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200-901 Practice Question: A DevOps team is building a CI/CD pipeline that…
A DevOps team is building a CI/CD pipeline that configures Cisco NX-OS switches. They want to use model-driven telemetry to stream operational data. Which protocol should they use for on-change telemetry?
⚠ Common exam trap
Cisco often tests the distinction between push-based (gRPC) and pull-based (SNMP, HTTP) protocols, trapping candidates who confuse SNMP traps (which are event-driven but not model-driven) with true on-change telemetry.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
gRPC
gRPC (Google Remote Procedure Call) is the correct protocol for on-change telemetry on Cisco NX-OS because it supports a publish-subscribe model where the switch pushes data only when a monitored value changes, reducing bandwidth and CPU overhead. This is defined in the Cisco MDT (Model-Driven Telemetry) framework, which uses gRPC with Protobuf encoding for efficient streaming of YANG-modeled operational data.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
SSH
Why it's wrong here
SSH provides an interactive CLI session or NETCONF over SSH, but it does not deliver model-driven telemetry streams; on-change telemetry needs gRPC or a dial-out subscription. SSH is tempting because NETCONF uses it, yet that transports configuration RPCs, not pushed operational data.
- ✓
gRPC
Why this is correct
gRPC supports dial-out, model-driven telemetry with on-change subscriptions, letting NX-OS switches push updates only when a monitored value changes rather than streaming continuously. This satisfies the stem's on-change requirement, unlike SNMP polling or CLI scraping, and uses efficient HTTP/2 transport with protobuf-encoded YANG data.
- ✗
HTTP
Why it's wrong here
HTTP is request-response and cannot push unsolicited on-change updates from the switch; model-driven telemetry requires a streaming transport such as gRPC or NETCONF dial-out. HTTP suits RESTCONF configuration retrieval, where the client polls the device, not continuous event-driven data streaming.
- ✗
SNMP
Why it's wrong here
SNMP is poll-based or sends coarse traps, not structured model-driven telemetry streams; on-change telemetry requires gRPC dial-out with YANG-modelled data. SNMP is tempting because traps are event-driven, but they carry limited OID values rather than the high-frequency, schema-defined streams the pipeline needs.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This 200-901 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Cisco certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the 200-901 exam.