EX294 Manage automation security and operations Practice Question
A Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform deployment uses automation mesh to manage remote nodes across a high-latency WAN. An administrator notices that some job runs fail intermittently due to connection timeouts. The administrator wants to improve reliability without changing network infrastructure. Which configuration change is most effective?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse connection timeouts with task execution failures, leading them to choose retries (Option B) or async (Option D), which do not address the root cause of SSH connection drops on high-latency links.
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
✓
Increase the 'timeout' value in the [defaults] section of ansible.cfg to 60 seconds.
Increasing the 'timeout' value in the [defaults] section of ansible.cfg extends the SSH connection timeout, which directly addresses intermittent failures caused by high-latency WAN links. This change allows Ansible to wait longer for a remote node to respond before aborting the connection, improving reliability without altering network infrastructure.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Increase the 'timeout' value in the [defaults] section of ansible.cfg to 60 seconds.
Why this is correct
This extends the connection timeout, accommodating high-latency links.
- ✗
Increase the 'retries' parameter for each task.
Why it's wrong here
Retries handle transient failures but do not extend the time allowed for a single connection.
- ✗
Increase the 'forks' value in ansible.cfg to 50.
Why it's wrong here
Forks control the number of parallel connections, not timeout behavior.
- ✗
Set 'async: 600' and 'poll: 10' in the playbook.
Why it's wrong here
Async/poll is for long-running tasks, not for general connection timeouts.
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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.