Q1: What do you know about DevOps?

Ans: If you want to build better software faster, DevOps is the answer. Here’s how this software
development methodology brings everyone to the table to create secure code quickly.

Q2: What benefits does DevOps have in business?

Ans: DevOps can bring several benefits to a business, such as:

Faster time to market: DevOps practices can help to streamline the development and deployment
process, allowing for faster delivery of new products and features.

Increased collaboration: DevOps promotes collaboration between development and operations teams,
resulting in better communication, more efficient problem-solving, and higher-quality software.

Improved agility: DevOps allows for more rapid and flexible responses to changing business needs and
customer demands.

Increased reliability: DevOps practices such as continuous testing, monitoring, and automated
deployment can help to improve the reliability and stability of software systems.

Greater scalability: DevOps practices can help to make it easier to scale systems to meet growing
business needs and user demand.

Cost savings: DevOps can help to reduce the costs associated with the development, deployment, and
maintenance of software systems by automating many manual processes and reducing downtime.

Better security: DevOps practices such as continuous testing and monitoring can help to improve the
security of software systems.

Q3: What are the key components of a successful DevOps workflow?

Ans: The key components include Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Delivery (CD), Automated
testing, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Configuration Management, Monitoring & Logging, and
Collaboration & Communication.

Q4 : What are the different phases of the DevOps lifecycle?

Ans: The DevOps lifecycle is designed to streamline the development process, minimize errors and
defects, and ensure that software is delivered to end-users quickly and reliably. The different phases of
the DevOps lifecycle are:

 Plan: Define project goals, requirements, and resources

 Code: Develop and write code
 Build: Compile code into executable software
 Test: Verify and validate software functionality
 Release: Deploy code to the production environment
 Deploy: Automated deployment and scaling of software
 Operate: Monitor and maintain the software in production
 Monitor: Collect and analyze software performance data
 Optimize: Continuously improve and evolve the software system
 Q5: What are the best programming and scripting languages for DevOps engineers?

Ans: The best programming and scripting languages DevOps engineers must know are as follows:

Programming languages:-,Bash, SQL, Go, Terraform (Infrastructure as Code), Ansible (Automation

and Configuration Management), Puppet (Automation and Configuration Management)

Scripting languages:-

JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Perl, Groovy

Q6: Explain configuration management in DevOps.

Ans: Configuration Management (CM) is a practice in DevOps that involves organizing and
maintaining the configuration of software systems and infrastructure. It includes version control,
monitoring, and change management of software systems, configurations, and dependencies.

The goal of CM is to ensure that software systems are consistent and reliable to make tracking and
managing changes to these systems easier. This helps to minimize downtime, increase efficiency, and
ensure that software systems remain up-to-date and secure.

Configuration Management is often performed using tools such as Ansible, Puppet, Chef, and
SaltStack, which automate the process and make it easier to manage complex software systems at
scale.

Q7: How would you strategize for a successful DevOps implementation?

Ans: For a successful DevOps implementation, I will follow the following steps:

 Define the business objectives.

 Build cross-functional teams.
 Adopt agile practices.
 Automate manual tasks.
 Implement continuous integration and continuous delivery.
 Use infrastructure as code.
 Monitor and measure.
 Continuously improve.
 Foster a culture of learning to encourage experimentation and innovation.

Q8: DevOps vs. Agile: How are they different?

Ans: DevOps and Agile are both methodologies used to improve software development and delivery, but
they have different focuses and goals:

Focus: Agile is focused primarily on the development process and the delivery of high-quality software,
while DevOps is focused on the entire software delivery process, from development to operations.

Goals: The goal of Agile is to deliver software in small, incremental updates, with a focus on
collaboration, flexibility, and rapid feedback. DevOps aims to streamline the software delivery process,
automate manual tasks, and improve collaboration between development and operations teams.
Teams: Agile teams mainly focus on software development, while DevOps teams are cross-functional
and their job include both development and operations.

Processes: Agile uses iterative development processes, such as Scrum or Kanban, to develop software,
while DevOps uses a continuous delivery process that integrates code changes, testing, and deployment
into a single, automated pipeline.

Culture: Agile emphasizes a culture of collaboration, continuous improvement, and flexible responses to
change, while DevOps emphasizes a culture of automation, collaboration, and continuous improvement
across the entire software delivery process.

To summarize, DevOps is a natural extension of Agile that incorporates the principles of Agile and applies
them to the entire software delivery process, not just the development phase.

Q9: Describe continuous integration.

Ans: Continuous integration (CI) is a software development practice that automatically builds, tests, and
integrates code changes into a shared repository. The goal of CI is to detect and fix integration problems
early in the development process, reducing the risk of bugs and improving the quality of the software.t

Q10: What is continuous delivery?

Ans: Continuous delivery (CD) is a software development practice that aims to automate the entire
software delivery process, from code commit to deployment. The goal of CD is to make it possible to
release software to production at any time by ensuring that the software is always in a releasable state.

Q11: Explain continuous testing.

Ans: Continuous testing is a software testing practice that involves automating the testing process and
integrating it into the continuous delivery pipeline. The goal of continuous testing is to catch and fix
issues as early as possible in the development process before they reach production.

Q12: What is continuous monitoring?

Ans: Continuous monitoring is a software development practice that involves monitoring applications'
performance, availability, and security in production environments. The goal is to detect and resolve
issues quickly and efficiently to ensure that the application remains operational and secure.

Q13: List down the types of HTTP requests.

Ans: HTTP requests (methods) play a crucial role in DevOps when interacting with APIs, automation,
webhooks, and monitoring systems. Here are the main HTTP methods used in a DevOps context:

GET: Retrieves information or resources from a server. Commonly used to fetch data or obtain status
details in monitoring systems or APIs.

POST: Submits data to a server to create a new resource or initiate an action. Often used in APIs to
create new items, trigger builds, or start deployments.

PUT: Updates a resource or data on the server. Used in APIs and automation to edit existing information
or re-configure existing resources.
PATCH: Applies partial updates to a resource on the server. Utilized when only a certain part of the data
needs an update, rather than the entire resource.

DELETE: Deletes a specific resource from the server. Use this method to remove data, stop running
processes, or delete existing resources within automation and APIs.

HEAD: Identical to GET but only retrieves the headers and not the body of the response. Useful for
checking if a resource exists or obtaining metadata without actually transferring the resource data.

OPTIONS: Retrieves the communication options available for a specific resource or URL. Use this method
to identify the allowed HTTP methods for a resource, or to test the communication capabilities of an API.

CONNECT: Establishes a network connection between the client and a specified resource for use with a
network proxy.

TRACE: Retrieves a diagnostic representation of the request and response messages for a resource. It is
mainly used for testing and debugging purposes.

Q14: What is the role of automation in DevOps?

Ans: Automation plays a critical role in DevOps, allowing teams to develop, test, and deploy software
more efficiently by reducing manual intervention, increasing consistency, and accelerating processes. Key
aspects of automation in DevOps include Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Deployment (CD),
Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Configuration Management, Automated Testing, Monitoring and Logging,
Automated Security, among others. By automating these aspects of the software development lifecycle,
DevOps teams can streamline their workflows, maximize efficiency, reduce errors, and ultimately deliver
higher-quality software faster.

Q15: How do you secure a CI/CD pipeline?

Ans: To secure a CI/CD pipeline, follow these steps:

 Ensure all tools and dependencies are up to date

 Implement strong access controls and authentication
 Scan code for vulnerabilities (e.g., SonarQube, OWASP Dependency-Check)
 Cloud provider managed private build environments (e.g., AWS CodeBuild)
 Store sensitive data like keys, tokens, and passwords in a secret management tool (e.g.,
HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager)
 Regularly audit infrastructure and system logs for anomalies

Q16: What is the difference between a git pull and a git fetch?

Ans: git pull is a combination of git fetch and git merge. It retrieves data from the remote repository and
automatically merges it into the local branch.

git fetch is used to retrieve data from remote repositories, but it does not automatically merge the data
into the local branch. It only downloads the data and stores it in the local repository as a separate
branch, which means the developer must manually merge the fetched data with the remote branch.
Q17: What is the difference between a container and a virtual machine?

Ans: A container and a virtual machine are both technologies used for application virtualization.
However, there are some key differences between the two.

A virtual machine runs an entire operating system, which can be resource-intensive, while a container
shares the host operating system and only includes the necessary libraries and dependencies to run an
application, making it lighter and more efficient.

Containers provide isolation between applications, while virtual machines provide complete isolation
from the host operating system and other virtual machines.

Q18: Explain how you will handle merge conflicts in Git.

Ans: The following three steps can help resolve merge conflicts in Git: -

Understand the problem, then merge conflict can arise due to different problems, for example, same line
edit on the same file, deleting some files, or files with the same file names. You can understand what
caused the conflict by checking the git status.

The next step is to mark and clean up the conflict. For this, open the file with mergetool. Git will mark
the conflict portion as ‘<<<<>>>>[other/branch/name]’ -

Now run commit again, and merge the current branch with the master branch.

When answering these DevOps interview questions, please include all the steps in your answer. The
more details you provide, the better your chances of moving through the interview process.

Q19: Is it possible to move or copy Jenkins from one server to another? How?

Ans: Yes, one can copy the Jenkins jobs directory from the old server to the new one. To move a job from
one Jenkins installation to another, one can simply copy the required job directory.

Another method is to create a clone of an existing job directory with a different name. Another way is to
rename an existing job by renaming the directory. However, in this method, one needs to change any
other job calling the renamed job.

Q20: What are Puppet Manifests?

Ans: While this is a rather simple DevOps interview question, knowing the answer to such questions
shows you are serious about your work. Puppet manifests are programs written in the native Puppet
language and saved with the .pp extension.

As such, any Puppet program built to create or manage a target host machine is referred to as a
manifest. These manifests are made of Puppet code. The configuration details of Puppet nodes and
Puppet agents are contained in the Puppet Master.
Q21: What are the components of continuous integration and DevOps? How do you approach each of
them?

Ans: Continuous integration and DevOps revolve around automating the software delivery process

Continuous integration involves automated testing and code integration, while DevOps encompasses the
entire delivery pipeline. I approach CI by setting up automated build and test pipelines, and for DevOps, I
focus on collaboration, monitoring, and feedback loops.”

Q22: Describe your ideal cloud infrastructure and cloud logging setup.

Ans: Cloud infrastructure is pivotal for scalable applications.

“I prefer a combination of compute instances for processing, managed databases for data storage, load
balancers for traffic distribution, and a CDN for content delivery. For logging, I use centralized logging
solutions like ELK Stack to monitor and analyze system behavior.”

Q23: Describe your approach to code reviews.

Ans: Code reviews ensure code quality and team collaboration.

“I focus on code clarity, efficiency, and adherence to best practices. It’s essential to ensure the code is
maintainable, performs well, and aligns with our coding standards.”

Q24: Why is it important to have configuration management in DevOps?

Ans: Configuration management ensures consistency.

“It ensures that an application’s configurations are consistent across different environments, reducing
errors during deployment and ensuring that applications behave as expected.”

Q25: How do Containers communicate in Kubernetes?

Ans: A Pod is a mapping between containers in Kubernetes. A Pod may contain multiple containers. Pods
have a flat network hierarchy inside an overlay network and communicate to each other in a flat fashion,
meaning that in theory any pod inside that overlay network can speak to any other Pod.

Q:26: How do you build a hybrid cloud?

Ans: There are multiple ways to build a hybrid cloud. A common way is to create an VPN tunnel between
the on-premise network and the cloud VPC/VNet.

AWS Direct Connect or Azure ExpressRoute bypasses the public internet and establishes a secure
connection between a private data center and the VPC. This is the method of choice for large production
deployments.

Q27: How does Kubernetes orchestrate Containers?

Ans: Kubernetes Containers are scheduled to run based on their scheduling policy and the available
resources.Every Pod that needs to run is added to a queue and the scheduler takes it off the queue and
schedules it. If it fails, the error handler adds it back to the queue for later scheduling.
Q28: Describe some deployment patterns.

Ans: Blue Green Deployments and Canary Releases are common deployment patterns.

In blue green deployments you have two identical environments. The “green” environment hosts the
current production system. Deployment happens in the “blue” environment.

The “blue” environment is monitored for faults and if everything is working well, load balancing and
other components are switch newm the “green” environment to the “blue” one.

Canary releases are releases that roll out specific features to a subset of users to reduce the risk involved
in releasing new features.

Q29: Explain the Sudo concept in Linux.

Ans: The sudo (superuser do) command in Linux is a powerful utility that allows users to execute
commands with the privileges of another user, usually the superuser or root. The sudo concept provides
a controlled way of managing which users can perform administrative tasks without granting them
unrestricted root access.

Q30: Explain Docker Swarms.

Ans: A Docker Swarm is a native clustering that turns a group of Docker hosts into a virtual, single Docker
host. The Swarm serves the standard Docker API, and any tool already communicating with the Docker
Daemon can utilize Swarm to scale transparently to various hosts. Supported tools include Dokku,
Docker Machine, Docker Compose, and Jenkins.