What happens if changes are made to running RAM and the switch is rebooted?

• A. The changes are preserved.
• B. The changes are lost.
• C. The system prompts to save changes.
• D. Only non-volatile memory changes are kept.

Answer: (B)

Running RAM holds the active configuration and is volatile. When the switch reboots, the contents of RAM are cleared, and the system loads the startup configuration from non-volatile storage into RAM. If you’ve only changed things in running RAM and haven’t saved them to non-volatile memory, those changes won’t survive the reboot. To keep the changes, you must write the running configuration to startup (non-volatile) memory before rebooting. Some devices may prompt you to save, but without saving, the changes are lost.