New Release 156-315.81 CCSE Questions

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation: The “MAC magic” value, also known as the “Cluster Global ID”, is a mechanism that identifies different clusters on the same network segment. It is used to prevent MAC address conflicts and ensure proper load balancing among cluster members. The “MAC magic” value is a hexadecimal number that is appended to the virtual MAC address of the cluster interface. By default, the “MAC magic” value is set to 1 for all clusters, but it must be changed manually if there is more than one cluster connected to the same VLAN. Otherwise, the clusters will not be able to communicate with each other or with external hosts.

The “MAC magic” value does not need to be modified under the other conditions listed in the question. The firewall cluster can use either Broadcast or Multicast for CCP traffic without affecting the “MAC magic” value. The number of members in a firewall cluster also does not affect the “MAC magic” value, as long as they belong to the same cluster and have the same Cluster Global ID.

References: Verifying Magic Mac - R81.20 - Check Point CheckMates; What is Magic MAC? - Check Point CheckMates; Check Point R81 CLI Reference Guide, page 17; R81 ClusterXL Administration Guide, page 9-10

The Hit Count feature allows tracking the number of connections that each rule matches, regardless of the Track option set for the rule. When you enable Hit Count, the Security Management Server collects the data from supported Security Gateways and displays it in SmartConsole. You can use the Hit Count feature to optimize your rule base by identifying unused or rarely used rules, or rules that match too many connections. 

You can disable the SecureXL mechanism temporarily for further diagnostic by running fwaccel off on the Security Gateway1. This command disables SecureXL, which is an acceleration solution that maximizes the performance of the Firewall by offloading CPU-intensive operations to the SecureXL device2. Disabling SecureXL can help you troubleshoot connectivity or policy issues, as it forces all traffic to go through the Firewall kernel and bypass the SecureXL device1. To run this command, you need to access the Security Gateway in expert mode and run fwaccel off1. To enable SecureXL again, you can run fwaccel on1. Note that disabling SecureXL may affect the performance of the Security Gateway, so use it with caution and only when necessary1.

References: How to enable/disable Check Point SecureXL via CLI - Check Point Software, SecureXL - Check Point Software

 How many users can have read/write access in Gaia at one time? Only one user can have read/write access in Gaia at one time. This is to prevent conflicts and inconsistencies in the configuration changes made by different users. If another user tries to login with read/write access while a user is already logged in, they will receive a warning message and will be given the option to either login with read-only access or force the other user to logout. References: [Gaia Administration Guide R81], page 15.