Utilizing Configuration Management GCSA Practice Questions (Page 6)

Questions 26–30

1. 26application · medium

   A team needs to manage configuration for a fleet of servers that are occasionally offline. They want a tool that can apply configuration when the server comes back online, without manual intervention. Which tool's feature is best suited for this?

   • APuppet's agent-based pull model
   • BChef's push jobs feature
   • CTerraform's apply command
   • DAnsible's push-based model
   Reveal Solution Discussion Select an answer first
2. 27expert · hard

   A company uses a CI/CD pipeline to deploy configuration changes to production. They want to ensure that if a configuration change causes a service to fail, the pipeline automatically rolls back to the previous configuration. They also want to minimize the impact on users. Which strategy best meets this requirement?

   • AUse a blue/green deployment strategy where the new configuration is applied to a separate environment, and if health checks fail, the old environment remains active.
   • BDeploy the change to all servers at once, and if the service fails, manually revert the configuration.
   • CUse a rolling deployment with a slow ramp-up, and if health checks fail, continue the deployment to gather more data.
   • DUse a canary deployment, but do not automate the rollback; rely on manual monitoring.
   Reveal Solution Discussion Select an answer first
4. 28expert · hard

   A company is migrating from a manual configuration process to an automated one. They have a mix of legacy servers that require specific, ordered steps to configure, and new servers that should be configured identically. They want to use a single tool to manage both. Which approach should they take?

   • AUse Puppet for all servers, as it is declarative and handles both types
   • BUse a custom shell script for legacy servers and Ansible for new servers
   • CUse Terraform to configure both legacy and new servers
   • DUse Ansible with playbooks that define ordered tasks for legacy servers and use roles for new servers
   Reveal Solution Discussion Select an answer first
5. 29application · medium

   A company uses Chef to manage its infrastructure. They need to rotate the credentials used by Chef to connect to their cloud provider API. They want to do this without disrupting the Chef runs and without exposing the credentials in logs or version control. What is the best way to handle this?

   • AUse a secrets management service and configure Chef to fetch the credentials dynamically from that service.
   • BHardcode the new credentials in the Chef cookbook and push the change to the repository.
   • CUpdate the credentials in the Chef data bag and re-upload the data bag to the Chef server.
   • DCreate a new Chef client for each server and update the credentials manually on each server.
   Reveal Solution Discussion Select an answer first
6. 30application · medium

   A DevOps team stores all Ansible playbooks and configuration files in a Git repository. They want to ensure that any change to a playbook is automatically tested and validated before it is applied to production servers. They also need to prevent sensitive variables (like database passwords) from being committed to the repository. Which combination of practices best achieves these goals?

   • ARequire all developers to run a linting tool locally before pushing, and store secrets in a plaintext file that is excluded from the repository via .gitignore.
   • BUse a branch protection rule that requires a pull request review, and store secrets in an environment variable file that is committed to the repository.
   • CSet up a CI/CD pipeline that runs a playbook syntax check and a test playbook against a staging environment on every pull request, and store secrets in a secrets manager referenced by the playbooks.
   • DUse git hooks to run a syntax check on every commit and store secrets in an encrypted vault file that is committed to the repository.
   Reveal Solution Discussion Select an answer first