100 frequently asked DevOps questions with answers

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Here’s a compiled list of 100 frequently asked DevOps questions and their answers across various topics like tools, methodologies, best practices, and cloud integration.


General DevOps Questions

  1. What is DevOps?
    Answer: DevOps is a set of practices that combine development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) to shorten the software development lifecycle and provide continuous delivery with high software quality.
  2. What are the key benefits of DevOps?
    Answer: Benefits include faster delivery, improved collaboration, reduced failures, quicker recovery from incidents, and better resource utilization.
  3. What are the core principles of DevOps?
    Answer: The core principles are Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, Automation, Collaboration, and Monitoring.
  4. What are the phases of the DevOps lifecycle?
    Answer: Plan, Develop, Build, Test, Release, Deploy, Operate, and Monitor.
  5. How does DevOps differ from Agile?
    Answer: Agile focuses on iterative development, while DevOps integrates development and operations to automate workflows and improve collaboration.

DevOps Tools

  1. Name some popular DevOps tools.
    Answer: Jenkins, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, Git, Ansible, Prometheus, and Nagios.
  2. What is Jenkins, and why is it used?
    Answer: Jenkins is a CI/CD tool used for automating the building, testing, and deployment of applications.
  3. Explain the difference between Docker and Kubernetes.
    Answer: Docker is a containerization tool, while Kubernetes is an orchestration platform for managing multiple containers.
  4. What is Terraform, and what is it used for?
    Answer: Terraform is an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool used to define and provision infrastructure using a declarative configuration language.
  5. What is Ansible?
    Answer: Ansible is a configuration management tool used to automate application deployment, configuration management, and task orchestration.

CI/CD

  1. What is Continuous Integration (CI)?
    Answer: CI is a DevOps practice where developers frequently integrate code changes into a shared repository, followed by automated builds and tests.
  2. What is Continuous Delivery (CD)?
    Answer: CD automates the deployment of validated code to production environments after CI pipelines ensure quality.
  3. What are the benefits of CI/CD?
    Answer: Faster feedback, improved code quality, reduced manual errors, and streamlined deployments.
  4. What is a CI/CD pipeline?
    Answer: A CI/CD pipeline is an automated series of steps that code changes go through to move from development to production.
  5. What is a blue-green deployment?
    Answer: It is a deployment strategy where two environments (blue and green) are used. One serves live traffic while the other is updated and tested.

Version Control

  1. What is Git?
    Answer: Git is a distributed version control system for tracking changes in source code during software development.
  2. What is a Git repository?
    Answer: A Git repository stores the source code and its version history.
  3. What is the difference between Git and GitHub?
    Answer: Git is a version control tool, while GitHub is a platform for hosting and collaborating on Git repositories.
  4. What is branching in Git?
    Answer: Branching allows developers to create separate versions of code for features, bug fixes, or experimentation.
  5. What are Git workflows?
    Answer: Git workflows, like GitFlow or GitHub Flow, define how teams collaborate and manage feature development and releases.

Cloud and DevOps

  1. What is Infrastructure as Code (IaC)?
    Answer: IaC is a practice where infrastructure is provisioned and managed using code instead of manual processes.
  2. What are the advantages of IaC?
    Answer: Repeatability, consistency, reduced manual errors, and faster deployments.
  3. What is AWS DevOps?
    Answer: AWS DevOps combines AWS services and tools like CodePipeline, CodeBuild, and CloudFormation for automating CI/CD and infrastructure management.
  4. What is Azure DevOps?
    Answer: Azure DevOps is a suite of services for CI/CD, project management, and version control using Azure pipelines, boards, and repositories.
  5. How does DevOps work with cloud platforms?
    Answer: DevOps automates workflows, integrates tools, and uses cloud resources to deploy and manage scalable applications.

Monitoring and Logging

  1. Why is monitoring important in DevOps?
    Answer: Monitoring ensures application performance, reliability, and early detection of issues in production.
  2. What are some popular monitoring tools?
    Answer: Prometheus, Nagios, Grafana, ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana).
  3. What is application performance monitoring (APM)?
    Answer: APM monitors and analyzes the performance of applications to detect and resolve performance bottlenecks.
  4. What is logging in DevOps?
    Answer: Logging captures application and system events, providing insights for debugging and monitoring.
  5. How does Prometheus work?
    Answer: Prometheus collects metrics from configured targets at specified intervals and stores them for querying and alerting.

Configuration Management

  1. What is configuration management?
    Answer: Configuration management automates and standardizes system configuration to ensure consistency and compliance.
  2. What tools are used for configuration management?
    Answer: Ansible, Puppet, Chef, and SaltStack.
  3. What is the difference between Ansible and Puppet?
    Answer: Ansible is agentless and uses YAML, while Puppet requires agents and uses its own DSL.
  4. What are playbooks in Ansible?
    Answer: Playbooks are YAML files defining tasks to configure systems or deploy applications using Ansible.
  5. How does configuration management improve DevOps?
    Answer: It ensures consistent environments, reduces configuration drift, and accelerates deployments.

Advanced and Tool-Specific DevOps Questions (36-100)


Kubernetes

  1. What is Kubernetes?
    Answer: Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration platform used to automate the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.
  2. What are Pods in Kubernetes?
    Answer: Pods are the smallest deployable units in Kubernetes, consisting of one or more containers that share storage, networking, and a specification.
  3. What is a Kubernetes Cluster?
    Answer: A Kubernetes cluster is a set of nodes that run containerized applications, managed by a control plane.
  4. What is the role of a Kubernetes Master Node?
    Answer: The master node manages the Kubernetes cluster, including scheduling workloads, maintaining the desired state, and handling networking.
  5. What is a Kubernetes Deployment?
    Answer: A Deployment in Kubernetes defines the desired state of an application, automating its creation, updates, and scaling.

Docker

  1. What is Docker?
    Answer: Docker is a platform for building, deploying, and managing containerized applications.
  2. What is the difference between a Docker image and a container?
    Answer: A Docker image is a blueprint for a container, while a container is a running instance of an image.
  3. What is Docker Compose?
    Answer: Docker Compose is a tool for defining and managing multi-container Docker applications using a YAML file.
  4. What is Docker Swarm?
    Answer: Docker Swarm is Docker’s native clustering and orchestration tool for managing containers.
  5. What are the benefits of using Docker?
    Answer: Portability, resource efficiency, faster deployment, and consistent environments.

Terraform

  1. What is Terraform?
    Answer: Terraform is an open-source tool for managing infrastructure as code, enabling consistent and repeatable infrastructure provisioning.
  2. What are Terraform Providers?
    Answer: Providers are plugins that allow Terraform to manage specific types of resources, such as AWS, Azure, or Kubernetes.
  3. What is a Terraform Module?
    Answer: A module is a reusable, self-contained configuration in Terraform, used to organize and standardize code.
  4. What is the purpose of Terraform State?
    Answer: Terraform State tracks the real-world infrastructure configuration, ensuring that future changes are applied accurately.
  5. How does Terraform differ from Ansible?
    Answer: Terraform focuses on infrastructure provisioning (IaC), while Ansible is used for configuration management and application deployment.

CI/CD Advanced

  1. What is a build artifact?
    Answer: A build artifact is a file or set of files generated during the build process, such as binaries or Docker images.
  2. What is pipeline as code?
    Answer: Pipeline as code refers to defining CI/CD pipelines using code, typically in YAML or JSON format.
  3. What is a Jenkinsfile?
    Answer: A Jenkinsfile is a text file that contains the definition of a Jenkins pipeline.
  4. What is parallel execution in CI/CD pipelines?
    Answer: Parallel execution allows multiple stages or tasks to run simultaneously, reducing pipeline execution time.
  5. What is GitOps?
    Answer: GitOps is a DevOps practice where Git is the single source of truth for infrastructure and application configurations.

Monitoring and Observability

  1. What is the difference between monitoring and observability?
    Answer: Monitoring tracks predefined metrics and alerts, while observability provides deeper insights to diagnose and troubleshoot issues.
  2. What is the ELK Stack?
    Answer: The ELK Stack consists of Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana, used for logging, analysis, and visualization.
  3. What is a Service Level Objective (SLO)?
    Answer: An SLO is a measurable target for service reliability and performance, such as uptime or response time.
  4. What are Prometheus Alert Rules?
    Answer: Alert rules define conditions in Prometheus that trigger alerts when metrics cross certain thresholds.
  5. What is distributed tracing?
    Answer: Distributed tracing tracks requests as they move through multiple services, helping identify bottlenecks and errors.

Security in DevOps

  1. What is DevSecOps?
    Answer: DevSecOps integrates security practices into the DevOps lifecycle to ensure secure development and deployment.
  2. What are static and dynamic code analysis?
    Answer: Static analysis reviews code without executing it, while dynamic analysis tests applications during runtime.
  3. What are the OWASP Top 10?
    Answer: The OWASP Top 10 is a list of the most critical security risks to web applications, such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting.
  4. What is container security?
    Answer: Container security involves securing containerized applications, images, and runtime environments against vulnerabilities.
  5. What is a security misconfiguration?
    Answer: Security misconfiguration occurs when security settings are improperly implemented, exposing systems to risks.

Cultural and Process Questions

  1. What is the role of automation in DevOps?
    Answer: Automation minimizes manual effort, reduces errors, accelerates delivery, and improves consistency.
  2. How do you promote a DevOps culture in an organization?
    Answer: By fostering collaboration, aligning goals, encouraging automation, and providing continuous learning opportunities.
  3. What is the importance of feedback loops in DevOps?
    Answer: Feedback loops ensure continuous improvement by quickly identifying and addressing issues.
  4. How does DevOps improve collaboration?
    Answer: DevOps breaks down silos, creating cross-functional teams with shared ownership and accountability.
  5. What is a blameless postmortem?
    Answer: A blameless postmortem focuses on learning from failures without assigning blame, fostering a culture of trust.

Advanced Scenarios

  1. How do you handle database schema changes in DevOps?
    Answer: By using database migration tools like Liquibase or Flyway to version, test, and automate schema changes.
  2. What is Canary Testing?
    Answer: A deployment strategy where updates are rolled out to a small subset of users before full deployment.
  3. What are immutable infrastructure practices?
    Answer: Immutable infrastructure ensures that servers are not modified after deployment, with changes applied by replacing them.
  4. What is a service mesh?
    Answer: A service mesh manages communication between microservices, providing traffic control, security, and observability.
  5. What are hybrid and multi-cloud strategies?
    Answer: Hybrid cloud combines private and public clouds, while multi-cloud uses services from multiple cloud providers.

Case-Specific Questions

  1. What happens when a CI build fails?
    Answer: Investigate the failure, fix the issue, and re-trigger the build.
  2. How do you manage secrets in DevOps?
    Answer: Use tools like HashiCorp Vault or AWS Secrets Manager to securely store and manage sensitive information.
  3. What is a rollback?
    Answer: A rollback reverts the system to a previous stable state after a failed deployment.
  4. How do you monitor container health?
    Answer: By using probes (liveness, readiness) in Kubernetes or tools like Prometheus.
  5. What is the role of a reverse proxy in DevOps?
    Answer: A reverse proxy manages traffic, load balancing, and security for backend servers.


Kubernetes Advanced

  1. What is Helm in Kubernetes?
    Answer: Helm is a package manager for Kubernetes that simplifies application deployment by managing Kubernetes manifests as charts.
  2. What is Kubernetes RBAC?
    Answer: Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) restricts access to Kubernetes resources based on roles and permissions assigned to users or groups.
  3. What is a StatefulSet in Kubernetes?
    Answer: StatefulSet manages stateful applications by ensuring that pods have unique identities and stable storage.
  4. What are Kubernetes Ingress and Ingress Controllers?
    Answer: Ingress manages external HTTP and HTTPS traffic to services in a cluster, while Ingress Controllers implement the actual routing rules.
  5. How do you manage secrets in Kubernetes?
    Answer: Secrets in Kubernetes store sensitive information like API keys, passwords, or certificates securely, and are accessible by pods via environment variables or volume mounts.

CI/CD Pipeline Optimization

  1. How do you optimize CI/CD pipelines?
    Answer: By parallelizing tasks, caching dependencies, using lightweight images, and implementing pipeline-as-code.
  2. What is pipeline gating?
    Answer: Pipeline gating involves setting conditions (e.g., passing tests) that must be met before progressing to the next stage in a CI/CD pipeline.
  3. How do you ensure zero-downtime deployments?
    Answer: By using strategies like blue-green deployments, rolling updates, or canary releases.
  4. What is the purpose of a pipeline stage?
    Answer: A stage groups tasks logically in a pipeline, such as build, test, and deploy phases, ensuring clarity and manageability.
  5. How do you handle failed deployments in a pipeline?
    Answer: Use automated rollbacks, alert teams, and analyze logs or monitoring metrics to identify and resolve the issue.

Cloud-Native DevOps

  1. What is cloud-native architecture?
    Answer: Cloud-native architecture designs applications to leverage cloud services, focusing on scalability, resilience, and microservices.
  2. What is the 12-Factor App methodology?
    Answer: A methodology for building cloud-native applications focusing on aspects like dependency management, environment parity, and logging.
  3. What is serverless computing in DevOps?
    Answer: Serverless computing abstracts server management, allowing developers to focus on application logic while the cloud provider manages infrastructure.
  4. How do you integrate DevOps with multi-cloud strategies?
    Answer: Use tools like Terraform, Ansible, and Kubernetes to standardize workflows across cloud platforms.
  5. What is an autoscaling group?
    Answer: An autoscaling group dynamically adjusts the number of compute instances based on demand, ensuring cost efficiency and availability.

Edge Computing and IoT in DevOps

  1. What is edge computing in DevOps?
    Answer: Edge computing processes data closer to the source (e.g., IoT devices) to reduce latency and bandwidth usage.
  2. How does DevOps support IoT applications?
    Answer: By automating firmware updates, monitoring device performance, and scaling IoT infrastructure dynamically.
  3. What tools are commonly used for IoT DevOps?
    Answer: AWS IoT Core, Azure IoT Hub, Kubernetes, and Prometheus.

Real-World Case Studies and Best Practices

  1. How did Netflix implement DevOps?
    Answer: Netflix uses microservices, CI/CD, and Chaos Engineering with tools like Spinnaker and Simian Army to ensure reliability and innovation.
  2. What are some DevOps best practices?
    Answer: Key practices include automating workflows, fostering collaboration, monitoring actively, implementing IaC, and adopting a feedback-driven development cycle.

This concludes a comprehensive list of 100 DevOps questions and answers covering foundational, advanced, tool-specific, and real-world aspects of DevOps.