EX294 Manage task execution and roles Practice Question
In an Ansible playbook, the 'strategy' parameter is set to 'free'. What behavior does this strategy produce?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse the 'free' strategy with the 'serial' parameter or the default 'linear' strategy, leading candidates to incorrectly associate batching or synchronized task execution with 'free'.
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
✓
Each host runs through the playbook independently of other hosts.
The 'free' strategy in Ansible allows each host to run through the playbook independently, without waiting for other hosts to finish the current task. This means a faster host can proceed to subsequent tasks while slower hosts are still working on earlier tasks, maximizing parallelism and reducing overall execution time.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Playbook runs tasks on hosts in batches of 1.
Why it's wrong here
Batches of one describe the serial strategy, which runs the entire play on one host before moving to the next. Free is tempting because hosts do advance independently, but they do so concurrently rather than in strict single-host batches, each finishing tasks as fast as it can.
- ✗
Strategy is deprecated and replaced by 'linear'.
Why it's wrong here
Free remains a supported, documented Ansible strategy alongside linear, host_pinned and serial. It is tempting because strategy plugins have evolved, but free is not deprecated; it simply lets each host run the play to completion without synchronising at task boundaries with other hosts.
- ✗
All hosts run the same task at the same time, then move to the next task.
Why it's wrong here
That describes the linear strategy, where every host completes a task before any host starts the next. Free is tempting because it also runs tasks in order per host, but each host proceeds independently through the play without waiting for other hosts to finish the same task.
- ✓
Each host runs through the playbook independently of other hosts.
Why this is correct
The free strategy lets each host proceed through the play at its own pace without waiting at task barriers for other hosts, so hosts complete independently. This differs from linear, which synchronises hosts at each task.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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