EX294 Coordinate rolling updates Practice Question
An Ansible Engineer is planning a rolling update for a web application deployed across 10 nodes. The playbook uses the 'delegate_to' directive to manage load balancer health checks. Which of the following best describes the recommended approach to minimize downtime?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often think 'serial: 10' is efficient because it updates all nodes quickly, but they overlook that it causes a full outage, whereas the correct approach prioritizes availability over speed.
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
✓
Use 'serial: 1' and delegate load balancer disable/enable tasks to localhost, ensuring each node is taken out of rotation before updating.
Using 'serial: 1' ensures that only one node is updated at a time, and delegating load balancer disable/enable tasks to localhost (or the Ansible control node) allows the playbook to interact with the load balancer API to remove the node from the pool before the update and re-add it after. This minimizes downtime by ensuring traffic is not sent to a node being updated, while other nodes continue serving requests.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Use 'serial: 1' and delegate load balancer disable/enable tasks to localhost, ensuring each node is taken out of rotation before updating.
Why this is correct
This ensures each node is removed from the load balancer, updated, and then re-added, minimizing downtime.
- ✗
Run the update playbook with 'serial: 10' to update all nodes at once, then run a separate playbook to update the load balancer.
Why it's wrong here
Updating all nodes at once without managing the load balancer first will cause downtime.
- ✗
Run the update on each node manually using 'ansible-playbook --limit' and skip load balancer management to save time.
Why it's wrong here
Manual execution without load balancer management will cause downtime.
- ✗
Use 'strategy: free' to allow nodes to update independently without controlling the load balancer.
Why it's wrong here
The free strategy does not manage the load balancer, leading to potential downtime.
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