EX294 Coordinate rolling updates Practice Question
A company uses Ansible to manage rolling updates of a web server fleet. During a deployment, the playbook fails on one host due to a transient network error, and the rest of the fleet is left in an inconsistent state. Which strategy would best minimize the risk of inconsistency in future rolling updates?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse `max_fail_percentage` with `serial` or think that retries (`Option A`) are sufficient to guarantee consistency, when in fact only aborting the rollout on any failure prevents the fleet from reaching an inconsistent mixed state.
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
✓
Set max_fail_percentage to 0 in the serial block to abort the rollout on any failure.
Setting `max_fail_percentage: 0` in a rolling update (using `serial`) tells Ansible to abort the entire playbook run if any single host fails. This prevents the rest of the fleet from being updated, avoiding an inconsistent state where some hosts have the new deployment and others do not. It directly addresses the risk of partial rollouts caused by transient errors.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Add retries to each task so transient errors are automatically retried.
Why it's wrong here
Retries may succeed but do not stop the rollout on persistent failures; inconsistency can still occur.
- ✗
Use a larger serial batch size to complete the rollout faster.
Why it's wrong here
Larger batches increase the number of hosts affected by a failure, worsening inconsistency.
- ✗
Set ignore_errors: yes on all tasks to continue despite failures.
Why it's wrong here
ignore_errors would mask failures, leading to inconsistency.
- ✓
Set max_fail_percentage to 0 in the serial block to abort the rollout on any failure.
Why this is correct
max_fail_percentage aborts the playbook if failure rate exceeds threshold, preventing inconsistency.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
One of 520 original EX294 practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This EX294 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Red Hat 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 EX294 exam.