A government agency wants infrastructure described as desired state, reviewed as a plan, and recorded in a state file before anything is applied. Which tool matches that workflow?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
Terraform is a blueprint with a notebook of what was already built. You describe the desired state, review the plan, and keep that state file so the next run knows what it created. An Ansible playbook runs steps, and it is not that plan-and-state workflow.
Full Explanation
Terraform is declarative. You describe the resources you want, the plan shows what would change before anything is touched, and the state file records what Terraform created so the next plan can detect drift. That is the agency workflow. Ansible is agentless and procedural. A playbook lists tasks the control node runs against an inventory. Tasks can be written so they are safe to repeat, and a playbook is still not a Terraform state file and does not produce Terraform's plan step. POAP is a day-0 bootstrap that runs when a switch has no startup configuration. It does not keep a state file of provider resources, and it does not lock the network against later changes. SPAN copies frames. Those frames are not a declarative state file and cannot be applied as infrastructure. Caveat: Terraform will only manage objects that are in its state and its providers, so a change made by hand on the switch can show up as drift on the next plan and can be overwritten on the next apply. Operational check: run the plan, confirm it lists the intended changes and nothing else, then apply and confirm the state file records the new resources.