Utilizing Configuration Management GCSA Practice Questions (Page 1)

Questions 1–5

1. 1expert · hard

   A large enterprise is adopting infrastructure as code. They have a compliance requirement that all changes to production infrastructure must be approved by a change advisory board (CAB). They also want to minimize the time between code commit and deployment to production. They use Terraform and Ansible in a CI/CD pipeline. Which pipeline design best balances compliance and speed?

   • AUse a pipeline that automatically deploys to staging, runs tests, and then pauses for CAB approval before deploying to production.
   • BUse a separate pipeline for production that requires manual approval from the CAB, but do not test in staging.
   • CRequire CAB approval before any code is merged, and then automatically deploy to production after merge.
   • DAutomatically apply all changes to production as soon as they are merged to the main branch, and notify the CAB after the fact.
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2. 2expert · hard

   A DevOps team uses Git to manage their Terraform configurations. They have a requirement that all changes to the production environment must be reviewed by a senior engineer. They also want to prevent secrets from being committed to the repository. They use a CI/CD pipeline that runs on every pull request. Which combination of practices best meets these requirements?

   • ARequire a pull request review from a senior engineer for the production branch, and use a pre-commit hook to scan for secrets.
   • BUse a separate repository for production configurations, and require a senior engineer to manually merge changes.
   • CUse a single branch for all environments, and rely on the senior engineer to review all commits after they are pushed.
   • DUse branch protection rules to require a senior engineer's approval for the production branch, and run a secret scan in the CI pipeline on every pull request.
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4. 3application · medium

   A company uses Chef to manage its cloud servers. An administrator manually changed a configuration file on one server to troubleshoot a performance issue. The next Chef run reverted the change, causing the server to behave unexpectedly. The administrator wants to understand why this happened and how to prevent it in the future. What should the administrator do?

   • ADisable the Chef client on that server to prevent automatic reversion.
   • BRun Chef in audit-only mode to detect drift without applying changes.
   • CUpdate the Chef cookbook to reflect the manual change as the new desired state.
   • DUse the 'force' attribute in the Chef resource to prevent the client from reverting changes.
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5. 4foundation · easy

   Which practice is a key part of version control for configuration files?

   • AStoring configuration files only on a local machine
   • BDeleting old versions to save space
   • CAvoiding the use of branches to keep things simple
   • DCommitting changes with descriptive messages
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6. 5application · medium

   A cloud team manages a fleet of 200 Ubuntu VMs that must have identical security settings. They currently use a set of shell scripts that run in a specific order. After a recent audit, they found that some VMs have different firewall rules and SSH settings because the scripts failed partway through on a few machines. The team wants a solution that will automatically bring any VM back to the required state during the next scheduled run, without requiring manual intervention. Which approach best meets this requirement?

   • AUse an imperative configuration management tool like Ansible with playbooks that run in a fixed order.
   • BRewrite the scripts to check for errors and re-run the failed steps in the same order.
   • CUse a declarative configuration management tool like Puppet or Chef that enforces the desired state on each run.
   • DCreate a golden image and redeploy all VMs from that image every week.
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