A customer exceeded the number of available VLANs on their network. To resolve this issue, they enabled VXLAN. They inquire about upgrading their servers with the FlexFabric 650 series NIC after…

Question

Options

• Asupports data deduplication when VXLAN is enabled
• Bdecreases memory load caused by VXLAN
• Csupports data inflight encryption when VXLAN is enabled
• Ddecreases CPU load caused by VXLAN

• A
  5% (1)
• B
  9% (2)
• C
  18% (4)
• D
  68% (15)

Explanation

D is correct because tunnel offload is a NIC-level hardware feature that moves the computational work of encapsulating and decapsulating VXLAN packets from the CPU to the NIC itself - directly reducing CPU overhead, which is the primary performance concern when VXLAN is introduced at scale.

Why the distractors are wrong:

• A (data deduplication): Tunnel offload has nothing to do with deduplication; that's a storage optimization feature, unrelated to NIC tunnel processing.
• B (memory load): VXLAN's main penalty hits CPU cycles, not memory. Tunnel offload targets CPU processing, not RAM consumption.
• C (in-flight encryption): Encryption offload (like MACsec or IPsec offload) is a separate NIC feature; tunnel offload specifically handles VXLAN encapsulation/decapsulation, not encryption.

Memory tip: Think of "offload" as moving work off the CPU onto the NIC. Whenever you see "tunnel offload" paired with VXLAN, the answer will always relate to CPU relief - the NIC handles the tunnel overhead so the CPU doesn't have to.

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