200-901 Infrastructure and Automation Practice Question
In a network automation workflow, a developer needs to ensure idempotency. What does idempotency mean in this context?
⚠ Common exam trap
Cisco often tests idempotency by pairing it with failure recovery or concurrency, hoping candidates confuse idempotency with fault tolerance or parallel execution.
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
✓
Running the script once produces the same result as running it multiple times
Idempotency in network automation means that executing an operation multiple times results in the same network state as executing it once. For example, using a REST API PUT request to set a VLAN configuration will leave the device in the same state whether the request is sent once or repeatedly, because PUT is inherently idempotent. This prevents unintended side effects like duplicate VLANs or interface misconfigurations when a script is retried due to network failures or timeouts.
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 script uses a single API call
Why it's wrong here
Not related.
- ✓
Running the script once produces the same result as running it multiple times
Why this is correct
This is the definition of idempotency.
- ✗
The script can recover from failures
Why it's wrong here
That's fault tolerance.
- ✗
The script can run on multiple devices simultaneously
Why it's wrong here
That's parallelism.
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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.