Which two features are provided by deploying an OOB management network in a Cisco Nexus data center? (Choose two.)

An out-of-band (OOB) management network provides a dedicated and isolated path for administrative access and monitoring, separate from the production data plane. Its primary purpose is to offer a reliable Layer 3 path for management protocols like SSH, SNMP, and Syslog (monitoring). A key design best practice for vPC is to use this OOB network for the vPC keepalive link. This ensures the keepalive messages have a path that is independent of the data plane interfaces and the vPC peer link, preventing a dual-active scenario if the peer link fails.

B. Layer 2 path for server traffic. The OOB network is strictly for management traffic, not for production server data traffic.
C. Layer 2 path for a vPC peer link. The vPC peer link is a high-speed data plane connection and must be separate from the OOB management network.
E. Layer 3 path for server traffic. Production server traffic should use the in-band data plane interfaces, not the OOB management network.

1. Cisco, Cisco Nexus 9000 Series NX-OS System Management Configuration Guide, Release 10.2(x), "System Management Overview". This guide details using the mgmt0 interface for OOB management, including for "SNMP, Telnet, SSH, and SFTP".

2. Cisco, Virtual PortChannel (vPC) Operations and Design with Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switches, "vPC Keepalive Link". This white paper explicitly recommends, "The vPC keepalive link should not be routed over the vPC peer link. The best practice is to connect the vPC keepalive link to a dedicated network, for example, through the out-of-band management network (mgmt0)."