Final answer:
The configuration management tool that uses SSH by default to connect to remote hosts is a) Ansible.
Step-by-step explanation:
The configuration management tool that uses SSH to connect to remote hosts is a) Ansible.
Ansible is designed to be minimal in nature, requiring no agents on the remote hosts and using SSH for communication and remote management. This approach lowers the complexity and increases the security of managing configurations. Unlike Ansible, tools like Puppet, Chef, and Salt typically use a master-agent model, requiring a specific agent to be installed on the remote hosts for management purposes. However, these tools can also be configured to use SSH in a masterless mode, but Ansible uses SSH by default.