What best describes the difference between Automation and Orchestration?

Automation executes one specific, self-contained task automatically - such as configuring a single interface - while Orchestration manages the dependencies, ordering, and conditional logic that ties many individual automated tasks together to complete a broader process such as full service provisioning.

Describing automation as only a 'hands-off configuration process' is too vague and fails to capture that automation applies to a single task, making this answer less precise than option A.

This choice incorrectly attributes multi-task execution with conditional logic to automation rather than orchestration; automation handles single tasks, and it is orchestration that manages multiple interdependent tasks with conditions.

Equating automation with specific scripting tools like Python or Ansible confuses the implementation mechanisms with the concept itself, and defining orchestration by a different category of tools rather than by its coordinating function is technically inaccurate.