What is the primary purpose of configuration management in cloud infrastructure?

To provide a graphical interface for managing cloud resources

To monitor application performance and alert on anomalies

To automatically scale resources based on real-time demand

To ensure that systems are consistently configured to a defined desired state

A team uses Git to manage their Ansible playbooks. They want to ensure that the playbooks are tested against a real environment before being merged into the main branch. They have a staging environment that can be provisioned on demand. Which CI/CD strategy best achieves this?

Merge the pull request and then run the playbook against the production environment, with a rollback plan if it fails.

Use a shared staging environment that is always running, and run the playbook against it on every merge to main.

On every pull request, provision a temporary staging environment, run the playbook against it, and then destroy the environment after tests pass.

Run a syntax check on every pull request, and merge if the syntax is valid.

A team is migrating from manual server setup to infrastructure as code. They currently have a mix of cloud VMs and on-premises servers. They want to use a single tool that can provision cloud resources and configure both cloud and on-premises servers, with the ability to define the desired state declaratively. Which tool best fits this requirement?

Terraform, because it can provision cloud resources and configure servers using provisioners.

Puppet, because it can provision cloud resources and manage both cloud and on-premises servers declaratively.

Ansible, because it can provision cloud resources and configure both cloud and on-premises servers using declarative playbooks.

Use Terraform for cloud provisioning and Puppet for configuration management of both cloud and on-premises servers.

Which benefit is directly provided by configuration management in a cloud environment?

Automatically resolving all network connectivity issues

Providing real-time cost optimization recommendations

Ensuring consistent and reliable infrastructure across deployments

Eliminating the need for security monitoring

GIAC Cloud Security Automation

Domain 1Objective 4

Utilizing Configuration Management GCSA Practice Questions (Page 3)

Part of the DevOps and Cloud Infrastructure domain, which makes up ~24% of our current practice bank. GIAC (SANS) does not publish an official question count, but from its 120-minute exam (~50–80 total, ~12–19 in this domain), expect 3–5 from this objective — we provide 45 practice questions to prepare you well beyond it. (estimate)

45questions here

9free pages

8concepts

Questions 11–15

11foundation · easy
What is the primary purpose of configuration management in cloud infrastructure?
Select an answer first
12expert · hard
A team uses Git to manage their Ansible playbooks. They want to ensure that the playbooks are tested against a real environment before being merged into the main branch. They have a staging environment that can be provisioned on demand. Which CI/CD strategy best achieves this?
Select an answer first
13application · medium
A team is migrating from manual server setup to infrastructure as code. They currently have a mix of cloud VMs and on-premises servers. They want to use a single tool that can provision cloud resources and configure both cloud and on-premises servers, with the ability to define the desired state declaratively. Which tool best fits this requirement?
Select an answer first
14foundation · easy
Which configuration management tool uses a declarative language and a pull-based model with agents?
Select an answer first
15foundation · easy
Which benefit is directly provided by configuration management in a cloud environment?
Select an answer first

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Utilizing Configuration Management GCSA Practice Questions (Page 3)

Questions 11–15

What is the primary purpose of configuration management in cloud infrastructure?

A team uses Git to manage their Ansible playbooks. They want to ensure that the playbooks are tested against a real environment before being merged into the main branch. They have a staging environment that can be provisioned on demand. Which CI/CD strategy best achieves this?

Which configuration management tool uses a declarative language and a pull-based model with agents?

Which benefit is directly provided by configuration management in a cloud environment?

Keep studying — DevOps and Cloud Infrastructure