DevOps Interview Questions And Answers

The tech world is buzzing thanks to the buzzword DevOps. DevOps is the combination of the development and operations teams. In this, they work hand in hand to deliver the product rapidly and more effectively. In the past few years, the job listing for DevOps specialists has expanded more than ever. To hire the best DevOps experts, enterprises ask several DevOps Interview Questions And Answers. But before we move on to the interview questions and answers, let us learn more about them. 

The DevOps movement has been around since 2007, when the software development and IT operations communities were concerned about the conventional software development model. In the conventional model, the developers who wrote the code worked apart from the operations which supported and deployed the code. 

DevOps Facts

DevOps was founded by merging the words “development and operations.” It reflects the integration process of both disciplines into a single and constant process. DevOps can significantly improve the development strategy of the development company. Under DevOps, both the development and operations teams will work together. In some cases, these teams will merge into a single team where the engineers will work across the lifecycle of the application, such as from development and test, to operations and development. It offers a vast range of multidisciplinary skills. 

These teams can use the proper tools to help them automate and enhance the processes, all of which help improve the application’s reliability. The toolchain of DevOps helps the team combat crucial DevOps fundamentals along with constant integration, constant delivery, collaboration, and automation.

The value of this process is sometimes changed when applied to teams other than development. When the security teams use DevOps, it will be an active and integrated DevOps process known as the DevSecOps.

Now that we have a hint about the platform let us explore some critical DevOps interview questions and answers for freshers.

1 . What do you know about DevOps?

Your answer must be simple and straightforward. Begin by explaining the growing importance of DevOps in the IT industry. Discuss how such an approach aims to synergize the efforts of the development and operations teams to accelerate the delivery of software products, with a minimal failure rate. Include how DevOps is a value-added practice, where development and operations engineers join hands throughout the product or service lifecycle, right from the design stage to the point of deployment.

2 . Which are some of the most popular DevOps tools?

The most popular DevOps tools include:

1. Selenium
2. Puppet
3. Chef
4. Git
5. Jenkins
6. Ansible
7. Docker

3 . What are the different phases in DevOps?

The various phases of the DevOps lifecycle are as follows:

• Plan – Initially, there should be a plan for the type of application that needs to be developed. Getting a rough picture of the development process is always a good idea.
• Code – The application is coded as per the end-user requirements. 
• Build – Build the application by integrating various codes formed in the previous steps.
• Test – This is the most crucial step of the application development. Test the application and rebuild, if necessary.
• Integrate – Multiple codes from different programmers are integrated into one.
• Deploy – Code is deployed into a cloud environment for further usage. It is ensured that any new changes do not affect the functioning of a high traffic website.
• Operate – Operations are performed on the code if required.
• Monitor – Application performance is monitored. Changes are made to meet the end-user requirements.

4 . Mention some of the core benefits of DevOps.

The core benefits of DevOps are as follows:

Technical benefits

• Continuous software delivery
• Less complex problems to manage
• Early detection and faster correction of defects

Business benefits

• Faster delivery of features
• Stable operating environments
• Improved communication and collaboration between the teams

5 . How will you approach a project that needs to implement DevOps?

The following standard approaches can be used to implement DevOps in a specific project:

• An assessment of the existing process and implementation for about two to three weeks to identify areas of improvement so that the team can create a road map for the implementation.
• Create a proof of concept (PoC). Once it is accepted and approved, the team can start on the actual implementation and roll-out of the project plan.
• The project is now ready for implementing DevOps by using version control/integration/testing/deployment/delivery and monitoring followed step by step.

By following the proper steps for version control, integration, testing, deployment, delivery, and monitoring, the project is now ready for DevOps implementation.

6 . 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.

7 . How does continuous monitoring help you maintain the entire architecture of the system?

Continuous monitoring in DevOps is a process of detecting, identifying, and reporting any faults or threats in the entire infrastructure of the system.

• Ensures that all services, applications, and resources are running on the servers properly.
• Monitors the status of servers and determines if applications are working correctly or not.
• Enables continuous audit, transaction inspection, and controlled monitoring.

8 . 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.

9 . Name three important DevOps KPIs.

The three important KPIs are as follows:

• Meantime to failure recovery – This is the average time taken to recover from a failure.
• Deployment frequency – The frequency in which the deployment occurs. 
• Percentage of failed deployments – The number of times the deployment fails.

10 . 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).

11 . How is IaC implemented using AWS?

Start by talking about the age-old mechanisms of writing commands into script files and testing them in a separate environment before deployment and how this approach is being replaced by IaC. Similar to the codes written for other services, with the help of AWS, IaC allows developers to write, test, and maintain infrastructure entities in a descriptive manner, using formats such as JSON or YAML. This enables easier development and faster deployment of infrastructure changes.

12 . Why Has DevOps Gained Prominence over the Last Few Years?

Before talking about the growing popularity of DevOps, discuss the current industry scenario. Begin with some examples of how big players such as Netflix and Facebook are investing in DevOps to automate and accelerate application deployment and how this has helped them grow their business. Using Facebook as an example, you would point to Facebook’s continuous deployment and code ownership models and how these have helped it scale up but ensure the quality of experience at the same time. Hundreds of lines of code are implemented without affecting quality, stability, and security.

Your next use case should be Netflix. This streaming and on-demand video company follows similar practices with fully automated processes and systems. Mention the user base of these two organizations: Facebook has 2 billion users while Netflix streams online content to more than 100 million users worldwide.

These are great examples of how DevOps can help organizations to ensure higher success rates for releases, reduce the lead time between bug fixes, streamline and continuous delivery through automation, and an overall reduction in manpower costs.

13 . What are the benefits of using version control?

Here are the benefits of using Version Control:

• All team members are free to work on any file at any time with the Version Control System (VCS). Later on, VCS will allow the team to integrate all of the modifications into a single version.
• The VCS asks to provide a brief summary of what was changed every time we save a new version of the project. We also get to examine exactly what was modified in the content of the file. As a result, we will be able to see who made what changes to the project.
• Inside the VCS, all the previous variants and versions are properly stored. We will be able to request any version at any moment, and we will be able to retrieve a snapshot of the entire project at our fingertips.
• A VCS that is distributed, such as Git, lets all the team members retrieve a complete history of the project. This allows developers or other stakeholders to use the local Git repositories of any of the teammates even if the main server goes down at any point in time.

14 . Describe the branching strategies you have used.

To test our knowledge of the purpose of branching and our experience of branching at a past job, this question is usually asked. 

Below topics can help in answering this DevOps interview question –

• Release branching – We can clone the develop branch to create a Release branch once it has enough functionality for a release. This branch kicks off the next release cycle, thus no new features can be contributed beyond this point. The things that can be contributed are documentation generation, bug fixing, and other release-related tasks. The release is merged into master and given a version number once it is ready to ship. It should also merge back into the development branch, which may have evolved since the initial release.
• Feature branching – This branching model maintains all modifications for a specific feature contained within a branch. The branch gets merged into master once the feature has been completely tested and approved by using tests that are automated.

Task branching – In this branching model, you implement every task in its respective branch. Mention the task key in the branch name. We need to simply look at the task key in the branch name to discover which code implements which task.

15 . What is Automation Testing?

Test automation or manual testing Automation is the process of automating a manual procedure in order to test an application or system. Automation testing entails the use of independent testing tools that allow you to develop test scripts. These can be run repeatedly without the need for human interaction.

What are the benefits of Automation Testing?

Some of the advantages of Automation Testing are –

• Helps to save money and time.
• Generally, unattended execution can be easily done.
• Huge test matrices can be easily tested.
• Usually, enables parallel execution.
• Reduced human-generated errors, which results in improved accuracy.
• Supports repeated test tasks execution.

16 . How to automate Testing in the DevOps lifecycle?

Developers are obliged to commit all source code changes to a shared DevOps repository.

Every time you change the code, Jenkins-like Continuous Integration tools will grab it from this common repository and deploy it for Continuous Testing. This is done by tools like Selenium.

17 . What are the core operations of DevOps with application development and infrastructure?

The core operation of DevOps with application development and infrastructure are:

• Application development
• Code building
• Code coverage
• Unit testing
• Packaging
• Deployment

Infrastructure

• Provisioning
• Configuration
• Orchestration
• Deployment

18 . What are the key components of DevOps?

The most important key components of DevOps are:

• Continuous integration
• Continuous testing
• Continuous delivery
• Continuous mongering

19 . What is Vagrant?

A Vagrant is a tool of DevOps that can create and manage virtualized environments for testing and developing software.

20 . What are the technical and business benefits of DevOps work culture?

Following are the technical and business benefits of DevOps work culture:

Technical benefits

• Less complex problems to fix.
• Continuous software delivery.
• Faster bugs resolution.

Business benefits

• Most stable operating environments.
• More time available to add product value.
• Faster delivery of features for customer satisfaction.

21 . What is Scrum?

Scrum divides a sophisticated software and product development task into smaller chunks using iterations and increasing practices. Scrum consist of three roles, such as:

1. Product owner
2. Scrum master
3. Team

22 . What is version control?

It is a system that records the changes to a file or set of files over time so you can recall specific versions.

The version control system consists of a central shared repository where teammates can commit the changes to a file or set of files. It allows:

• To revert the file to the previous state.
• To compare changes over time.
• To revert the entire project to a previous state.
• To see who modified something in the files.

23 . Which scripting tools are in DevOps?

Both Python and Ruby scripting tools are popular in DevOps.

24 . What is the role of AWS in DevOps?

AWS is a cloud-based service provided by Amazon that ensures scalability through unlimited computing power and storage. It empowers IT enterprises to develop and deliver experienced products and deploy applications on the cloud.

25 . Why do open source tools boost DevOps?

Any organisation use Open source tools mainly which adapts DevOps pipeline because DevOps came with the focus of automation in various aspects of organization build, release, change management, and infrastructure management areas.

26 . What is the need for organization playbooks as the role?

Organization playbooks as the role give more reliability and reusability to any plays while considering a task where MySQL installation should be done after the removal of Oracle DB. You need another requirement to install MySQL after java installation. In both cases, you need to install MySQL, but without roles, it needs to write playbooks separately for both use cases. Still, once using roles, the MySQL installation role you create and utilize any number of times by invoking logic in site.yaml.

27 . How many cloud platforms are there for DevOps implementation?

Here are some cloud computing platform used for DevOps implementation, such as:

• Google Cloud
• Amazon Web Services
• Microsoft Azure

28 . Explain two-factor authentication?

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

29 . What is the use of PTR in DNS?

PTR is a pointer record that you use for a reverse DNS lookup.

30 . Name some network monitoring tools?

Some most essential network monitoring tools are:

• Nagios
• OpenNMS
• Splunk
• Icinga 2
• Wireshark

31 . What is CBD?

Component-Based Development (CBD) 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 . What is the DevOps pipeline?

A pipeline in software engineering team is a set of automated processes which allows DevOps professionals and developers to reliably and efficiently compile, build, and deploy their code to their production compute platforms.

33 . What is Azure DevOps?

Azure DevOps is also popular as Microsoft visual studio team services (VSTS). It is a set of collaborative development tools for the cloud. VSTS was commonly popular as a standalone term. Also, Azure DevOps is a platform which is made up of a few different products, such as:

• Azure Test Plans
• Azure Boards
• Azure Repos
• Azure Pipeline
• Azure Artifacts

34 . Which makes AWS DevOps highly accessible?

Here are some reasons which make AWS DevOps a highly popular, such as:

• AWS CloudFormation
• AWS EC2
• AWS CloudWatch
• AWS CodePipeline

35 . What is the Build in DevOps?

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

36 . Explain at what instance has used the SSH?

You can use SSH to log into a remote machine and work on the command line. Also, you can use it to tunnel into the system to facilitate secure encrypted communication between two hosts over an insecure network.

37 . How is infrastructure code executes in AWS?

In AWS:

• The code for infrastructure will be in a simple JSON format.
• This JSON code you will organize into files popular as templates.
• These templates you can deploy on AWS DevOps and manage as stacks.
• Later the CloudFormation service will do the Creating, deleting, updating, etc. operation in the stack.

38 . What are the fundamental differences between DevOps & Agile?

39 . 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 repeatedly 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.

 40 . Explain with a use case where DevOps use-case 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 marketplace 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.

41 . 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. Moreover, 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.

42 . What are the KPIs for gauging the success of a DevOps team?

KPI Means Key Performance Indicators to measure the performance of a DevOps team, identify mistakes and rectify them. This helps the DevOps team to increase productivity and which directly impacts revenue.

There are many KPIs which one can track in a DevOps team. Following are some of them:

• Change Failure rates: This is used to measure the number of failures in deployments.
• Meantime to recovery (MTTR): The time is taken to recover from a failed deployment.
• Lead time: This helps to measure the time taken to deploy on the production environment.
• Deployment frequency: Generally, this measures how frequently you deploy a new feature.
• Change volume: Generally, this measures how much code you change from the existing code.
• Cycle time: Generally, this measures total application development time.
• Customer Ticket: This helps us to measure the number of errors detected by the end-user.
• Availability: Generally, this is determines the downtime of the application.
• Defect escape rate: Generally, this helps us to measure the number of bugs to fix.
• Time of detection: This helps you understand whether your response time and application monitoring processes are functioning correctly.

43 . Why has DevOps become famous?

As we know before DevOps there are two other software development models:

• Waterfall model
• Agile model

In the waterfall model, we have limitations of one-way working and lack of communication with customers. This is where DevOps is introduced. It bridges the gap between the development team and the operation team by including the automation feature. Due to this, the speed of production increases. By including automation, you can also integrate testing. Which resulted in finding the bugs at the very initial stage which increased the speed and efficiency.

44 . How does AWS contribute to DevOps?

AWS [Amazon Web Services ] is one of the famous cloud providers. In AWS DevOps is provided with some benefits:

• Flexible Resources: AWS provides all the DevOps resources which are flexible to use.
• Scaling: we can create several instances on AWS with a lot of storage and computation power.
• Automation: Automation is provided by AWS like CI/CD
• Security: AWS provides security when we create an instance like IAM

45 . How do you push a file from your local system to the GitHub repository using Git?

First, connect the local repository to your remote repository:

git remote add origin [copied web address]      

Second, push your file to the remote repository:

git push origin master

46 . What is Jenkinsfile?

Jenkinsfile contains the definition of a Jenkins pipeline. You can check into the source control repository. It is a text file.

• It allows code review and iteration on the pipeline.
• It permits an audit trail for the pipeline.
• There is a single source of truth for the pipeline, which you can view and edit.

 47 . What concepts are key aspects of the Jenkins pipeline?

• Pipeline: User-defined model of a CD pipeline. The pipeline’s code defines the entire build process, which includes building, testing and delivering an application
• Node: A machine that is part of the Jenkins environment and capable of executing a pipeline
• Step: A single task that tells Jenkins what to do at a particular point in time
• Stage: Defines a conceptually distinct subset of tasks performed through the entire pipeline (build, test, deploy stages)

48 . Define DevOps Automation?

Automation is the crucial need for DevOps practices, and automating everything is the fundamental principle of DevOps. Also, automation starts from the code generation on the developer’s machine, until the code is pushed to the code, to monitor the application and system in the production.

Automation in DevOps boosts speed, consistency, higher accuracy, reliability, and increases the number of deliveries.

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