300-445 Exam Dumps - Designing and Implementing Enterprise Network Assurance(300-445 ENNA)

Troubleshooting intermittent performance issues is a core component of theDesigning and Implementing Enterprise Network Assurance (300-445 ENNA)curriculum. When a transaction test using Basic Authentication fails randomly, the engineer must employ a multi-layered diagnostic approach to determine if the fault lies with the credentials, the network path, or the application server.

The first step is toverify the correctness of credentials(Option B). Because Basic Authentication encodes credentials in the header, any change in user permissions or account lockouts will trigger immediate failures. Performing manual logins from various geographical locations helps rule out location-based access control lists (ACLs) or regional IdP sync issues.

The most data-rich diagnostic step is toanalyze the ThousandEyes waterfall charts and HTTP response codes(Option C). The waterfall view allows the engineer to see if the failure happens during the initial 401 Unauthorized challenge or after the credentials are sent. If the charts show high "Wait Time" or 5xx errors, the issue is likely server-side latency or instability. If the "Connect Time" is high, the problem may be network-layer congestion.

Finally, if the telemetry indicates that the network path is healthy but the server is intermittently returning errors or timing out, the engineer shouldcontact the web application vendor(Option D). Providing the vendor with the specific ThousandEyes "Share Link" allows them to see the exact same packet-level and browser-level data, proving that the issue is not with the client's network but with the server-side infrastructure. Disabling authentication (Option A) is not a valid troubleshooting step for a test designed specifically to monitor an authenticated workflow.

In theDesigning and Implementing Enterprise Network Assurance (300-445 ENNA)architecture, the deployment of ThousandEyes Enterprise Agents on switching infrastructure is designed to be highly flexible, catering to different management styles and network scales. Modern Cisco switches, specifically theCatalyst 9300 and 9400 Series, support the execution of containerized applications directly on the switch's hardware through theCisco IOS XE Application Hostingframework.1

Application Hosting (Option A)refers to the manual method using the Cisco IOS XE Command Line Interface (CLI). An engineer can use app-hosting commands to install, configure, and manage the Docker-based Enterprise Agent.2This provides granular control over resource allocation and networking for the container.Catalyst Center (Option B)provides a GUI-driven, automated workflow to deploy agents at scale across an entire campus fabric.3It simplifies the lifecycle management by handling the installation and activation across multiple switches simultaneously. For switches acting as edge devices in an SD-WAN fabric,Catalyst SD-WAN Manager (Option C)orchestrates the deployment through centralized policies and templates, allowing the agent to be pushed as part of a device configuration. Finally, while theThousandEyes Portal (Option D)is the management plane for tests, it is also where the Docker image and Account Group Token are obtained for any of the aforementioned deployment methods.

Each method provides the same end result: an Enterprise Agent running "on-box" to provide deep visibility into the network path starting directly from the access or core layer. Therefore,All of the above(Option E) is the correct answer as it encompasses the manual, automated, and orchestrated methods available for switch-based deployment as per the 300-445 ENNA official guidelines.

Alert fatigue is a major operational challenge in network assurance. To make a CPU utilization alert for Endpoint Agents less sensitive and reduce "noise," an engineer must implement statistical filters that ignore transient spikes or isolated events.

The two most effective methods are:

Increase the agent count (Option A):By requiring a higher number or percentage of agents to simultaneously exceed the threshold, the system ensures the alert represents a widespread environmental issue rather than a single user running a CPU-intensive background process.

Require more rounds of data (Option C):Instead of alerting on a single measurement (1 of 1 round), the engineer can configure the rule to require the threshold to be breached for multiple consecutive checks (e.g., 2 of 3 rounds). This filters out brief, non-impactful CPU spikes that occur naturally during OS updates or browser startups.

Other options would have the opposite effect:

Option B:Lowering the percentage threshold (e.g., from 90% to 50%) would cause the alert to trigger much more frequently, increasing noise.

Option D:Enabling the alert on more agents increases the pool of potential triggers, which typically leads to more notifications unless the logic in Option A is also applied.

In theDesigning and Implementing Enterprise Network Assurance (300-445 ENNA)implementation guide, the Cisco IOS XEApplication Hostinglifecycle is a critical concept for troubleshooting and configuration management. When an application environment variable—such as proxy settings or account tokens—is modified in the app-hosting configuration, a simple restart of the container is insufficient to apply those changes.

The correct procedure involves moving the application back through its lifecycle states to ensure the new environment variables are injected. This requires executing the full agent lifecycle (Option C):Stop, Deactivate, Activate, and Start.

Stop:Terminates the current running process of the container.

Deactivate:Releases the allocated hardware resources (CPU, Memory) and, most importantly, clears the runtime environment.

Activate:Re-allocates the resources andinjects the updated configuration parametersinto the container's environment variables.

Start:Initiates the container with the newly applied configuration settings.

After the application is up and running, the ThousandEyes-agent process attempts to connect to the controller in the cloud environment. Without thedeactivate/activatesequence, the container continues to use the environment variables present at the time of its initial activation, causing the agent to remain offline as it fails to reach the ThousandEyes portal without the proxy.Reinstalling(Option B) would work but is an unnecessarily lengthy process, whileNo action(Option D) will result in no change to the agent's connectivity status.

In theDesigning and Implementing Enterprise Network Assurance (300-445 ENNA)framework, baselining is the process of establishing a "normal" performance profile for network infrastructure to enable the detection of anomalies. When the metric of interest is the internal health of a physical device, such asCPU utilizationon a core router,SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol)is the industry-standard data source.

SNMP provides direct visibility into the device's control plane and hardware performance. By polling specific Object Identifiers (OIDs) from the router's Management Information Base (MIB), a monitoring system likeCisco Catalyst Centeror a third-party NMS can collect granular data on CPU cycles, memory allocation, and temperature. This "inside-out" telemetry is essential for baselining because it reflects the actual resource consumption of the router during various traffic loads.

Conversely, ThousandEyes tests (Options A, B, and D) provide "outside-in" synthetic data. WhileDNS resolution time(Option A),HTTP response times(Option B), andPath Visualization(Option D) are excellent for measuring end-to-end service delivery and network transit health, they do not report on the router's internal hardware state. For instance, a router could have 99% CPU utilization (indicating a potential crash), yet a ThousandEyes path test might still show a "green" path if the data plane (ASICs) is still forwarding packets efficiently. Therefore, to establish a reliable baseline for hardware-specific metrics like CPU,SNMP data(Option C) is the only appropriate source among the choices.

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In theDesigning and Implement7ing Enterpr8ise Network Assurance (300-445 ENNA)framework, configuring effective alert rules is critical for distinguishing between standard network noise and actionable application-layer failures. ForWeb - HTTP Servertests, ThousandEyes allows engineers to monitor both network-level metrics (like Connect time) and application-level indicators (like HTTP response codes).

The requirement is to trigger an alert specifically when the HTTP server responds with aserver error. In the HTTP protocol, server errors are categorized as the5XXseries of status codes (e.g., 500 Internal Server Error, 503 Service Unavailable, 504 Gateway Timeout). To meet this requirement, the engineer must configure a location alert condition where theMetricis set toResponse Codeand the condition value isserver error(5XX)(Option D).

Reviewing the other options:

Error type is any (Option A):While this would capture server errors, it would also trigger for 4XX client errors (like 404 Not Found) and network-layer timeouts, making it too broad for a specific "server error" requirement.

Wait Time is Dynamic (Option B):This monitors the time-to-first-byte using statistical baselining. While high wait times oftenprecede5XX errors, this condition only alerts on latency, not on the actual error code itself.

Response Time (Option C):Similar to wait time, this monitors performance speed rather than the logical success or failure of the server's response.

By specifically selectingResponse Code: server error(5XX), the engineer ensures that the operations team is only notified when the application backend is experiencing a functional failure, rather than just a slow response or a client-side misconfiguration.

Within the framework ofDesigning and Implementing Enterprise Network Assurance (300-445 ENNA), network monitoring is categorized into two primary methodologies: active and passive monitoring.1Active monitoring(Option C) is characterized by the generation of synthetic or "probes" traffic specifically designed to measure network performance.2These probes simulate real-world user activity, such as HTTP requests, DNS queries, or ICMP pings, to baseline performance metrics like latency, jitter, and packet loss.

The core benefit of the active approach is its independence from actual user traffic. By sending a continuous ping or synthetic HTTP probe, an engineer can verify path availability and performance even during off-peak hours when no real users are on the network. In the context of Cisco ThousandEyes—a central platform in the ENNA certification—this is the primary mode of operation for Cloud, Enterprise, and Endpoint agents. For instance, a ThousandEyes network test proactively sends packets to a target IP or URL to visualize the hop-by-hop underlay and overlay paths.

Conversely, options A, B, and D representpassive monitoringtechniques. Passive monitoring involves observing and analyzing traffic that is already traversing the network.3Methods such asSNMP(Option A) provide device-level health data like CPU load and interface utilization, whilepacket captures(Option B) andNetFlow(Option D) analyze the characteristics of existing user flows to determine top talkers or traffic patterns. While passive monitoring is excellent for volume and utilization analysis, it lacks the proactive capability to test a path's performance before a user encounters a failure. Therefore, sending a synthetic probe like a continuous ping is the definitive example of active monitoring.

According to theDesigning and Implementing Enterprise Network Assurance (300-445 ENNA)curriculum, the native integration of ThousandEyes within the Meraki portfolio is specifically focused on theMeraki MXsecurity and SD-WAN appliances. This integration allows users to install ThousandEyes Enterprise Agents directly on supported Meraki MX hardware, providing critical visibility into the performance of services that distributed users rely on.4

TheMeraki MX (Option A)supports the ThousandEyes Enterprise Agent as a containerized service that can be activated with a single click within the Meraki Dashboard.5This integration is designed to provide better monitoring and testing capabilities for customers interested in improving the quality of their experience and adding the appropriate SD-WAN policies to optimize network performance. By running the agent natively on the MX, administrators can monitor the performance of external applications and services directly from the SD-WAN sites, bridging the gap between local branch health and global internet performance.6

While Cisco continues to expand its assurance integrations across the portfolio, theMR (Wireless),MS (Switching),MV (Camera), andMG (Cellular)series do not currently support the native, "on-box" execution of the ThousandEyes Enterprise Agent. For these other platforms, visibility is typically achieved through passive monitoring viaMeraki Insight (MI)or by deploying ThousandEyes agents on connected client devices (Endpoint Agents) or nearby infrastructure. Therefore, theMeraki MXis the only verified platform supporting native ThousandEyes agent deployment in this context.