Top DevOps Interview Questions

These are the top questions you might face in a DevOps job interview:

General DevOps Interview Questions

This category will include questions that are not related to any particular DevOps stage.
Questions here are meant to test your understanding about DevOps rather than focusing
on a particular tool or a stage.

Q1. What is the need for DevOps?

According to me, this answer should start by explaining the general market trend. Instead
of releasing big sets of features, companies are trying to see if small features can be
transported to their customers through a series of release trains. This has many
advantages like quick feedback from customers, better quality of software etc. which in
turn leads to high customer satisfaction. To achieve this, companies are required to:

1. Increase deployment frequency

2. Lower failure rate of new releases
3. Shortened lead time between fixes
4. Faster mean time to recovery in the event of new release crashing

DevOps fulfills all these requirements and helps in achieving seamless software
delivery. You can give examples of companies like Etsy, Google and Amazon which have
adopted DevOps to achieve levels of performance that were unthinkable even five years
ago. They are doing tens, hundreds or even thousands of code deployments per day while
delivering world class stability, reliability and security.

If I have to test your knowledge on DevOps, you should know the difference between
Agile and DevOps. The next question is directed towards that.

Q2. How is DevOps different from Agile / SDLC?

I would advise you to go with the below explanation:

Agile is a set of values and principles about how to produce i.e. develop software.
Example: if you have some ideas and you want to turn those ideas into working software,
you can use the Agile values and principles as a way to do that. But, that software might
only be working on a developer’s laptop or in a test environment. You want a way to
quickly, easily and repeatably move that software into production infrastructure, in a safe
and simple way. To do that you need DevOps tools and techniques.

You can summarize by saying Agile software development methodology focuses on the
development of software but DevOps on the other hand is responsible for development
as well as deployment of the software in the safest and most reliable way possible. Here’s
a blog that will give you more information on the evolution of DevOps.

Now remember, you have included DevOps tools in your previous answer so be prepared
to answer some questions related to that.

Q3. Which are the top DevOps tools? Which tools have you worked
on?

The most popular DevOps tools are mentioned below:

 Git : Version Control System tool

 Jenkins : Continuous Integration tool
 Selenium : Continuous Testing tool
 Puppet, Chef, Ansible : Configuration Management and Deployment tools
 Nagios : Continuous Monitoring tool
 Docker : Containerization tool

You can also mention any other tool if you want, but make sure you include the above
tools in your answer.
The second part of the answer has two possibilities:

1. If you have experience with all the above tools then you can say that I have worked
on all these tools for developing good quality software and deploying those
softwares easily, frequently, and reliably.
2. If you have experience only with some of the above tools then mention those tools
and say that I have specialization in these tools and have an overview about the
rest of the tools.

Q4. How do all these tools work together?

Given below is a generic logical flow where everything gets automated for seamless
delivery. However, this flow may vary from organization to organization as per the
requirement.

1. Developers develop the code and this source code is managed by Version Control
System tools like Git etc.
 2. Developers send this code to the Git repository and any changes made in the code
is committed to this Repository.
3. Jenkins pulls this code from the repository using the Git plugin and build it using
tools like Ant or Maven.
4. Configuration management tools like puppet deploys & provisions testing
environment and then Jenkins releases this code on the test environment on which
testing is done using tools like selenium.
5. Once the code is tested, Jenkins send it for deployment on the production server
(even production server is provisioned & maintained by tools like puppet).
6. After deployment It is continuously monitored by tools like Nagios.
7. Docker containers provides testing environment to test the build features.

Q5. What are the advantages of DevOps?

For this answer, you can use your past experience and explain how DevOps helped you
in your previous job. If you don’t have any such experience, then you can mention the
below advantages.

Technical benefits:

 Continuous software delivery

 Less complex problems to fix
 Faster resolution of problems

Business benefits:

 Faster delivery of features

 More stable operating environments
 More time available to add value (rather than fix/maintain)
Q6. What is the most important thing DevOps helps us achieve?

According to me, the most important thing that DevOps helps us achieve is to get the
changes into production as quickly as possible while minimizing risks in software quality
assurance and compliance. This is the primary objective of DevOps. Learn more in
this DevOps tutorial blog.
However, you can add many other positive effects of DevOps. For example, clearer
communication and better working relationships between teams i.e. both the Ops team
and Dev team collaborate together to deliver good quality software which in turn leads
to higher customer satisfaction.

Q7. Explain with a use case where DevOps can be used in industry/
real-life.

There are many industries that are using DevOps so you can mention any of those use
cases, you can also refer the below example:
Etsy is a peer-to-peer e-commerce website focused on handmade or vintage items and
supplies, as well as unique factory-manufactured items. Etsy struggled with slow, painful
site updates that frequently caused the site to go down. It affected sales for millions of
Etsy’s users who sold goods through online market place and risked driving them to the
competitor.
With the help of a new technical management team, Etsy transitioned from its waterfall
model, which produced four-hour full-site deployments twice weekly, to a more agile
approach. Today, it has a fully automated deployment pipeline, and its continuous
delivery practices have reportedly resulted in more than 50 deployments a day with fewer
disruptions.

Q8. Explain your understanding and expertise on both the software

development side and the technical operations side of an organization
you have worked with in the past.

For this answer, share your past experience and try to explain how flexible you were in
your previous job. You can refer the below example:
DevOps engineers almost always work in a 24/7 business-critical online environment. I
was adaptable to on-call duties and was available to take up real-time, live-system
responsibility. I successfully automated processes to support continuous software
deployments. I have experience with public/private clouds, tools like Chef or Puppet,
scripting and automation with tools like Python and PHP, and a background in Agile.

Q9. What are the anti-patterns of DevOps?

A pattern is common usage usually followed. If a pattern commonly adopted by others

does not work for your organization and you continue to blindly follow it, you are
essentially adopting an anti-pattern. There are myths about DevOps. Some of them
include:

 DevOps is a process
 Agile equals DevOps?
 We need a separate DevOps group
 Devops will solve all our problems
 DevOps means Developers Managing Production
 DevOps is Development-driven release management
1. DevOps is not development driven.
2. DevOps is not IT Operations driven.
 We can’t do DevOps – We’re Unique
 We can’t do DevOps – We’ve got the wrong people

Learn DevOps Now >>

Version Control System (VCS) Interview

Questions
Now let’s look at interview questions on VCS:

Q1. What is Version control?

This is probably the easiest question you will face in the interview. My suggestion is to
first give a definition of Version control. It is a system that records changes to a file or
set of files over time so that you can recall specific versions later. Version control systems
consist of a central shared repository where teammates can commit changes to a file or
set of file. Then you can mention the uses of version control.

Version control allows you to:

 Revert files back to a previous state.

 Revert the entire project back to a previous state.
 Compare changes over time.
 See who last modified something that might be causing a problem.
 Who introduced an issue and when.
Q2. What are the benefits of using version
control?
I will suggest you to include the following advantages of version control:

1. With Version Control System (VCS), all the team members are allowed to work
freely on any file at any time. VCS will later allow you to merge all the changes
into a common version.
2. All the past versions and variants are neatly packed up inside the VCS. When you
need it, you can request any version at any time and you’ll have a snapshot of the
complete project right at hand.
3. Every time you save a new version of your project, your VCS requires you to
provide a short description of what was changed. Additionally, you can see what
exactly was changed in the file’s content. This allows you to know who has made
what change in the project.
4. A distributed VCS like Git allows all the team members to have complete history
of the project so if there is a breakdown in the central server you can use any of
your teammate’s local Git repository.

Q3. Describe branching strategies you have used.

This question is asked to test your branching experience so tell them about how you have
used branching in your previous job and what purpose does it serves, you can refer the
below points:

 Feature branching
A feature branch model keeps all of the changes for a particular feature inside of
a branch. When the feature is fully tested and validated by automated tests, the
branch is then merged into master.
 Task branching
In this model each task is implemented on its own branch with the task key
included in the branch name. It is easy to see which code implements which task,
just look for the task key in the branch name.
 Release branching
Once the develop branch has acquired enough features for a release, you can clone
that branch to form a Release branch. Creating this branch starts the next release
cycle, so no new features can be added after this point, only bug fixes,
documentation generation, and other release-oriented tasks should go in this
branch. Once it is ready to ship, the release gets merged into master and tagged
with a version number. In addition, it should be merged back into develop branch,
which may have progressed since the release was initiated.

In the end tell them that branching strategies varies from one organization to another,
so I know basic branching operations like delete, merge, checking out a branch etc.

Q4. Which VCS tool you are comfortable with?

You can just mention the VCS tool that you have worked on like this: “I have worked on
Git and one major advantage it has over other VCS tools like SVN is that it is a distributed
version control system.”
Distributed VCS tools do not necessarily rely on a central server to store all the versions
of a project’s files. Instead, every developer “clones” a copy of a repository and has
the full history of the project on their own hard drive.

Q5. What is Git?

I will suggest that you attempt this question by first explaining about the architecture of
git as shown in the below diagram. You can refer to the explanation given below:

 Git is a Distributed Version Control system (DVCS). It can track changes to a file
and allows you to revert back to any particular change.
 Its distributed architecture provides many advantages over other Version Control
Systems (VCS) like SVN one major advantage is that it does not rely on a central
server to store all the versions of a project’s files. Instead, every developer
“clones” a copy of a repository I have shown in the diagram below with “Local
repository” and has the full history of the project on his hard drive so that when
there is a server outage, all you need for recovery is one of your teammate’s local
Git repository.
 There is a central cloud repository as well where developers can commit changes
and share it with other teammates as you can see in the diagram where all
collaborators are commiting changes “Remote repository”.

Q6. Explain some basic Git commands?

Below are some basic Git commands:

Q7. In Git how do you revert a commit that has already been pushed
and made public?

There can be two answers to this question so make sure that you include both because
any of the below options can be used depending on the situation:

 Remove or fix the bad file in a new commit and push it to the remote repository.
This is the most natural way to fix an error. Once you have made necessary
changes to the file, commit it to the remote repository for that I will use
git commit -m “commit message”
 Create a new commit that undoes all changes that were made in the bad commit.to
do this I will use a command
git revert <name of bad commit>

Q8. How do you squash last N commits into a single commit?

There are two options to squash last N commits into a single commit. Include both of the
below mentioned options in your answer:

 If you want to write the new commit message from scratch use the following
command
 git reset –soft HEAD~N &&
git commit
 If you want to start editing the new commit message with a concatenation of the
existing commit messages then you need to extract those messages and pass
them to Git commit for that I will use
git reset –soft HEAD~N &&
git commit –edit -m”$(git log –format=%B –reverse .HEAD@{N})”

Q9. What is Git bisect? How can you use it to determine the source of
a (regression) bug?

I will suggest you to first give a small definition of Git bisect, Git bisect is used to find the
commit that introduced a bug by using binary search. Command for Git bisect is
git bisect <subcommand> <options>
Now since you have mentioned the command above, explain what this command will do,
This command uses a binary search algorithm to find which commit in your project’s
history introduced a bug. You use it by first telling it a “bad” commit that is known to
contain the bug, and a “good” commit that is known to be before the bug was introduced.
Then Git bisect picks a commit between those two endpoints and asks you whether the
selected commit is “good” or “bad”. It continues narrowing down the range until it finds
the exact commit that introduced the change.

Q10. What is Git rebase and how can it be used to resolve conflicts in
a feature branch before merge?

According to me, you should start by saying git rebase is a command which will merge
another branch into the branch where you are currently working, and move all of the
local commits that are ahead of the rebased branch to the top of the history on that
branch.
Now once you have defined Git rebase time for an example to show how it can be used
to resolve conflicts in a feature branch before merge, if a feature branch was created
from master, and since then the master branch has received new commits, Git rebase
can be used to move the feature branch to the tip of master.
The command effectively will replay the changes made in the feature branch at the tip of
master, allowing conflicts to be resolved in the process. When done with care, this will
allow the feature branch to be merged into master with relative ease and sometimes as
a simple fast-forward operation.
Q11. How do you configure a Git repository to run code sanity
checking tools right before making commits, and preventing them if
the test fails?

I will suggest you to first give a small introduction to sanity checking, A sanity or smoke
test determines whether it is possible and reasonable to continue testing.
Now explain how to achieve this, this can be done with a simple script related to the pre-
commit hook of the repository. The pre-commit hook is triggered right before a commit
is made, even before you are required to enter a commit message. In this script one can
run other tools, such as linters and perform sanity checks on the changes being
committed into the repository.
Finally give an example, you can refer the below script:
#!/bin/sh
files=$(git diff –cached –name-only –diff-filter=ACM | grep ‘.go$’)
if [ -z files ]; then
exit 0
fi
unfmtd=$(gofmt -l $files)
if [ -z unfmtd ]; then
exit 0
fi
echo “Some .go files are not fmt’d”
exit 1
This script checks to see if any .go file that is about to be committed needs to be passed
through the standard Go source code formatting tool gofmt. By exiting with a non-zero
status, the script effectively prevents the commit from being applied to the repository.

Q12. How do you find a list of files that has changed in a particular
commit?

For this answer instead of just telling the command, explain what exactly this command
will do so you can say that, To get a list files that has changed in a particular commit use
command
git diff-tree -r {hash}
Given the commit hash, this will list all the files that were changed or added in that
commit. The -r flag makes the command list individual files, rather than collapsing them
into root directory names only.
You can also include the below mention point although it is totally optional but will help
in impressing the interviewer.
The output will also include some extra information, which can be easily suppressed by
including two flags:
git diff-tree –no-commit-id –name-only -r {hash}
Here –no-commit-id will suppress the commit hashes from appearing in the output, and
–name-only will only print the file names, instead of their paths.

Q13. How do you setup a script to run every time a repository receives
new commits through push?

There are three ways to configure a script to run every time a repository receives new
commits through push, one needs to define either a pre-receive, update, or a post-receive
hook depending on when exactly the script needs to be triggered.

 Pre-receive hook in the destination repository is invoked when commits are pushed
to it. Any script bound to this hook will be executed before any references are
updated. This is a useful hook to run scripts that help enforce development
policies.
 Update hook works in a similar manner to pre-receive hook, and is also triggered
before any updates are actually made. However, the update hook is called once
for every commit that has been pushed to the destination repository.
 Finally, post-receive hook in the repository is invoked after the updates have been
accepted into the destination repository. This is an ideal place to configure simple
deployment scripts, invoke some continuous integration systems, dispatch
notification emails to repository maintainers, etc.

Hooks are local to every Git repository and are not versioned. Scripts can either be
created within the hooks directory inside the “.git” directory, or they can be created
elsewhere and links to those scripts can be placed within the directory.

Q14. How will you know in Git if a branch has already been merged
into master?

I will suggest you to include both the below mentioned commands:

git branch –merged lists the branches that have been merged into the current branch.
git branch –no-merged lists the branches that have not been merged.
 Learn GIT With DevOps >>

Continuous Integration questions

Now, let’s look at Continuous Integration interview questions:

Q1. What is meant by Continuous Integration?

I will advise you to begin this answer by giving a small definition of Continuous
Integration (CI). It is a development practice that requires developers to integrate code
into a shared repository several times a day. Each check-in is then verified by an
automated build, allowing teams to detect problems early.
I suggest that you explain how you have implemented it in your previous job. You can
refer the below given example:

In the diagram shown above:

1. Developers check out code into their private workspaces.

2. When they are done with it they commit the changes to the shared repository
(Version Control Repository).
3. The CI server monitors the repository and checks out changes when they occur.
4. The CI server then pulls these changes and builds the system and also runs unit
and integration tests.
5. The CI server will now inform the team of the successful build.
6. If the build or tests fails, the CI server will alert the team.
 7. The team will try to fix the issue at the earliest opportunity.
8. This process keeps on repeating.

Q2. Why do you need a Continuous Integration of Dev & Testing?

For this answer, you should focus on the need of Continuous Integration. My suggestion
would be to mention the below explanation in your answer:
Continuous Integration of Dev and Testing improves the quality of software, and reduces
the time taken to deliver it, by replacing the traditional practice of testing after completing
all development. It allows Dev team to easily detect and locate problems early because
developers need to integrate code into a shared repository several times a day (more
frequently). Each check-in is then automatically tested.

Q3. What are the success factors for Continuous Integration?

Here you have to mention the requirements for Continuous Integration. You could include
the following points in your answer:

 Maintain a code repository

 Automate the build
 Make the build self-testing
 Everyone commits to the baseline every day
 Every commit (to baseline) should be built
 Keep the build fast
 Test in a clone of the production environment
 Make it easy to get the latest deliverables
 Everyone can see the results of the latest build
 Automate deployment

Q4. Explain how you can move or copy Jenkins from one server to
another?

I will approach this task by copying the jobs directory from the old server to the new one.
There are multiple ways to do that; I have mentioned them below:
You can:

 Move a job from one installation of Jenkins to another by simply copying the
corresponding job directory.
 Make a copy of an existing job by making a clone of a job directory by a different
name.
 Rename an existing job by renaming a directory. Note that if you change a job
name you will need to change any other job that tries to call the renamed job.

Q5. Explain how can create a backup and copy files in Jenkins?
Answer to this question is really direct. To create a backup, all you need to do is to
periodically back up your JENKINS_HOME directory. This contains all of your build jobs
configurations, your slave node configurations, and your build history. To create a back-
up of your Jenkins setup, just copy this directory. You can also copy a job directory to
clone or replicate a job or rename the directory.

Q6. Explain how you can setup Jenkins job?

My approach to this answer will be to first mention how to create Jenkins job. Go to
Jenkins top page, select “New Job”, then choose “Build a free-style software project”.
Then you can tell the elements of this freestyle job:

 Optional SCM, such as CVS or Subversion where your source code resides.
 Optional triggers to control when Jenkins will perform builds.
 Some sort of build script that performs the build (ant, maven, shell script, batch
file, etc.) where the real work happens.
 Optional steps to collect information out of the build, such as archiving the artifacts
and/or recording javadoc and test results.
 Optional steps to notify other people/systems with the build result, such as sending
e-mails, IMs, updating issue tracker, etc..

Q7. Mention some of the useful plugins in Jenkins.

Below, I have mentioned some important Plugins:

 Maven 2 project
 Amazon EC2
 HTML publisher
 Copy artifact
 Join
 Green Balls

These Plugins, I feel are the most useful plugins. If you want to include any other Plugin
that is not mentioned above, you can add them as well. But, make sure you first mention
the above stated plugins and then add your own.

Q8. How will you secure Jenkins?

The way I secure Jenkins is mentioned below. If you have any other way of doing it,
please mention it in the comments section below:

 Ensure global security is on.

  Ensure that Jenkins is integrated with my company’s user directory with
appropriate plugin.
 Ensure that matrix/Project matrix is enabled to fine tune access.
 Automate the process of setting rights/privileges in Jenkins with custom version
controlled script.
 Limit physical access to Jenkins data/folders.
 Periodically run security audits on same.

Master Jenkins In DevOps Training >>

Here is a testimony on DevOps Training course by an Edureka learner.

Continuous Testing Interview Questions:

Now let’s move on to the Continuous Testing questions.

Q1. What is Continuous Testing?

I will advise you to follow the below mentioned explanation:

Continuous Testing is the process of executing automated tests as part of the software
delivery pipeline to obtain immediate feedback on the business risks associated with in
the latest build. In this way, each build is tested continuously, allowing Development
teams to get fast feedback so that they can prevent those problems from progressing to
the next stage of Software delivery life-cycle. This dramatically speeds up a developer’s
workflow as there’s no need to manually rebuild the project and re-run all tests after
making changes.

Q2. What is Automation Testing?

Automation testing or Test Automation is a process of automating the manual process to

test the application/system under test. Automation testing involves use of separate
testing tools which lets you create test scripts which can be executed repeatedly and
doesn’t require any manual intervention.

Q3. What are the benefits of Automation Testing?

I have listed down some advantages of automation testing. Include these in your answer
and you can add your own experience of how Continuous Testing helped your
previous company:
  Supports execution of repeated test cases
 Aids in testing a large test matrix
 Enables parallel execution
 Encourages unattended execution
 Improves accuracy thereby reducing human generated errors
 Saves time and money

Q4. How to automate Testing in DevOps lifecycle?

I have mentioned a generic flow below which you can refer to:
In DevOps, developers are required to commit all the changes made in the source code
to a shared repository. Continuous Integration tools like Jenkins will pull the code from
this shared repository every time a change is made in the code and deploy it for
Continuous Testing that is done by tools like Selenium as shown in the below diagram.
In this way, any change in the code is continuously tested unlike the traditional approach.

Q5. Why is Continuous Testing important for DevOps?

You can answer this question by saying, “Continuous Testing allows any change made in
the code to be tested immediately. This avoids the problems created by having “big-
bang” testing left to the end of the cycle such as release delays and quality issues. In this
way, Continuous Testing facilitates more frequent and good quality releases.”

Q6. What are the key elements of Continuous Testing tools?

Key elements of Continuous Testing are:

 Risk Assessment: It Covers risk mitigation tasks, technical debt, quality

assessment and test coverage optimization to ensure the build is ready to progress
toward next stage.
 Policy Analysis: It ensures all processes align with the organization’s evolving
business and compliance demands are met.
 Requirements Traceability: It ensures true requirements are met and rework is
not required. An object assessment is used to identify which requirements are at
risk, working as expected or require further validation.
 Advanced Analysis: It uses automation in areas such as static code analysis,
change impact analysis and scope assessment/prioritization to prevent defects in
the first place and accomplishing more within each iteration.
 Test Optimization: It ensures tests yield accurate outcomes and provide
actionable findings. Aspects include Test Data Management, Test Optimization
Management and Test Maintenance
 Service Virtualization: It ensures access to real-world testing environments.
Service visualization enables access to the virtual form of the required testing
stages, cutting the waste time to test environment setup and availability.

Q7. Which Testing tool are you comfortable with and what are the
benefits of that tool?

Here mention the testing tool that you have worked with and accordingly frame your
answer. I have mentioned an example below:
I have worked on Selenium to ensure high quality and more frequent releases.

Some advantages of Selenium are:

 It is free and open source

 It has a large user base and helping communities
 It has cross Browser compatibility (Firefox, chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari etc.)
 It has great platform compatibility (Windows, Mac OS, Linux etc.)
 It supports multiple programming languages (Java, C#, Ruby, Python, Pearl etc.)
 It has fresh and regular repository developments
 It supports distributed testing

Q8. What are the Testing types supported by Selenium?

Selenium supports two types of testing:

Regression Testing: It is the act of retesting a product around an area where a bug
was fixed.
Functional Testing: It refers to the testing of software features (functional points)
individually.
Q9. What is Selenium IDE?

My suggestion is to start this answer by defining Selenium IDE. It is an integrated

development environment for Selenium scripts. It is implemented as a Firefox extension,
and allows you to record, edit, and debug tests. Selenium IDE includes the entire
Selenium Core, allowing you to easily and quickly record and play back tests in the actual
environment that they will run in.
Now include some advantages in your answer. With autocomplete support and the ability
to move commands around quickly, Selenium IDE is the ideal environment for creating
Selenium tests no matter what style of tests you prefer.

Q10. What is the difference between Assert and Verify commands in

Selenium?

I have mentioned differences between Assert and Verify commands below:

 Assert command checks whether the given condition is true or false. Let’s say we
assert whether the given element is present on the web page or not. If the
condition is true, then the program control will execute the next test step. But, if
the condition is false, the execution would stop and no further test would be
executed.
 Verify command also checks whether the given condition is true or false.
Irrespective of the condition being true or false, the program execution doesn’t
halts i.e. any failure during verification would not stop the execution and all the
test steps would be executed.

Q11. How to launch Browser using WebDriver?

The following syntax can be used to launch Browser:

WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
WebDriver driver = new InternetExplorerDriver();

Q12. When should I use Selenium Grid?

For this answer, my suggestion would be to give a small definition of Selenium Grid.
It can be used to execute same or different test scripts on multiple platforms and
browsers concurrently to achieve distributed test execution. This allows testing under
different environments and saving execution time remarkably.

Automate Testing Using DevOps Now >>

Configuration Management Interview Questions

Now let’s check how much you know about Configuration Management.

Q1. What are the goals of Configuration management processes?

The purpose of Configuration Management (CM) is to ensure the integrity of a product or

system throughout its life-cycle by making the development or deployment process
controllable and repeatable, therefore creating a higher quality product or system. The
CM process allows orderly management of system information and system changes for
purposes such as to:

 Revise capability,
 Improve performance,
 Reliability or maintainability,
 Extend life,
 Reduce cost,
 Reduce risk and
 Liability, or correct defects.

Q2. What is the difference between Asset management and

Configuration Management?

Given below are few differences between Asset Management and Configuration
Management:

Q3. What is the difference between an Asset and a Configuration

Item?
According to me, you should first explain Asset. It has a financial value along with a
depreciation rate attached to it. IT assets are just a sub-set of it. Anything and everything
that has a cost and the organization uses it for its asset value calculation and related
benefits in tax calculation falls under Asset Management, and such item is called an asset.
Configuration Item on the other hand may or may not have financial values assigned to
it. It will not have any depreciation linked to it. Thus, its life would not be dependent on
its financial value but will depend on the time till that item becomes obsolete for the
organization.

Now you can give an example that can showcase the similarity and differences between
both:
1) Similarity:
Server – It is both an asset as well as a CI.
2) Difference:
Building – It is an asset but not a CI.
Document – It is a CI but not an asset

Q4. What do you understand by “Infrastructure as code”? How does

it fit into the DevOps methodology? What purpose does it achieve?

Infrastructure as Code (IAC) is a type of IT infrastructure that operations teams can use
to automatically manage and provision through code, rather than using a manual process.
Companies for faster deployments treat infrastructure like software: as code that can be
managed with the DevOps tools and processes. These tools let you make infrastructure
changes more easily, rapidly, safely and reliably.

Q5. Which among Puppet, Chef, SaltStack and Ansible is the best
Configuration Management (CM) tool? Why?

This depends on the organization’s need so mention few points on all those tools:
Puppet is the oldest and most mature CM tool. Puppet is a Ruby-based Configuration
Management tool, but while it has some free features, much of what makes Puppet great
is only available in the paid version. Organizations that don’t need a lot of extras will find
Puppet useful, but those needing more customization will probably need to upgrade to
the paid version.
Chef is written in Ruby, so it can be customized by those who know the language. It also
includes free features, plus it can be upgraded from open source to enterprise-level if
necessary. On top of that, it’s a very flexible product.
Ansible is a very secure option since it uses Secure Shell. It’s a simple tool to use, but it
does offer a number of other services in addition to configuration management. It’s very
easy to learn, so it’s perfect for those who don’t have a dedicated IT staff but still need
a configuration management tool.
SaltStack is python based open source CM tool made for larger businesses, but its
learning curve is fairly low.

Q6. What is Puppet?

I will advise you to first give a small definition of Puppet. It is a Configuration

Management tool which is used to automate administration tasks.
Now you should describe its architecture and how Puppet manages its Agents. Puppet
has a Master-Slave architecture in which the Slave has to first send a Certificate signing
request to Master and Master has to sign that Certificate in order to establish a secure
connection between Puppet Master and Puppet Slave as shown on the diagram below.
Puppet Slave sends request to Puppet Master and Puppet Master then pushes
configuration on Slave.
Refer the diagram below that explains the above description.
Q7. Before a client can authenticate with the Puppet Master, its certs
need to be signed and accepted. How will you automate this task?

The easiest way is to enable auto-signing in puppet.conf.

Do mention that this is a security risk. If you still want to do this:

 Firewall your puppet master – restrict port tcp/8140 to only networks that you
trust.
 Create puppet masters for each ‘trust zone’, and only include the trusted nodes in
that Puppet masters manifest.
 Never use a full wildcard such as *.

Q8. Describe the most significant gain you made from automating a
process through Puppet.

For this answer, I will suggest you to explain you past experience with Puppet. you can
refer the below example:
I automated the configuration and deployment of Linux and Windows machines using
Puppet. In addition to shortening the processing time from one week to 10 minutes, I
used the roles and profiles pattern and documented the purpose of each module in
README to ensure that others could update the module using Git. The modules I wrote
are still being used, but they’ve been improved by my teammates and members of the
community

Q9. Which open source or community tools do you use to make Puppet
more powerful?

Over here, you need to mention the tools and how you have used those tools to make
Puppet more powerful. Below is one example for your reference:
Changes and requests are ticketed through Jira and we manage requests through an
internal process. Then, we use Git and Puppet’s Code Manager app to manage Puppet
code in accordance with best practices. Additionally, we run all of our Puppet changes
through our continuous integration pipeline in Jenkins using the beaker testing
framework.

Q10. What are Puppet Manifests?

It is a very important question so make sure you go in a correct flow. According to me,
you should first define Manifests. Every node (or Puppet Agent) has got its configuration
details in Puppet Master, written in the native Puppet language. These details are written
in the language which Puppet can understand and are termed as Manifests. They are
composed of Puppet code and their filenames use the .pp extension.
Now give an exampl. You can write a manifest in Puppet Master that creates a file and
installs apache on all Puppet Agents (Slaves) connected to the Puppet Master.

Q11. What is Puppet Module and How it is different from Puppet

Manifest?

For this answer, you can go with the below mentioned explanation:
A Puppet Module is a collection of Manifests and data (such as facts, files, and templates),
and they have a specific directory structure. Modules are useful for organizing your
Puppet code, because they allow you to split your code into multiple Manifests. It is
considered best practice to use Modules to organize almost all of your Puppet Manifests.
Puppet programs are called Manifests which are composed of Puppet code and their file
names use the .pp extension.

Q12. What is Facter in Puppet?

You are expected to answer what exactly Facter does in Puppet so according to me, you
should say, “Facter gathers basic information (facts) about Puppet Agent such as
hardware details, network settings, OS type and version, IP addresses, MAC addresses,
SSH keys, and more. These facts are then made available in Puppet Master’s Manifests
as variables.”

Q13. What is Chef?

Begin this answer by defining Chef. It is a powerful automation platform that transforms
infrastructure into code. Chef is a tool for which you write scripts that are used to
automate processes. What processes? Pretty much anything related to IT.
Now you can explain the architecture of Chef, it consists of:

 Chef Server: The Chef Server is the central store of your infrastructure’s
configuration data. The Chef Server stores the data necessary to configure your
nodes and provides search, a powerful tool that allows you to dynamically drive
node configuration based on data.
 Chef Node: A Node is any host that is configured using Chef-client. Chef-client
runs on your nodes, contacting the Chef Server for the information necessary to
configure the node. Since a Node is a machine that runs the Chef-client software,
nodes are sometimes referred to as “clients”.
  Chef Workstation: A Chef Workstation is the host you use to modify your
cookbooks and other configuration data.

Q14. What is a resource in Chef?

My suggestion is to first define Resource. A Resource represents a piece of infrastructure

and its desired state, such as a package that should be installed, a service that should
be running, or a file that should be generated.
You should explain about the functions of Resource for that include the following points:

 Describes the desired state for a configuration item.

 Declares the steps needed to bring that item to the desired state.
 Specifies a resource type such as package, template, or service.
 Lists additional details (also known as resource properties), as necessary.
 Are grouped into recipes, which describe working configurations.

Q15. What do you mean by recipe in Chef?

For this answer, I will suggest you to use the above mentioned flow: first define Recipe.
A Recipe is a collection of Resources that describes a particular configuration or policy. A
Recipe describes everything that is required to configure part of a system.
After the definition, explain the functions of Recipes by including the following points:

 Install and configure software components.

 Manage files.
 Deploy applications.
 Execute other recipes.

Q16. How does a Cookbook differ from a Recipe in Chef?

The answer to this is pretty direct. You can simply say, “a Recipe is a collection of
Resources, and primarily configures a software package or some piece of infrastructure.
A Cookbook groups together Recipes and other information in a way that is more
manageable than having just Recipes alone.”

Q17. What happens when you don’t specify a Resource’s action in

Chef?

My suggestion is to first give a direct answer: when you don’t specify a resource’s action,
Chef applies the default action.
Now explain this with an example, the below resource:
file ‘C:\Users\Administrator\chef-repo\settings.ini’ do
content ‘greeting=hello world’
end
is same as the below resource:
file ‘C:\Users\Administrator\chef-repo\settings.ini’ do
action :create
content ‘greeting=hello world’
end
because: create is the file Resource’s default action.

Q18. What is Ansible module?

Modules are considered to be the units of work in Ansible. Each module is mostly
standalone and can be written in a standard scripting language such as Python, Perl,
Ruby, bash, etc.. One of the guiding properties of modules is idempotency, which means
that even if an operation is repeated multiple times e.g. upon recovery from an outage,
it will always place the system into the same state.
Q19. What are playbooks in Ansible?

Playbooks are Ansible’s configuration, deployment, and orchestration language. They can
describe a policy you want your remote systems to enforce, or a set of steps in a general
IT process. Playbooks are designed to be human-readable and are developed in a basic
text language.
At a basic level, playbooks can be used to manage configurations of and deployments to
remote machines.

Q20. How do I see a list of all of the ansible_ variables?

Ansible by default gathers “facts” about the machines under management, and these
facts can be accessed in Playbooks and in templates. To see a list of all of the facts that
are available about a machine, you can run the “setup” module as an ad-hoc action:
Ansible -m setup hostname
This will print out a dictionary of all of the facts that are available for that particular host.

Q21. How can I set deployment order for applications?

WebLogic Server 8.1 allows you to select the load order for applications. See the
Application MBean Load Order attribute in Application. WebLogic Server deploys server-
level resources (first JDBC and then JMS) before deploying applications. Applications are
deployed in this order: connectors, then EJBs, then Web Applications. If the application
is an EAR, the individual components are loaded in the order in which they are declared
in the application.xml deployment descriptor.

Q22. Can I refresh static components of a deployed application

without having to redeploy the entire application?

Yes, you can use weblogic.Deployer to specify a component and target a server, using
the following syntax:
java weblogic.Deployer -adminurl http://admin:7001 -name appname -targets
server1,server2 -deploy jsps/*.jsp

Q23. How do I turn the auto-deployment feature off?

The auto-deployment feature checks the applications folder every three seconds to
determine whether there are any new applications or any changes to existing applications
and then dynamically deploys these changes.

The auto-deployment feature is enabled for servers that run in development mode. To
disable auto-deployment feature, use one of the following methods to place servers in
production mode:

 In the Administration Console, click the name of the domain in the left pane, then
select the Production Mode checkbox in the right pane.
 At the command line, include the following argument when starting the domain’s
Administration Server:
-Dweblogic.ProductionModeEnabled=true
 Production mode is set for all WebLogic Server instances in a given domain.

Q24. When should I use the external_stage option?

Set -external_stage using weblogic.Deployer if you want to stage the application yourself,
and prefer to copy it to its target by your own means.

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Continuous Monitoring Interview Questions

Let’s test your knowledge on Continuous Monitoring.

Q1. Why is Continuous monitoring necessary?

I will suggest you to go with the below mentioned flow:

Continuous Monitoring allows timely identification of problems or weaknesses and quick
corrective action that helps reduce expenses of an organization. Continuous monitoring
provides solution that addresses three operational disciplines known as:

 continuous audit
 continuous controls monitoring
 continuous transaction inspection

Q2. What is Nagios?

You can answer this question by first mentioning that Nagios is one of the monitoring
tools. It is used for Continuous monitoring of systems, applications, services, and
business processes etc in a DevOps culture. In the event of a failure, Nagios can alert
technical staff of the problem, allowing them to begin remediation processes before
outages affect business processes, end-users, or customers. With Nagios, you don’t
have to explain why an unseen infrastructure outage affect your organization’s bottom
line.
Now once you have defined what is Nagios, you can mention the various things that you
can achieve using Nagios.
By using Nagios you can:

 Plan for infrastructure upgrades before outdated systems cause failures.

 Respond to issues at the first sign of a problem.
 Automatically fix problems when they are detected.
 Coordinate technical team responses.
 Ensure your organization’s SLAs are being met.
 Ensure IT infrastructure outages have a minimal effect on your organization’s
bottom line.
 Monitor your entire infrastructure and business processes.

This completes the answer to this question. Further details like advantages etc. can be
added as per the direction where the discussion is headed.

Q3. How does Nagios works?

I will advise you to follow the below explanation for this answer:
Nagios runs on a server, usually as a daemon or service. Nagios periodically runs plugins
residing on the same server, they contact hosts or servers on your network or on the
internet. One can view the status information using the web interface. You can also
receive email or SMS notifications if something happens.
The Nagios daemon behaves like a scheduler that runs certain scripts at certain moments.
It stores the results of those scripts and will run other scripts if these results change.

Now expect a few questions on Nagios components like Plugins, NRPE etc..

Q4. What are Plugins in Nagios?

Begin this answer by defining Plugins. They are scripts (Perl scripts, Shell scripts, etc.)
that can run from a command line to check the status of a host or service. Nagios uses
the results from Plugins to determine the current status of hosts and services on your
network.
Once you have defined Plugins, explain why we need Plugins. Nagios will execute a Plugin
whenever there is a need to check the status of a host or service. Plugin will perform the
check and then simply returns the result to Nagios. Nagios will process the results that it
receives from the Plugin and take the necessary actions.

Q5. What is NRPE (Nagios Remote Plugin Executor) in Nagios?

For this answer, give a brief definition of Plugins. The NRPE addon is designed to allow
you to execute Nagios plugins on remote Linux/Unix machines. The main reason for doing
this is to allow Nagios to monitor “local” resources (like CPU load, memory usage, etc.)
on remote machines. Since these public resources are not usually exposed to external
machines, an agent like NRPE must be installed on the remote Linux/Unix machines.

I will advise you to explain the NRPE architecture on the basis of diagram shown below.
The NRPE addon consists of two pieces:

 The check_nrpe plugin, which resides on the local monitoring machine.

 The NRPE daemon, which runs on the remote Linux/Unix machine.

There is a SSL (Secure Socket Layer) connection between monitoring host and remote
host as shown in the diagram below.

Q6. What do you mean by passive check in Nagios?

According to me, the answer should start by explaining Passive checks. They are initiated
and performed by external applications/processes and the Passive check results are
submitted to Nagios for processing.
Then explain the need for passive checks. They are useful for monitoring services that
are Asynchronous in nature and cannot be monitored effectively by polling their status
on a regularly scheduled basis. They can also be used for monitoring services that are
Located behind a firewall and cannot be checked actively from the monitoring host.

Q7. When Does Nagios Check for external commands?

Make sure that you stick to the question during your explanation so I will advise you to
follow the below mentioned flow. Nagios check for external commands under the
following conditions:

 At regular intervals specified by the command_check_interval option in the main

configuration file or,
 Immediately after event handlers are executed. This is in addition to the regular
cycle of external command checks and is done to provide immediate action if an
event handler submits commands to Nagios.

Q8. What is the difference between Active and Passive check in

Nagios?

For this answer, first point out the basic difference Active and Passive checks. The major
difference between Active and Passive checks is that Active checks are initiated and
performed by Nagios, while passive checks are performed by external applications.
If your interviewer is looking unconvinced with the above explanation then you can also
mention some key features of both Active and Passive checks:
Passive checks are useful for monitoring services that are:

 Asynchronous in nature and cannot be monitored effectively by polling their status

on a regularly scheduled basis.
 Located behind a firewall and cannot be checked actively from the monitoring host.

The main features of Actives checks are as follows:

 Active checks are initiated by the Nagios process.

 Active checks are run on a regularly scheduled basis.

Q9. How does Nagios help with Distributed Monitoring?

The interviewer will be expecting an answer related to the distributed architecture of

Nagios. So, I suggest that you answer it in the below mentioned format:
With Nagios you can monitor your whole enterprise by using a distributed monitoring
scheme in which local slave instances of Nagios perform monitoring tasks and report the
results back to a single master. You manage all configuration, notification, and reporting
from the master, while the slaves do all the work. This design takes advantage of Nagios’s
ability to utilize passive checks i.e. external applications or processes that send results
back to Nagios. In a distributed configuration, these external applications are other
instances of Nagios.

Q10. Explain Main Configuration file of Nagios and its location?

First mention what this main configuration file contains and its function. The main
configuration file contains a number of directives that affect how the Nagios daemon
operates. This config file is read by both the Nagios daemon and the CGIs (It specifies
the location of your main configuration file).
Now you can tell where it is present and how it is created. A sample main configuration
file is created in the base directory of the Nagios distribution when you run the configure
script. The default name of the main configuration file is nagios.cfg. It is usually placed
in the etc/ subdirectory of you Nagios installation (i.e. /usr/local/nagios/etc/).

Q11. Explain how Flap Detection works in Nagios?

I will advise you to first explain Flapping first. Flapping occurs when a service or host
changes state too frequently, this causes lot of problem and recovery notifications.
Once you have defined Flapping, explain how Nagios detects Flapping. Whenever Nagios
checks the status of a host or service, it will check to see if it has started or stopped
flapping. Nagios follows the below given procedure to do that:

 Storing the results of the last 21 checks of the host or service analyzing the
historical check results and determine where state changes/transitions occur
 Using the state transitions to determine a percent state change value (a measure
of change) for the host or service
 Comparing the percent state change value against low and high flapping
thresholds

A host or service is determined to have started flapping when its percent state change
first exceeds a high flapping threshold. A host or service is determined to have stopped
flapping when its percent state goes below a low flapping threshold.
Q12. What are the three main variables that affect recursion and
inheritance in Nagios?

According to me the proper format for this answer should be:

First name the variables and then a small explanation of each of these variables:

 Name
 Use
 Register

Then give a brief explanation for each of these variables. Name is a placeholder that is
used by other objects. Use defines the “parent” object whose properties should be used.
Register can have a value of 0 (indicating its only a template) and 1 (an actual object).
The register value is never inherited.

Q13. What is meant by saying Nagios is Object Oriented?

Answer to this question is pretty direct. I will answer this by saying, “One of the features
of Nagios is object configuration format in that you can create object definitions that
inherit properties from other object definitions and hence the name. This simplifies and
clarifies relationships between various components.”

Q14. What is State Stalking in Nagios?

I will advise you to first give a small introduction on State Stalking. It is used for logging
purposes. When Stalking is enabled for a particular host or service, Nagios will watch that
host or service very carefully and log any changes it sees in the output of check results.
Depending on the discussion between you and interviewer you can also add, “It can be
very helpful in later analysis of the log files. Under normal circumstances, the result of a
host or service check is only logged if the host or service has changed state since it was
last checked.”

Containerization and Virtualization Interview Questions

Let’s see how much you know about containers and VMs.

Q1. What are containers?

My suggestion is to explain the need for containerization first, containers are used to
provide consistent computing environment from a developer’s laptop to a test
environment, from a staging environment into production.
Now give a definition of containers, a container consists of an entire runtime
environment: an application, plus all its dependencies, libraries and other binaries, and
configuration files needed to run it, bundled into one package. Containerizing the
application platform and its dependencies removes the differences in OS distributions and
underlying infrastructure.

Q2. What are the advantages that Containerization provides over

virtualization?

Below are the advantages of containerization over virtualization:

 Containers provide real-time provisioning and scalability but VMs provide slow
provisioning
 Containers are lightweight when compared to VMs
 VMs have limited performance when compared to containers
 Containers have better resource utilization compared to VMs

Q3. How exactly are containers (Docker in our case) different from
hypervisor virtualization (vSphere)? What are the benefits?

Given below are some differences. Make sure you include these differences in your
answer:
Q4. What is Docker image?

I suggest that you go with the below mentioned flow:

Docker image is the source of Docker container. In other words, Docker images are used
to create containers. Images are created with the build command, and they’ll produce a
container when started with run. Images are stored in a Docker registry such as
registry.hub.docker.com because they can become quite large, images are designed to
be composed of layers of other images, allowing a minimal amount of data to be sent
when transferring images over the network.
Tip: Be aware of Dockerhub in order to answer questions on pre-available
images.

Q5. What is Docker container?

This is a very important question so just make sure you don’t deviate from the topic. I
advise you to follow the below mentioned format:
Docker containers include the application and all of its dependencies but share the kernel
with other containers, running as isolated processes in user space on the host operating
system. Docker containers are not tied to any specific infrastructure: they run on any
computer, on any infrastructure, and in any cloud.
Now explain how to create a Docker container, Docker containers can be created by either
creating a Docker image and then running it or you can use Docker images that are
present on the Dockerhub.
Docker containers are basically runtime instances of Docker images.

Q6. What is Docker hub?

Answer to this question is pretty direct. Docker hub is a cloud-based registry service
which allows you to link to code repositories, build your images and test them, stores
manually pushed images, and links to Docker cloud so you can deploy images to your
hosts. It provides a centralized resource for container image discovery, distribution and
change management, user and team collaboration, and workflow automation throughout
the development pipeline.

Q7. How is Docker different from other container technologies?

According to me, below points should be there in your answer:

Docker containers are easy to deploy in a cloud. It can get more applications running on
the same hardware than other technologies, it makes it easy for developers to quickly
create, ready-to-run containerized applications and it makes managing and deploying
applications much easier. You can even share containers with your applications.
If you have some more points to add you can do that but make sure the above the above
explanation is there in your answer.

Q8. What is Docker Swarm?

You should start this answer by explaining Docker Swarn. It is native clustering for
Docker which turns a pool of Docker hosts into a single, virtual Docker host. Docker
Swarm serves the standard Docker API, any tool that already communicates with a
Docker daemon can use Swarm to transparently scale to multiple hosts.
I will also suggest you to include some supported tools:

 Dokku
 Docker Compose
 Docker Machine
 Jenkins

Q9. What is Dockerfile used for?

This answer according to me should begin by explaining the use of Dockerfile. Docker can
build images automatically by reading the instructions from a Dockerfile.
Now I suggest you to give a small definition of Dockerfle. A Dockerfile is a text document
that contains all the commands a user could call on the command line to assemble an
image. Using docker build users can create an automated build that executes several
command-line instructions in succession.

Now expect a few questions to test your experience with Docker.

Q10. Can I use json instead of yaml for my compose file in Docker?

You can use json instead of yaml for your compose file, to use json file with compose,
specify the filename to use for eg:
docker-compose -f docker-compose.json up

Q11. Tell us how you have used Docker in your past position?

Explain how you have used Docker to help rapid deployment. Explain how you have
scripted Docker and used Docker with other tools like Puppet, Chef or Jenkins. If you
have no past practical experience in Docker and have past experience with other tools in
similar space, be honest and explain the same. In this case, it makes sense if you can
compare other tools to Docker in terms of functionality.

Q12. How to create Docker container?

I will suggest you to give a direct answer to this. We can use Docker image to create
Docker container by using the below command:
docker run -t -i <image name> <command name>
This command will create and start container.
You should also add, If you want to check the list of all running container with status on
a host use the below command:
docker ps -a

Q13. How to stop and restart the Docker container?

In order to stop the Docker container you can use the below command:
docker stop <container ID>
Now to restart the Docker container you can use:
docker restart <container ID>
Q14. How far do Docker containers scale?

Large web deployments like Google and Twitter, and platform providers such as Heroku
and dotCloud all run on container technology, at a scale of hundreds of thousands or even
millions of containers running in parallel.

Q15. What platforms does Docker run on?

I will start this answer by saying Docker runs on only Linux and Cloud platforms and then
I will mention the below vendors of Linux:

 Ubuntu 12.04, 13.04 et al

 Fedora 19/20+
 RHEL 6.5+
 CentOS 6+
 Gentoo
 ArchLinux
 openSUSE 12.3+
 CRUX 3.0+

Cloud:

 Amazon EC2
 Google Compute Engine
 Microsoft Azure
 Rackspace

Note that Docker does not run on Windows or Mac.

Q16. Do I lose my data when the Docker container exits?

You can answer this by saying, no I won’t loose my data when Dcoker container exits.
Any data that your application writes to disk gets preserved in its container until you
explicitly delete the container. The file system for the container persists even after the
container halts.

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Additional Questions

1. How does HTTP work?

The HTTP protocol works in a client and server model like most other protocols. A web
browser using which a request is initiated is called as a client and a web server software
which responds to that request is called a server. World Wide Web Consortium and the
Internet Engineering Task Force are two important spokes in the standardization of the
HTTP protocol. HTTP allows improvement of its request and response with the help of
intermediates, for example a gateway, a proxy, or a tunnel. The resources that can be
requested using the HTTP protocol, are made available using a certain type of URI
(Uniform Resource Identifier) called a URL (Uniform Resource Locator). TCP
(Transmission Control Protocol) is used to establish a connection to the application layer
port 80 used by HTTP.

2. Explain your understanding and expertise on both the software

development side and the technical operations side of an organization
you’ve worked for in the past.

DevOps engineers almost always work in a 24/7 business critical online environment. I
was adaptable to on-call duties and able to take up real-time, live-system responsibility.
I successfully automated processes to support continuous software deployments. I have
experience with public/private clouds, tools like Chef or Puppet, scripting and automation
with tools like Python and PHP, and a background in Agile.

3. Discuss your experience building bridges between IT Ops, QA and

development.

DevOps is all about effective communication and collaboration. I’ve been able to deal
with production issues from the development and operations sides, effectively straddling
the two worlds. I’m less interested in finding blame or playing the hero than I am with
ensuring that all of the moving parts come together.

4. What types of testing are needed?

Software teams will often look for the “fair weather” path to system completion; that is,
they start from an assumption that software will usually work and only occasionally fail.
I believe to practice defensive programming in a pragmatic way, which often means
assuming that the code will fail and planning for those failures. I try to incorporate unit
test strategy, use of test harnesses, early load testing; network simulation, A/B and
multi-variate testing etc.

5. Give me an example of how you would handle projects?

As a professional with managerial responsibilities, I would demonstrate a clear
understanding of DevOps project management tactics and also work with teams to set
objectives, streamline workflow, maintain scope, research and introduce new tools or
frameworks, translate requirements into workflow and follow up. I would resort to CI,
release management and other tools to keep interdisciplinary projects on track.

6. What’s your career objective in your role as a DevOps engineer?

My passion is breaking down the barriers and building and improving processes, so that
the engineering and operations teams work better and smarter. That’s why I love
DevOps. It’s an opportunity to be involved in the entire delivery system from start to
finish.

7. How would you make software deployable?

The ability to script the installation and reconfiguration of software systems is essential
towards controlled and automated change. Although there is an increasing trend for new
software to enable this, older systems and products suffer from the assumption that
changes would be infrequent and minor, and so make automated changes difficult. As a
professional who appreciates the need to expose configuration and settings in a manner
accessible to automation, I will work with concepts like Inversion of Control (IoC) and
Dependency Injection, scripted installation, test harnesses, separation of concerns,
command-line tools, and infrastructure as code.

8. What is the one most important thing DevOps helps do?

The most important thing DevOps helps do is to get the changes into production as
quickly as possible while minimizing risks in software quality assurance and compliance.
That is the primary objective of DevOps. However, there are many other positive side-
effects to DevOps. For example, clearer communication and better working relationships
between teams which creates a less stressful working environment.

9. Which scripting languages do you think are most important for a

DevOps engineer?

As far as scripting languages go, the simpler the better. In fact, the language itself isn’t
as important as understanding design patterns and development paradigms such as
procedural, object-oriented, or functional programming.
10. How do you expect you would be required to multitask as a
DevOps professional?

I believe I’ll be expected to:

1. Focus attention on bridging communication gaps between Development and

Operations teams.
2. Understand system design from an architect’s perspective, software development
from a developer’s perspective,operations and infrastructure from the perspective
of a seasoned Systems Administrator.
3. Execute – to be able to actually do what needs to be done.

11. What testing is necessary to ensure that a new service is ready

for production?

DevOps is all about continuous testing throughout the process, starting with development
through to production. Everyone shares the testing responsibility. This ensures that
developers are delivering code that doesn’t have any errors and is of high quality, and it
also helps everyone leverage their time most effectively.

12. What’s a PTR in DNS?

Pointer records are used to map a network interface (IP) to a host name. These are
primarily used for reverse DNS. Reverse DNS is setup very similar to how normal
(forward) DNS is setup. When you delegate the DNS forward, the owner of the domain
tells the registrar to let your domain use specific name servers.

13. Describe two-factor authentication?

Two-factor authentication is a security process in which the user provides two means of
identification from separate categories of credentials; one is typically a physical token,
such as a card, and the other is typically something memorized, such as a security code.

14. Tell us about the CI tools that you are familiar with?

The premise of CI is to get feedback as early as possible because the earlier you get
feedback, the less things cost to fix. Popular open source tools include Hudson, Jenkins,
CruiseControl and CruiseControl.NET. Commercial tools include ThoughtWorks’ Go,
Urbancode’s Anthill Pro, Jetbrains’ Team City and Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server.

15. What are the advantages of NoSQL database over RDBMS?

The advantages are:

1. Less need for ETL

2. Support for unstructured text
3. Ability to handle change over time
4. Breadth of functionality
5. Ability to scale horizontally
6. Support for multiple data structures
7. Choice of vendors

16. What is an MX record in DNS?

MX records are mail exchange records used for determining the priority of email servers
for a domain. The lowest priority email server is the first destination for email. If the
lowest priority email server is unavailable, mail will be sent to the higher priority email
servers.

17. What is the difference between RAID 0 and RAID 1?

RAID 1 offers redundancy through mirroring, i.e., data is written identically to two drives.
RAID 0 offers no redundancy and instead uses striping, i.e., data is split across all the
drives. This means RAID 0 offers no fault tolerance; if any of the constituent drives fails,
the RAID unit fails.

18. How would you prepare for a migration?

Tips to answer: This question evaluates your experience of real projects with all the
awkwardness and complexity they bring. Include terms like cut-over, dress rehearsals,
roll-back and roll-forward, DNS solutions, feature toggles, branch by abstraction, and
automation in your answer. Developing greenfield systems with little or no existing
technology in place is always easier than having to deal with legacy components and
configuration. As a candidate if you appreciate that any interesting software system will
in effect be under constant migration, you will appear suitable for the role.

19. What’s your systems background?

Tips to answer: Some DevOps jobs require extensive systems knowledge, including
server clustering and highly concurrent systems. As a DevOps engineer, you need to
analyze system capabilities and implement upgrades for efficiency, scalability and
stability, or resilience. It is recommended that you have a solid knowledge of OSes and
supporting technologies, like network security, virtual private networks and proxy server
configuration.

DevOps relies on virtualization for rapid workload provisioning and allocating compute
resources to new VMs to support the next rollout, so it is useful to have in-depth
knowledge around popular hypervisors. This should ideally include backup, migration and
lifecycle management tactics to protect, optimize and eventually recover computing
resources. Some environments may emphasize microservices software development
tailored for virtual containers. Operations expertise must include extensive knowledge of
systems management tools like Microsoft System Center, Puppet, Nagios and Chef.
DevOps jobs with an emphasis on operations require detailed problem-solving,
troubleshooting and analytical skills.

20. What DevOp tools have you worked with?

Tips to answer: Software configuration management and build/release (version control)

tools, including Apache Subversion, Mercurial, Fossil and others, help document change
requests. Developers can more easily follow the company’s best practices and policies
while software changes.

Continuous integration (CI) tools such as Rational Build Forge, Jenkins and Semaphore
merge all developer copies of the working code into a central version. These tools are
important for larger groups where teams of developers work on the same codebase
simultaneously. QA experts use code analyzers to test software for bugs, security and
performance. If you’ve used HP’s Fortify Static Code Analyzer, talk about how it identified
security vulnerabilities in coding languages. Also speak about tools like GrammaTech’s
CodeSonar that you used to identify memory leaks, buffer underruns and other defects
for C/C++ and Java code. It is essential that you have adequate command of the principal
languages like Ruby, C#, .NET, Perl, Python, Java, PHP, Windows PowerShell, and are
comfortable with the associated OS environments Windows, Linux and Unix.

21. How much have you interacted with cloud based software
development?

Tips to answer: Share your knowledge around use of cloud platforms, provisioning new
instances, coding new software iterations with the cloud provider’s APIs or software
development kits, configuring clusters to scale computing capacity, managing workload
lifecycles and so on. This is the perfect opportunity to discuss container-based cloud
instances as an alternative to conventional VMs. Event-based cloud computing, such as
AWS Lambda offers another approach to software development, a boon for experienced
DevOps candidates. In your interview, mention experience handling big data, which uses
highly scalable cloud infrastructures to tackle complex computing tasks.

22. What other tools are you familiar with that might help you in this
role?

Tips to answer: DevOps is so diverse and inclusive that it rarely ends with coding, testing
and systems. A DevOps project might rely on database platforms like SQL or NoSQL, data
structure servers like Redis, or configuration and management issue tracking systems
like Redmine. Web applications are popular for modern enterprises, making a background
with Web servers, like Microsoft Internet Information Services, Apache Tomcat or other
Web servers, beneficial. Make sure to bring across that you are familiar with Agile
application lifecycle management techniques and tools.

23. Are you familiar with just Linux or have you worked with Windows
environments as well?

Tips to answer: Demonstrate as much as you can, a clear understanding of both the
environments including the key tools.

24. How can you reduce load time of a dynamic website?

Tips to answer: Talk about Webpage optimization, cached web pages, quality web hosting
, compressed text files, Apache fine tuning.

25. Describe your experience implementing continuous deployment?

Tips to answer: Answer with a comprehensive list of all the tools that you used. Include
inferences of the challenges you faced and how you tackled them.

26. How would you ensure traceability?

Tips to answer: This question probes your attitude to metrics, logging, transaction
journeys, and reporting. You should be able to identify that metric, monitoring and
logging needs to be a core part of the software system, and that without them, the
software is essentially not going to be able to appear maintained and diagnosed. Include
words like SysLog, Splunk, error tracking, Nagios, SCOM, Avicode in your answer.

27. What was your greatest achievement on a recent project?

Tips to answer: Make sure you demonstrate your perfect understanding of both
development and operations. Do not let your answer lean towards one particular skillset
ignoring the other. Even if you have worked in an environment wherein you had to work
more with one skillset, assure the intervewer that you are agile according to the needs
of your organization.

28. What problems did you face and how did you solve them in a way
that met the team’s goals?

Tips to answer: This questions aims to find out how much you can handle stress and non-
conformity at work. Talk about your leadership skills to handle and motivate the team to
solve problems together.Talk about CI, release management and other tools to keep
interdisciplinary projects on track.

29. Are you more Dev or Ops?

Tips to answer: This is probably the trickiest question that you might face in the interview.
Emphasize the fact that this depends a lot on the job, the company you are working for
and the skills of people involved. You really have to be able to alternate between both
sides of the fence at any given time. Talk about your experience and demonstrate how
you are agile with both.

30. What special training or education did it require for you to become
a DevOps engineer?

Tips to answer: DevOps is more of a mind-set or philosophy rather than a skill-set. The
typical technical skills associated with DevOps Engineers today is Linux systems
administration, scripting, and experience with one of the many continuous integration or
configuration management tools like Jenkins and Chef. What it all boils down to is that
whatever skill-sets you have, while important, are not as important as having the ability
to learn new skills quickly to meet the needs. It’s all about pattern recognition, and having
the ability to merge your experiences with current requirements.Proficiency in Windows
and Linux systems administration, script development, an understanding of structured
programming and object-oriented design, and experience creating and consuming
RESTful APIs would take one a long way.