A Fabric Interconnect port mode that carries both Ethernet and Fibre Channel traffic over one physical link to a converged adapter or switch, reducing cabling while preserving separate LAN and SAN forwarding.

The management application embedded in the Fabric Interconnects that provisions, monitors, and manages UCS servers, chassis, adapters, and policies as a single logical domain through GUI, CLI, or API.

A software object that defines a server's identity and connectivity: UUID, MAC and WWN addresses, boot order, firmware, BIOS policy, and network and storage attachments. It is associated with a physical server or pool.

A reusable blueprint of policy and identity settings from which service profiles are derived, ensuring consistent configuration across many servers and simplifying later changes through template updates.

A named group of physical UCS servers from which a service profile can automatically claim a suitable server, enabling stateless computing and rapid hardware replacement without reconfiguring the profile.

Cisco's cloud-hosted management platform for UCS, HyperFlex, and other infrastructure, offering policy-based configuration, firmware management, health monitoring, and automation through a SaaS or on-premises appliance.

Cisco's blade server line that installs in a chassis with I/O modules and shares Fabric Interconnect connectivity, offering high density and unified management through UCS Manager or Intersight.

Cisco's rack-mount standalone servers, typically managed individually through CIMC or onboard management, used where chassis-based blade density is not required.

The Integrated Management Controller, an onboard management processor in UCS C-Series and some other servers that provides out-of-band access for power control, BIOS, firmware, sensors, and virtual media.

A hyperconverged infrastructure platform combining compute, storage, and networking with a distributed file system, managed as clusters and often integrated with UCS management tools.

A technology that lets two switches appear as one logical switch to downstream devices, allowing a server or switch to use multi-chassis link aggregation without spanning-tree blocking.

The configuration grouping that defines the two peer switches, their peer link, peer keepalive path, and shared role for a virtual port channel deployment.

The high-bandwidth interconnect between two vPC peer switches that synchronizes control-plane state and carries traffic when a member link fails.

A Nexus feature that partitions one physical switch into multiple independent logical switches, each with its own interfaces, routing tables, and administrative context.

Virtual Routing and Forwarding, a technique that creates separate routing tables on one device so overlapping address space and isolated traffic paths can coexist.

An overlay encapsulation that carries Layer 2 frames inside IP packets using a 24-bit segment identifier, allowing large-scale Layer 2 extension across a routed underlay.

A VXLAN Tunnel Endpoint, the device or interface that encapsulates and decapsulates VXLAN traffic, mapping local VLANs to VXLAN segments and forwarding over the IP underlay.

Ethernet VPN, a BGP control-plane solution that distributes MAC and IP reachability for overlay networks, enabling efficient VXLAN learning, multihoming, and mobility.

The network operating system used on Cisco Nexus data center switches, featuring modular processes, checkpoint and rollback, and unified CLI and API management.

Application Centric Infrastructure, a policy-driven data center fabric of Nexus switches managed by an APIC controller, where endpoints and connectivity are defined by intent-based policy rather than per-switch configuration.

In ACI, a policy container that groups endpoints sharing network and security requirements, such as VLANs or virtual machines, and binds them to bridge domains and contracts.

In ACI, a Layer 2 forwarding domain that contains one or more subnets and defines routing and flooding behavior for its endpoint groups.

In ACI, a policy object that defines which traffic is permitted between endpoint groups, using subjects, filters, and directions to enforce security intent.

In ACI, a logical container that isolates policies, networking objects, and resources for an application or organization, similar in purpose to a VRF-based partition.

A Cisco data center technology that builds multipath Layer 2 topologies using IS-IS, providing loop-free forwarding and better bandwidth use than spanning tree.

A protocol that encapsulates Fibre Channel frames inside Ethernet frames, letting converged adapters and switches carry LAN and SAN traffic over the same physical infrastructure.

Virtual SAN, a Fibre Channel feature that partitions a physical SAN into isolated logical fabrics, each with its own zoning, domain, and fabric services.

A SAN access-control mechanism that groups fabric ports or WWNs into zones and zones into zone sets, restricting which initiators may communicate with which targets.

World Wide Name, a unique 64-bit identifier assigned to Fibre Channel devices and ports, used for addressing, zoning, and mapping storage to servers.

A Fibre Channel feature that assigns multiple virtual port IDs to one physical host bus adapter, allowing a server to present several WWNs for virtual machines or applications.

N-Port Virtualization, a switch mode in which an edge switch proxies fabric logins to a core switch, reducing domain ID consumption and simplifying SAN scaling.

A dedicated VLAN that carries Fibre Channel over Ethernet traffic on a converged link, mapped to a VSAN so frames retain fabric isolation.

Role-Based Access Control, a method of granting permissions through roles assigned to users, limiting what each account can view or change on network and compute systems.

Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting, the framework that verifies identities, controls permitted actions, and records activity for network and compute device access.

A Cisco-developed AAA protocol that separates authentication, authorization, and accounting and encrypts the full payload, commonly used for administrative device access control.

A set of Layer 2 protections such as DHCP snooping, dynamic ARP inspection, and IPv6 RA guard that prevent rogue devices from hijacking default gateway or address assignment roles.

A switch feature that limits which and how many MAC addresses may appear on an interface, with violation actions such as shutdown, restrict, or protect.

A Layer 2 segmentation feature that divides a VLAN into isolated, community, and promiscuous ports, restricting host-to-host traffic within one subnet.

A configuration that requires time synchronization packets to be validated with keys, preventing a rogue server from shifting device clocks and corrupting logs or certificates.

An agentless automation tool that applies declarative playbooks over SSH or APIs, widely used to configure Nexus, UCS, and ACI environments from a central controller.

An HTTP-based programmatic interface exposing resources as URLs with standard methods, used by Nexus, UCS Manager, and Intersight for automation and integration.

A software library that wraps a platform's API in Python classes and methods, simplifying scripted automation for controllers and switches.

A Microsoft task-automation shell and scripting language used with modules to manage Windows and Cisco compute platforms, including UCS and HyperFlex operations.