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Difficulty: HardImpact of Automation on Network Management

An enterprise network team is transitioning from traditional per-device CLI configuration management to a centralized, API-driven network automation framework using controller-based orchestration and configuration management tools. During an operational review, engineers highlight that out-of-band manual CLI edits performed directly on individual switches regularly cause configuration drift and compliance failures across sites. Which operational shift brought by network automation directly mitigates this specific issue?

  1. Establishing a centralized single source of truth that enables continuous compliance auditing and automated state reconciliation to remediate local configuration drift.Answer
  2. B
    Migrating to agentless configuration management tools like Ansible to completely remove the need for underlying physical IP routing and underlay connectivity.
  3. C
    Executing periodic HTTP GET requests to modify network device state and continuously overwrite non-compliant running configurations.
  4. D
    Converting control plane routing protocol messages into JSON arrays to prevent local CLI access on network switches.

Answer

Establishing a centralized single source of truth that enables continuous compliance auditing and automated state reconciliation to remediate local configuration drift.
Centralized network automation replaces ad-hoc local CLI changes with a single source of truth (such as version-controlled repositories or controller-based policies). Automated systems continuously monitor device states, detect configuration drift caused by manual intervention, and automatically re-apply standard configurations to restore compliance across the network infrastructure.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the core operational problem described in the scenario.
The primary issue is configuration drift resulting from manual, out-of-band CLI changes on individual switches across multiple sites.
Traditional per-device management creates inconsistency because manual local changes are not tracked centrally.
2
Evaluate how network automation shifts operational management models.
Automation shifts configuration management from decentralized manual entry to central controller/repository orchestration (version-controlled single source of truth).
By defining intent centrally (e.g., via Git, DNA Center, or Ansible playbooks), automation tools can periodically validate real-time device states against defined templates.
3
Match the solution to the specific mitigation outcome.
Automated compliance checks detect discrepancies between actual device states and intended states, enforcing automated reconciliation to reverse manual CLI edits.
This directly resolves configuration drift and enforces enterprise-wide consistency.

Key Concept

Impact of Automation on Network Management - Configuration Drift and Centralized Single Source of Truth
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Topics

Impact of Automation on Network Management

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