EX294 Deploy Ansible Automation Platform Practice Question
A company is deploying Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.3 in a hybrid cloud environment. The automation controller is installed on a RHEL 8 server in the on-premises data center. Execution nodes are distributed: four in the same data center, two in a remote branch office connected via VPN, and three in AWS EC2 instances. The VPN connection to the branch office is low-bandwidth and high-latency. The AWS nodes use a direct connect with stable bandwidth. During initial testing, playbooks running on the branch office execution nodes frequently timeout or hang, while on-premises and AWS nodes work fine. The automation mesh topology is configured with all nodes as direct children of the controller. The team wants to minimize latency and ensure reliable execution for the branch office nodes. Which course of action should the administrator take?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse tuning parameters (timeout, forks) with architectural fixes, failing to recognize that the mesh topology itself must be adapted to overcome network constraints.
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
✓
Deploy an additional automation mesh node in the branch office and make the branch office execution nodes children of that node.
Deploying an additional automation mesh node in the branch office creates a local parent for the branch office execution nodes, reducing the number of high-latency, low-bandwidth VPN hops between the controller and those nodes. In the automation mesh, parent-child relationships allow execution nodes to connect through a closer intermediary, minimizing timeouts and improving reliability by keeping control-plane traffic local.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Deploy an additional automation mesh node in the branch office and make the branch office execution nodes children of that node.
Why this is correct
A local mesh node reduces WAN traffic by caching playbook artifacts and handling control plane communication locally.
- ✗
Configure the controller to use the AWS execution nodes for all branch office jobs via a proxy.
Why it's wrong here
This would route traffic through the direct connect, but the branch office nodes still need to communicate; it does not solve the branch office latency.
- ✗
Increase the `ansible_timeout` setting in the controller configuration to 120 seconds.
Why it's wrong here
This only extends the timeout window; it does not address the root cause of latency and may still fail.
- ✗
Reduce the forks value for branch office execution nodes to 1.
Why it's wrong here
Lowering forks reduces parallelism but does not address network latency; jobs may still time out.
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