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Objective 6.1

200-301

Explain how automation impacts network management.

Objective 6.1 sits in Automation and Programmability, which carries 10% of the CCNA exam. The questions below are original, written from the official objective title above, and each explanation cites the Cisco page it rests on.

Objective title verbatim from the official objectives. Cisco exam page ↗

A worked example

Shown solved, with the whole explanation open: this is what every question here carries.

6-1Automation and Programmability

A script reads a router's running values and writes them back as configuration on a rebuilt device. Neighbour learned values are written back too, and the rebuild fails. What went wrong?

Configured data was not separated from learned stateCorrect · your answerCorrect. Learned state was captured as if it were configuration and replayed.
The rebuilt device runs a different software releaseA release difference would show as rejected syntax rather than as replayed learned values.
The script wrote the values in the wrong orderOrder matters for readability and comparison rather than for whether a value belongs in the file.
The values were read before the device had convergedWaiting longer would produce more learned state, not less of it in the capture.

Correct.

Checked against datatracker.ietf.org, August 2026

Concept

Automation treats a device's settings as data it can copy, compare and reapply. That only works when the settings a person chose can be told apart from the values the device learned while running, because only the first group belongs in a source of truth.

Why A

Operational state and statistics are outcomes rather than intent, so writing them back as configuration asserts things the device should be discovering for itself. The two have to be fetched separately, and only the configured half is stored and replayed.

Source

It is necessary to make a clear distinction between configuration data, data that describes operational state and statistics. Some devices make it very hard to determine which parameters were administ…

IETF RFC 3535, Overview of the 2002 IAB Network Management Workshop, section 3, checked August 2026
#automation#configuration management#state

Now you: objective 6.1 questions

No account needed. The explanation opens when you answer.

Sample question 1 of 3

6-1Automation and Programmability

A team defines a VLAN and its access policy once, and the tooling works out what each of forty switches needs. Which shift in network management does that show?

Sample question 2 of 3

6-1Automation and Programmability

An automation tool compares the intended configuration with what a router currently holds and pushes only the difference rather than the whole file. Why is that preferred?

Sample question 3 of 3

6-1Automation and Programmability

Nightly configuration backups are committed to a version control system. Reviews are noisy: a device reorders its access list entries on each export, so unchanged files differ. What should change?

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Read the sources

These are the official pages the questions above cite. Reading them is studying the objective from the primary source, which is what the explanations point you toward anyway.

More objectives in Automation and Programmability