200-901 Infrastructure and Automation Practice Question
During a CI/CD pipeline for network changes, a Jenkins job runs an Ansible playbook that applies configuration to a device. The playbook fails with a timeout error. What is the most likely cause?
⚠ Common exam trap
Cisco often tests the distinction between connectivity failures (unreachable), authentication errors (wrong credentials), and performance issues (timeouts), where candidates mistakenly assume any failure is due to a syntax or credential problem rather than device resource exhaustion.
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
✓
The device is under heavy CPU load causing slow responses
A timeout error in an Ansible playbook during a CI/CD pipeline typically indicates that the network device is responding too slowly to complete the SSH or API session within the configured timeout period. Heavy CPU load on the device can cause delayed responses to Ansible's control node, triggering the timeout before the playbook finishes applying the configuration. This is distinct from connectivity failures or authentication issues, which produce different error messages.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
The playbook syntax is invalid
Why it's wrong here
Syntax errors are caught early in the playbook run and do not cause timeouts.
- ✗
Incorrect credentials
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect credentials would result in an authentication failure, not a timeout.
- ✓
The device is under heavy CPU load causing slow responses
Why this is correct
High CPU can delay responses, resulting in timeout errors.
- ✗
Device is unreachable
Why it's wrong here
Unreachability might cause timeout, but a specific network issue is less likely than CPU load.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every 200-901 question from scratch — 989 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
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.