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Difficulty: MediumCapabilities of Configuration Management Mechanisms (Puppet, Chef, Ansible)

A network automation engineer is selecting a configuration management tool for a enterprise network environment. The organizational policy mandates an agentless architecture that uses SSH or NETCONF for transport, executes configuration tasks defined in YAML files from a centralized control machine, and pushes updates directly to managed switches and routers without installing persistent client daemons. Which configuration management tool satisfies these operational requirements?

  1. AnsibleAnswer
  2. B
    Puppet
  3. C
    Chef
  4. D
    SaltStack in master-minion mode

Answer

Ansible is the configuration management tool that fulfills the requirement for an agentless architecture utilizing SSH/NETCONF transport, YAML configuration files (playbooks), and a push execution model.
Ansible is uniquely designed as an agentless configuration management system that communicates directly with managed devices via native transport mechanisms such as SSH or NETCONF. It uses human-readable YAML syntax for its configuration files (playbooks) and follows a push model where the control node initiates configuration changes on managed nodes.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the operational requirements provided in the scenario.
Identified key requirements: Agentless model, SSH/NETCONF transport, YAML definition files, push-based execution from control node.
Matching specific architectural traits determines the correct configuration management framework.
2
Evaluate Ansible against the identified criteria.
Ansible requires no software agent on managed nodes (agentless), uses standard SSH/NETCONF for communication, defines configurations using YAML playbooks, and pushes updates from the control node.
Ansible's architecture directly aligns with all required criteria.
3
Compare against Puppet and Chef architectures.
Puppet and Chef both primarily rely on installed client agents on managed nodes, a pull model of communication, and specific domain-specific languages (Puppet DSL and Ruby DSL respectively).
Puppet and Chef fail the agentless and YAML push requirements.

Key Concept

Ansible Architecture (Agentless, Push Model, SSH Transport, YAML Playbooks)
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Topics

Capabilities of Configuration Management Mechanisms (Puppet, Chef, Ansible)

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