200-901 Infrastructure and Automation Practice Question
An engineer must push a configuration change to a Cisco IOS XE router using NETCONF. The engineer wants to stage the change so it can be previewed and later committed or discarded, rather than applying it immediately to the running configuration. Which NETCONF capability enables this behavior?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse capabilities that affect configuration application with the candidate datastore, which is the only one that stages edits for review before commit.
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
✓
urn:ietf:params:netconf:capability:candidate:1.0
NETCONF advertises supported capabilities during hello exchange. The candidate datastore capability creates a staging area separate from running, letting an engineer apply edits, inspect them, and then commit or discard. Writable-running applies changes immediately, rollback-on-error only handles failed transactions, and notification streams events, so none of those provide the preview-then-commit workflow.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
urn:ietf:params:netconf:capability:notification:1.0
Why it's wrong here
The notification capability lets a client subscribe to asynchronous event streams such as syslog or alarm events from the device. It is a monitoring feature and has no relationship to datastore staging, so it cannot satisfy the requirement to preview a configuration change before committing it.
- ✓
urn:ietf:params:netconf:capability:candidate:1.0
Why this is correct
The candidate capability gives the device a separate candidate datastore where edits are staged. An engineer can edit the candidate, review it with a get-config against that datastore, then commit it to running or discard it, which is precisely the preview-and-commit workflow described in the scenario.
- ✗
urn:ietf:params:netconf:capability:writable-running:1.0
Why it's wrong here
Writable-running allows direct edits to the running datastore, but changes take effect immediately and there is no staging or preview step. That directly contradicts the requirement to review a change before applying it, so this capability does not provide the transactional workflow the engineer needs.
- ✗
urn:ietf:params:netconf:capability:rollback-on-error:1.0
Why it's wrong here
Rollback-on-error automatically reverts a failed operation within a single edit-config, but it does not create a staging area for a human to inspect. The engineer could not preview the change before it applied, so this capability addresses error recovery rather than the requested stage-review-commit behavior.
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Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Cisco exam blueprint
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