TOP 100 DevOps Interview Questions And Answers

DevOps Interview Questions And Answers

DevOps is a combination of cultural philosophies, practices, and tools that increases an organization’s ability to deliver software and other products and services rapidly and reliably. It aims at establishing a culture and environment where building, testing, and releasing software can happen rapidly, frequently, and more reliably.

DevOps interview questions typically cover a wide range of topics, including:

DevOps principles and practices: Interviewers will want to know that you have a good understanding of the core principles and practices of DevOps, such as continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD), infrastructure as code, and automation.
DevOps tools: Interviewers will also want to know that you are familiar with the most popular DevOps tools, such as Jenkins, Ansible, and Docker.
DevOps experience: Interviewers will want to know that you have experience implementing DevOps practices in a production environment.
Communication and collaboration skills: DevOps is all about communication and collaboration between development, operations, and security teams. Interviewers will want to know that you have strong communication and collaboration skills.

If you are interested in a career in DevOps, it is important to learn the core principles and practices of DevOps, as well as the most popular DevOps tools. You should also gain experience implementing DevOps practices in a production environment.

Here are some of the reasons why you should learn DevOps:

DevOps is in high demand: The demand for DevOps professionals is growing rapidly. In fact, a recent survey found that 70% of organizations are planning to increase their investment in DevOps in the next year.
DevOps can help you improve your career prospects: Learning DevOps can help you improve your career prospects. With DevOps skills, you can command a higher salary and get more job opportunities.
DevOps can help you make a difference in the world: DevOps can help you make a difference in the world by helping organizations deliver software and other products and services more rapidly and reliably. This can lead to improved customer satisfaction, increased productivity, and reduced costs

DevOps Interview Questions And Answers are as follows –

1) Explain what DevOps is?

DevOps is a set of practices that combines software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) to shorten the systems development life cycle and provide continuous delivery with high quality.

DevOps is all about breaking down the silos between development and operations teams and working together to deliver software more rapidly and reliably. It is also about automating as much of the software development and deployment process as possible, so that engineers can focus on more creative and strategic work.

In simple words, DevOps is about building, testing, and deploying software faster, more reliably, and more securely.

Here are some of the benefits of DevOps:

Faster time to market: DevOps can help organizations to deliver software to market faster. This is because it shortens the software development and deployment process.
Improved quality: DevOps can help organizations to improve the quality of their software. This is because it automates the testing process and makes it easier to find and fix bugs.
Reduced costs: DevOps can help organizations to reduce costs. This is because it automates the software development and deployment process, which can free up engineers to focus on more creative and strategic work.
Improved customer satisfaction: DevOps can help organizations to improve customer satisfaction. This is because it allows organizations to deliver software more frequently and with fewer bugs.

2) Mention what the key aspects or principle behind DevOps are?

The core principles of DevOps are:

Culture: DevOps is about creating a culture of collaboration and communication between development, operations, and security teams. This means breaking down the silos between these teams and working together to deliver software more rapidly and reliably.
Automation: DevOps is about automating as much of the software development and deployment process as possible. This frees up engineers to focus on more creative and strategic work, and it helps to ensure that deployments are more reliable.
Measurement: DevOps is about measuring the success of the software development and deployment process. This data can be used to identify areas for improvement and to make better decisions about how to deploy software in the future.
Continuous improvement: DevOps is about continuous improvement. This means always looking for ways to improve the software development and deployment process. This can be done by adopting new technologies, processes, and practices.

3) What are the core operations of DevOps with application development and with infrastructure?

The core operations of DevOps are

Application development

Code building
Code coverage
Unit testing
Packaging
Deployment

Infrastructure

Provisioning
Configuration
Orchestration
Deployment

4) Explain how “Infrastructure code” is processed or executed in AWS?

In AWS,

The code for infrastructure will be in simple JSON format

This JSON code will be organized into files called templates

This templates can be deployed on AWS devops and then managed as stacks

Later the CloudFormation service will do the Creating, deleting, updating, etc. operation in the stack

5) Explain how DevOps is helpful to developers?

DevOps can be helpful to developers to fix the bug and implement new features quickly. It also helps for clearer communication between the team members.

6) List out some popular tools for DevOps?

Some of the popular tools for DevOps are

Jenkins
Nagios
Monit
ELK (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana)
Jenkins
Docker
Ansible
Git

7) Mention at what instance have you used the SSH?

I have used SSH to log into a remote machine and work on the command line. Beside this, I have also used it to tunnel into the system in order to facilitate secure encrypted communications between two untrusted hosts over an insecure network.

8) Explain how you would handle revision (version) control?

My approach to handling revision control would be to post the code on SourceForge or GitHub so everyone can view it. Also, I will post the checklist from the last revision to make sure that any unsolved issues are resolved.

9) What are the types of Http requests?

The types of Http requests are

GET
HEAD
PUT
POST
PATCH
DELETE
TRACE
CONNECT
OPTIONS

10) What are the key components of DevOps?

The most important components of DevOps are:

Continuous Integration

Continuous Testing

Continuous Delivery

Continuous Monitoring

11) Name a few cloud platform which are used for DevOps Implementation

Popular Cloud computing platform used for DevOps implementation are:

Google Cloud

Amazon Web Services

Microsoft Azure

12) Give some benefits of using Version Control system

The version Control system allows team members to work freely on any file at any time.

All the past versions and variants are closely packed up inside the VCS.

A distributed VCS like helps you to store the complete history of the project so in case of a breakdown in the central server you can use your team member’s local Git repository.

Allows you to see what exact changes are made in the file’s content

13) Explain Git Bisect

Git bisect helps you to find the commit which introduced a bug using binary search.

14) What is the build?

A build is a method in which the source code is put together to check whether it works as a single unit. In the build creation process, the source code will undergo compilation, inspection, testing, and deployment.

15) What is Puppet?

Puppet is a useful project management tool. It helps you to automate administration tasks.

16) Explain two-factor authentication

Two-factor authentication is a security method in which the user provides two ways of identification from separate categories.

17) Explain the term ‘Canary Release’.

A canary release is a pattern which reduces the risk of introducing a new version software into the production environment. It is done by making it available in a controlled manner to a subset of the user. Before making it available to the complete user set.

18) What types of testing is important to ensure that new service is ready for production?

You need to conduct continuous testing to ensure that the new service is ready for production.

19) What is Vagrant?

A vagrant is a tool which can create and manage virtualized environments for testing and developing software.

20) What is the use of PTR in DNS?

Pointer record which is also known as (PTR) is used for reverse DNS lookup.

21) What is Chef?

It is a powerful automation platform which transforms infrastructure into code. In this tool, you can use write scripts that are used to automate processes.

22) What are the prerequisites for the implementation of DevOps?

Following are the useful prerequisites for DevOps Implementation:

At least one Version Control Software

Proper communication between the team members

Automated testing

Automated deployment

23) Name some best practices which should be followed for DevOps success.

Here, are essential best practices for DevOps implementation:

The speed of delivery means time taken for any task to get them into the production environment.

Track how many defects are found in the various

It’s important to measure the actual or the average time that it takes to recover in case of a failure in the production environment.

The number of bugs being reported by the customer also impact the quality of the application.

24) Explain SubGIt tool

SubGit helps you to migrate SVN to Git. It also allows you to build a writable Git mirror of a local or remote Subversion repository.

25) Name some important network monitoring tools

Some most prominent network monitoring tools are:

Splunk

Icinga 2

Wireshark

Nagios

OpenNMS

26) Explain Blue/Green Deployment Pattern

Blue/Green coloring pattern addresses the most important challenges faced during the automatic deployment process. In Blue/ Green Deployment approach, you need to ensure two identical production environment. However, only one among them is LIVE at any given point of time. The LIVE environment is called Blue environment.

When the team prepares the next release of their software, they conduct their final stage of testing in an environment which is known as Green environment. Once verified, the traffic is routed to the Green environment.

27) What are the containers?

Containers are from of lightweight virtualization. They offer isolation among processes.

28) What is post mortem meeting with reference to DevOps?

Post mortem meeting is done to discuss what went wrong and what steps you need to take in order to avoid failures.

29) Name two tools which are used for docker networking.

For docker networking, you can use Kubernetes and Docker swarm.

30) Name some of the areas where DevOps are Implemented

DevOps are used for Production, IT operations, production feedback, and its software development.

31) What is CBD’?

CBD or Component-Based Development is a unique way to approach product development. In this method, developers always look for existing well defined, tested, and verified components to compose and assemble them to a product instead of developing from scratch.

32) Explain Pair Programming with reference to DevOps

Pair programming is an engineering practice of Extreme Programming Rules. In this method, two programmers work on the same system, on the same design/algorithm/code.

One programmer act as a “driver.” Other acts as an “observer” who continuously monitor the progress of a project to identify problems. The roles can be reversed at any point of time without any prior intimation.

33) Name three important DevOps KPIs

Three most common DevOps KPIs are:

Meantime to failure recovery

Deployment frequency

Percentage of failed deployments

34) What are the different phases in DevOps?

Answer: DevOps is mainly classified into 6 phases. Its phases are in a particular cycle. However, all the phases are not separated by boundaries, and no phase begins even if the previous one has ended completely. Now, let’s study the DevOps cycle phase in more detail.

Planning

Planning and software development is the first phase of the DevOps lifecycle. This phase involves understanding the project properly for the ultimate work goal of its participants. This also feeds the various phases of development and operations. It’s also important that organizations are trained on tools and metrics to have enough clarity of the project’s management.

Development

In this phase, the project gets built by designing infrastructure, writing codes, defining tests, or by automation process. Evidence is important in this phase. In managing applications, operations with data, developers store codes in code manager, which allows viewing, versioning, and much more.

Continuous Integration

This phase automates the mechanism of validation, testing. This has a unique feature that ensures the development environment is properly and then published in a service that integrates it with the remaining applications.

Automated Deployment

DevOps stimulates the automation of deployments by tools and scripts with the ultimate goal of solving the whole process with the activation of a feature. The most important aspect of this phase is the arrival of the cloud, as a code that forces a change from finite infrastructure management to permanent cost optimization management.

Operations

Usually, all operations related to DevOps happen continuously throughout the life of software, as there is a dynamic change in the infrastructure. This platform provides opportunities for transformation, availability, and scalability.

Monitoring

This phase is a permanent phase of the DevOps process. DevOps monitors and analyzes information that displays the current status of the application.

35) What are the benefits of using the Version Control System (VCS)?

Answer: The key benefits of Version Control are as follows:

With the Version Control System (VCS), all the workers are allowed to access the file freely at any time. It also allows merging all the changes that are made in a common version.

It is designed to help multiple people by collaboratively edit text files, which makes sharing comparatively easy between multiple computers.

It is important for documents that require a lot of redrafting and revision as they provide an audit trail for redrafting and updating final versions.

It permits all the team members to have access to the complete history of the project so that in case of any breakdown in the central server, we can use any teammate’s storehouse.

All the previous versions and variants are smartly packed up inside the VCS. Any version is requested at any time to get information about the previous complete projects.

36) Can you tell us the fundamental differences between DevOps & Agile?

Answer: Although DevOps shares some similarities with the Agile methodology, which is one of the most popular SDLC methodologies, both are fundamentally different approaches to software development. Following are the various fundamental differences between the two:

Agile Approach – The agile approach is only meant for development in Agile while the agile approach is meant for both development and operations in DevOps.

Practices and Processes – While agile involves practices such as Agile Scrum and Agile Kanban, DevOps involves processes such as CD (Continuous Delivery), CI (Continuous Integration), and CT (Continuous Testing).

Priority – Agile prioritizes timeliness whereas, DevOps gives equal priority to timeliness and quality.

Release Cycles – DevOps offers smaller release cycles with immediate feedback while Agile offers only smaller release cycles without immediate feedback.

Feedback Source – Agile relies on feedback from customers while feedback from self (monitoring tools) is involved in DevOps.

Scope of Work – For Agile, the scope of work is agility only but for DevOps, it is agility and the need for automation

37) Why do we need DevOps?

Answer: Organizations these days are trying to transport small features to customers via a series of release trains instead of releasing big feature sets. There are several benefits of doing so, including better software quality and quick customer feedback.

All such benefits lead to a higher level of customer satisfaction, which is the most important goal for any product development project. To do so, companies need to:

Increase deployment frequency

Lessen lead time between fixes

The lower failure rate of new releases

In case of new release crashing, have a faster mean time to recovery

DevOps helps in fulfilling all these requirements and thus, achieving seamless software delivery. Full-fledged organizations like Amazon, Etsy, and Google have adopted DevOps methodology resulting in achieving performance levels that were previously uncharted.

With the adoption of DevOps methodology, organizations are able to accomplish tens to thousands of deployments in a single day. Moreover, doing so while offering first-rate reliability, security, and stability.

38) What are the important business and technical benefits of using DevOps?

Answer: DevOps brings a lot of business and technical benefits to the table. Some of the most important ones are listed down as follows:

Business benefits

Enhanced operating environment stability
Faster delivery of features
More time for adding value to the product

Technical benefits

Continuous software delivery
Faster problem resolution
Lesser complex problems

39) Can you name some of the most-used DevOps tools?

Answer: Following is a list of some of the most widely used DevOps tools:

Ansible – A configuration management and application deployment tool

Chef – A configuration management and application deployment tool

Docker – A containerization tool

Git – A version control system (VCS) tool

What do you understand by Puppet in DevOps?

Answer: It is a configuration management tool that is used for automating administration tasks. Puppet makes use of the Master-Slave architecture in which the two entities communicate via an encrypted channel.

System admins need to perform a lot of repetitive tasks, notably installing and configuring servers. Writing scripts for automating such tasks is an option but it becomes hectic when the infrastructure is large. Configuration management is a great workaround for this.

Puppet helps in configuring, deploying, and managing servers. Not only does it make such redundant tasks easier but it also cuts a significant portion of the total work time. The mature configuration management tool:

Continuously checks whether the needed configuration for a host is in place or not. If altered, the configuration is automatically reverted back

Defines distinct configurations for every host

Does dynamic scaling (up and down) of machines

Provides control over all the configured machines so that a centralized change can automatically get propagated to all of them

Jenkins – A continuous integration (CI) tool

Jira – An agile team collaboration tool

Nagios – A continuous monitoring tool

Puppet – A configuration management and application deployment tool

Selenium – A continuous testing (CT) tool

41) What do you understand by anti-patterns of DevOps?

Answer: When a DevOps pattern commonly adopted by other organizations doesn’t work in a specific context and still the organization continues using it, it leads to the adoption of an anti-pattern. In other words, anti-patterns are myths about DevOps. Some of the notable anti-patterns are:

An organization needs to have a separate DevOps group

Agile equals DevOps

DevOps is a process

DevOps is development-driven release management

DevOps is not possible because the organization is unique

DevOps is not possible because the people available are unsuitable

DevOps means Developers Managing Production

DevOps will solve all problems

Failing to include all aspects of the organization in an ongoing DevOps transition

Not defining KPIs at the start of a DevOps transition

Reduce the silo-based isolation of development and operations with a new DevOps team that silos itself from other parts of the organization

42) What does CAMS in DevOps stand for?

Answer: The acronym CAMS is usually used for describing the core creeds of DevOps methodology. It stands for:

Culture
Automation
Measurement
Sharing

43) What are the several KPIs used to gauge DevOps success?

Answer: KPIs is a contracted form of Key Performance Indicators. In order to measure the success of a DevOps process, several KPIs can be used. Some of the most popular ones are:

Application performance
Application usage and traffic
The automated test pass percentage
Availability
Change volume
Customer tickets
Defect escape rate
Deployment frequency
Deployment time
Error rates
Failed deployments
Lead time
Mean time to detection (MTTD)
Meantime to recovery (MTTR)

44) In your opinion, what are the major benefits of implementing DevOps automation?

Answer: Following are the major benefits of implementing DevOps automation:

Removal of the possibility of human error from the CD equation (Core benefit).

As tasks become more predictable and repeatable, it is easy to identify and correct when something goes wrong. Hence, it results in producing more reliable and robust systems.

Removes bottlenecks from the CI pipeline. It results in increased deployment frequency and decreased number of failed deployments. Both of them are important DevOps KPIs.

45) Microservices are a core part of DevOps. Can you name any two popular Java development frameworks for creating microservices?

Answer: There are several Java frameworks that allow creating microservices. However, Eclipse MicroProfile and Spring Boot stand out from the herd as the two leading Java development frameworks used in DevOps for creating microservices.

46) Git is a popular DevOps tool. Tell us how you will revert a commit that has already been pushed and made public.

Answer: There are two ways of doing so:

By creating a new commit to undo all changes made by the commit that has already been pushed and made public. Following command is used for doing so:
git revert

By fixing or removing the bad file in a new commit and then pushing it to the remote repository. After making necessary changes to the file, commit it to the remote repository using the command:
git commit -m “commit message”

47) Draw a comparison between Asset Management and Configuration Management.

Answer: The process of monitoring as well as maintaining things of value to an entity or group is called an Asset Management.

Configuration Management refers to the process of controlling, identifying, planning for, and verifying the configuration items within service in support of Change Management.

48) Can you state and explain various key elements of continuous testing?

Answer: Various key elements of continuous testing are:

Advanced analysis – Used for forecasting and predicting unknown future events

Policy analysis – Meant for improving the testing process

Requirement traceability – Refers to the ability to describe as well as follow the life of a requirement, from its origin to deployment

Risk assessment – The method or process of identifying hazards and risk factors that can cause potential damage

Service virtualization – Allows using virtual services instead of production services. Emulates software components for simple testing

Test optimization – Improve the overall testing process

49) Which methodology is DevOps related to?

Answer: DevOps is related to Agile methodology.

50) What are the different advantages of Git?

Answer: Git has the following advantages:

It helps in data redundancy and replication.
It is highly available.
It supports collaboration.
It can be used for a variety of projects.
It uses only one Git directory per repository.
It supports disk utilization.
It offers higher network performance.

51) What is the difference between continuous delivery and continuous deployment?

Continuous Delivery	Continuous Deployment
Ensures code can be safely deployed on to production	Every change that passes the automated tests is deployed to production automatically
Ensures business applications and services function as expected	Makes software development and the release process faster and more robust
Delivers every change to a production-like environment through rigorous automated testing	There is no explicit approval from a developer and requires a developed culture of monitoring

52) What is the role of configuration management in DevOps?

Enables management of and changes to multiple systems.

Standardizes resource configurations, which in turn, manage IT infrastructure.

It helps with the administration and management of multiple servers and maintains the integrity of the entire infrastructure.

53) What is the role of AWS in DevOps?

AWS has the following role in DevOps:

Flexible services – Provides ready-to-use, flexible services without the need to install or set up the software.

Built for scale – You can manage a single instance or scale to thousands using AWS services.

Automation – AWS lets you automate tasks and processes, giving you more time to innovate

Secure – Using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), you can set user permissions and policies.

Large partner ecosystem – AWS supports a large ecosystem of partners that integrate with and extend AWS services.

54) Explain the term “Infrastructure as Code” (IaC) as it relates to configuration management.

Writing code to manage configuration, deployment, and automatic provisioning.

Managing data centers with machine-readable definition files, rather than physical hardware configuration.

Ensuring all your servers and other infrastructure components are provisioned consistently and effortlessly.

Administering cloud computing environments, also known as infrastructure as a service (IaaS).

55) Explain the difference between a centralized and distributed version control system (VCS).

Centralized Version Control System

All file versions are stored on a central server

No developer has a copy of all files on a local system

If the central server crashes, all data from the project will be lost

56) Explain the difference between a centralized and distributed version control system (VCS).

Centralized Version Control System:

All file versions are stored on a central server

No developer has a copy of all files on a local system

If the central server crashes, all data from the project will be lost

Distributed Control System:

Every developer has a copy of all versions of the code on their systems

Enables team members to work offline and does not rely on a single location for backups

There is no threat, even if the server crashes

57) How does Nagios help in the continuous monitoring of systems, applications, and services?

Nagios enables server monitoring and the ability to check if they are sufficiently utilized or if any task failures need to be addressed.

Verifies the status of the servers and services

Inspects the health of your infrastructure

Checks if applications are working correctly and web servers are reachable

58) What are active and passive checks in Nagios?

Nagios is capable of monitoring hosts and services in two ways:

Actively

Active checks are initiated as a result of the Nagios process
Active checks are regularly scheduled

Passively

Passive checks are initiated and performed through external applications/processes
Passive checks results are submitted to Nagios for processing

59) What are the benefits of HTTP and SSL certificate monitoring with Nagios?

HTTP certificate monitoring
Increased server, services, and application availability.
Fast detection of network outages and protocol failures.
Enables web transaction and web server performance monitoring.
SSL certificate monitoring
Increased website availability.
Frequent application availability.
It provides increased security.

60) Explain what state stalking is in Nagios.

State stalking is used for logging purposes in Nagios.

When stalking is enabled for a particular host or service, Nagios will watch that host or service very carefully.

It will log any changes it sees in the output of check results.

This helps in the analysis of log files.

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