1Y0-311 · Question #106
Scenario: A Citrix Engineer maintains a multi-zone XenDesktop infrastructure with a Primary Zone and a Single Zone. Each zone contains two Delivery Controllers. Two new Delivery Agent (VDA) machines…
The correct answer is A. The VDAs will immediately attempt to register with one of the Delivery Controllers in the Primary. See the full explanation below for the reasoning.
Question
Scenario: A Citrix Engineer maintains a multi-zone XenDesktop infrastructure with a Primary Zone and a Single Zone. Each zone contains two Delivery Controllers. Two new Delivery Agent (VDA) machines are being introduced into the Satellite Zone. What will be the registration process for the new VDAs of both the Satellite Zone Delivery Controllers are offline?
Options
- AThe VDAs will immediately attempt to register with one of the Delivery Controllers in the Primary
- BThe VDAs will first attempt to contact both Delivery Controllers in the local zone and then fail over
- CThe VDAs will intermittently attempt to register with both the Delivery Controllers in the local zone
- DThe VDAs will first attempt to contact one of the Delivery Controllers in the local zone and then
How the community answered
(19 responses)- A74% (14)
- B5% (1)
- C16% (3)
- D5% (1)
Community Discussion
8
Brenda K.Jun 27, 2026This is a quick win, do not overthink it and do not flag it for later. The registration hierarchy in a multi-zone XenDesktop environment is the key concept here, and once you know it, this question takes you maybe 20 seconds. The correct answer is A. When new VDAs come online in a Satellite Zone and both local Delivery Controllers are offline, the VDAs do not sit idle waiting, they immediately reach out to the Primary Zone controllers. This is by design because the Primary Zone always serves as the fallback registration point when the Satellite Zone loses its controllers. Options C and D try to trick you into thinking the VDAs keep spinning their wheels in the local zone indefinitely, and option B adds the word "fail over" to sound plausible, but it misrepresents the timing since the VDAs go straight to Primary when local controllers are unavailable, not after some extended local retry loop. Burn this into your memory: Satellite Zone controllers go down, VDAs go immediately to Primary, full stop.
Prof. SaraJun 27, 2026Satellite down, VDAs go straight to Primary, no hesitation. Saw this exact setup on my 1Y0-311 sitting two years ago, and I almost second-guessed myself on C because "intermittently" sounds plausible when you are tired. What saved me was the zone failover rule I hammer into every cohort: local controllers get the first look, but if both are unreachable, the VDA skips straight to Primary with no retry loop in between. That is why A is the only clean answer. B sounds right until you remember the VDAs are new and have no existing registration to "fail over" from in the traditional sense. D is just A with the sentence cut off, so eliminate it on sight.
Samuel O.Jun 29, 2026The "no existing registration" point on B is what trips people up most, but worth adding that even seasoned VDAs would skip the retry loop in a full satellite outage since the local controllers are both gone, so the behavior lands the same way regardless of whether the VDAs are new or not.
Yusuf A.Jun 17, 2026I went back and forth on this one but I keep landing on B. The way my senior explained VDA registration to me, the agent always tries the local zone controllers first because that is the whole point of having zones in the first place, so the VDA does not just skip over its own zone and go straight to Primary. The "fail over" part is what seals it for me, because if both local controllers are offline the VDA then escalates to the Primary Zone, which matches how zone preference and fallback are described in the XenDesktop architecture docs I have been studying. Option A feels wrong because it skips the local attempt entirely, and C just says "intermittently" which sounds like it never actually moves on to a fallback at all.
Lena V.Jun 27, 2026Took this one on my 1Y0-311 sitting last fall and honestly the wording on option D being cut off threw me for a second, but I knew from lab work that when both local zone controllers are down, the VDAs skip the wait and go straight to Primary Zone controllers, so A was the only call that made sense. The failover to Primary is immediate, not a retry loop, and that distinction is exactly what Citrix tests you on here.
Yusuf A.Jun 28, 2026Good catch on the immediate failover, Lena, and I would just add that my senior had me trace through the broker service logs on a test box to confirm there is no configurable retry delay at that stage, which helped me really lock in why the Primary Zone takes over right away rather than waiting on a local zone recovery.
Samuel O.Jun 27, 2026I have been going back and forth on this one but I keep landing on C, and here is why. When a VDA boots up and tries to register, it does not just pick one controller and give up if that one is down, it cycles through all the controllers it knows about in its local zone list repeatedly until it gets a response. The key word in the scenario is that both Satellite Zone controllers are offline, not unreachable in a one-shot sense, so the VDA is going to keep hammering away at both local zone controllers intermittently rather than immediately jumping ship to the Primary Zone. The failover to Primary Zone controllers is a separate mechanism that kicks in under different conditions, not simply because one or two local attempts timed out, and the exam has tested this distinction before. C is the only option that accurately describes that looping retry behavior against the local zone controllers before any cross-zone fallback logic even enters the picture.
Brenda K.Jun 27, 2026Samuel, the retry loop you described is accurate but it does not override the architectural rule here. When all controllers in the local Satellite Zone are offline, the VDA falls back to the Primary Zone controllers by design, which is exactly what A describes.