CompTIA Linux+ XK0-006 (V8) Practice Question

The correct answer explains the fundamental principle of agentless configuration management. Tools like Ansible are considered agentless because they do not require any proprietary or dedicated software (an agent) to be installed and persistently running on the managed nodes. Instead, they use standard, commonly available communication protocols like SSH for Linux systems to connect, push temporary execution modules, run tasks, and then remove the modules. This approach directly minimizes the software footprint and simplifies setup because there is no agent to install or maintain.

The concept of managed nodes actively pulling configurations describes an agent-based model, which is the default for tools like Puppet. Similarly, compiling configurations on a central master is a feature associated with Puppet's agent-based architecture. The claim about isolating tasks in containers is not a standard mechanism for mainstream agentless tools.