PNCSE practice questions I don't get at all...

[Tommie89]

Hello

So I'm preparing taking the PNCSE 8.0 certification exam.
as part of my prep I took the practice exam on the palo alto site.
it went fairly well( 16 wrong, so failed) however an emergency came up so I rushed through and later in reviewing I found a few very stupid mistakes (that I would have picked out if I had reviewed the questiosn before submiting.

however a few questions I just don't see how I could ever get the right answer because I think there is some info missing. or they are just very confusing.
I have 2 questions (printscreens I just don't get(pics below)

the 1st one. I don't think I have all the info.
according to test review the correct answer is:

SH into the device, enter in configure mode, and add the following static route command: set network virtual-router vr1 routing-table ip static-route dmzroute interface ethernet1/2 destination 10.15.26.0/24 nexthop ip-address 10.15.25.1

however I have no way of knowing the correct routing out of the 2 possible configure routing answers in the options.
so how do you solve this? what's the logic? as I don't see any way to have a 100% certainty your routing is correct.
during the test I guesse don one of the routing options. and guessed wrong. so is this a question with only 50% certainty of getting it right?
(according to the review the topic for this question can be found in admin guide of pan os 6.0 paged 438.

The 2nd question I think is just a very confusing way of asking it. in hind sight if I had just deductec that IP 1.1.1.1 is mentioned nowhere in the question I would have picked option 4 (which would be the correct one.
however wth kind of questioning is this?
" a rule that performs following source translation" --> and then does not give any info about the translation.
but jumps to the source and destination zone. (seems like a typo)
I also find this a stupid question. because from a practical standpoint if you were to troubleshoot this you would first collect all that info( source, destination, possible nat, etc). there's no logic in holding any of that info behind as that would just not happen during troubleshooting...

can anybody elaborate so I can see the light? or confirm the questions are missing info/confusing?

[OtakarKlier]

Hello,

I too am looking to take the test and have been going throug the study guide and have found quite a few errors already.

https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/services/education/pcnse

Wouldnt surprise me if this was in error.

Regards,

[BPry]

@Tommie89,

The last time I went through the PNCSE practice questions I felt like a few of the questions I kept getting wrong were errors. Really makes you second guess if you are doing things correctly, and generally doesn't work all that great if your told that a correct answer is wrong. 

I personally find the actual study guide way more helpful than the actual practice questions for this exact reason. 

[SethArnoff]

You're not wrong, many of the questions in the practice exam are lacking proper context. I'm studying for the exam as well.

The Study Guide is also full of spelling, grammar, and general mistakes as well.

I suggest "getting a feel" of the questions on the practice test, reading the study guide and taking the practice test WITHIN the study guide, realize how much of a failure you are at networking, then reading the full 800-page Administrative guide.

Seriously, the practice questions are all over the place. I've even grabbed a few "practice exams" from the web that ask the most bizarre questions, none of which are mentioned in the study guide.

I'm taking a Udemy course to supplement some learning, and I'm also studying where each feature is located within the Palo Alto itself. Hands-on experience seems to help the most (for me) since a lot of questions seem to be related to the gui and cli.

[BPry]

I'll just throw this out for everyone as well. During the PNCSE testing there are features about every feature you could possibly use on the firewall. If you don't have any experiance with SSL-Decryption, BGP Configuration, Panorama, or anything like that I would highly recommend reading up on those so that you have some knowledge to answer those questions on the exam.