Overview
Still being one of the hottest buzzwords in the tech realm, DevOps is much more than buzz, it’s a sure-shot norm to succeed.
As the name implies, DevOps can be bifurcated well between development and operations just to deliver products at a faster rate, and not to mention these concepts and approaches certainly increase overall efficiency.
No wonder over the past few years, there has been a tremendous increase in job listings for recruiting software developers, particularly for DevOps engineers. Big tech giants such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, and many more companies have opened multiple positions, especially in regards to DevOps.
The following post as the title suggests focuses on DevOps interview questions and answers which can give you an upper hand and prepare you for different challenging roles within the ever-evolving industry.
Define DevOps
One of the ever-emerging concepts in the software development industry, DevOps is all about development + operations which can assist in improving the overall efficiency and quality of the developed software.
One of the primary objectives of DevOps is to foster absolute teamwork and effective collaboration between development and operations.
Why is there a need for such an approach? Well, the answer is really simple, earlier things were pretty problematic between both teams which often led to huge miscommunications, misunderstandings and losses which doesn’t seem to be a likeable scenario.
In addition to seamless collaboration, the DevOps objective is to enhance the scope for automation, continuous integration, delivery, and deployment which eventually reduces mistakes like never before.
Now as a DevOps engineer, what is your duty? You are an expert who carries immense knowledge and experience in developing, deploying and maintaining software systems using different devOps methodologies and practices.
As a DevOps engineer, you are supposed to collaborate closely with IT operation teams, software developers and other departments including stakeholders just to ensure efficient delivery of the product. Now in this case what needs to be done is, to try implementing certain approaches such as:
- Automation
- Continuous Integration
- Continuous delivery/deployment (CI/CD) practices
Most of the DevOps engineers who happen to be short-listed come from different IT backgrounds, system administrations, software development scenarios, scripting, automation, and cloud computing skills.
Also, they are supposed to adopt a wide range of tools and technologies featuring source code management systems, build and deployment tools, virtualization and container technologies, and monitoring and logging tools.
In addition, a DevOps engineer is required to be pretty proficient in technical as well as numerous interpersonal skills. Also, he must be a great team player and encompasses numerous problem-solving techniques.
What’s more, these professionals need to be capable of interacting well and collaborating successfully with coworkers from different backgrounds and disciplines since they work closely with several teams within the business.
- Excellent technical background
- Experience with numerous DevOps tools and methods
- Automation skills
- Cloud computing experience
- Soft skills
- Experience in using AI tools
- Relevant certification Certified DevOps Engineer (CDE), Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA), or AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Top DevOps Interview questions and answers
Now without any further delay, let me jump straight to interview questions and answers.
1. What do you understand about the term DevOps?
One of the easiest tricks to get into the good books of the interviewer is to make sure you answer in the most simple manner. Try emphasizing on how the approach aims to synergize different efforts of development and operations and accelerate the delivery of the product and that too with less or no failures.
One has to understand extremely carefully that DevOps is certainly a value-added practice where engineers from both the department’s developers and operations join hands from start to finish, which is the design stage to the deployment point.
2. DevOps and agile methodology – What do you think are the same or different?
Of course, both concepts are different from each other. DevOps is a culture that enables both development and operation teams to work in sync.
As a result, whenever you are conducting software development projects using these scenarios, continuous software development, testing, integration, deployment, and monitoring is possible.
Now agile is quite a different methodology which mainly focuses on iterative, incremental, small and quick releases of the developed softwares. Also, agile methodology even focuses on proper customer feedback. This is why it is said to address potential gaps and conflicts among customers and developers.
3. Can you name some popular DevOps tools to use?
- Selenium
- Puppet
- Chef
- Git
- Jenkins
- Docker
- Ansible
4. How many phases are included in devOps and can you describe them?
The DevOps approach has seven major phases, from planning to coding to developing, testing, integrating, deploying, operating, and monitoring.
- Plan – As the name suggests, it is very important to plan for the app especially before the development phase even begins.
- Code – The app is simply coded under end-user requirements.
- Develop – Now the app is supposed to be developed by integrating different codes.
- Test – The next step is pretty important since now the developed app is considered to test. And not just test, the app can be built if necessary.
- Integrate – The next phase is to integrate multiple ranges of codes from different programs into one.
- Deploy – The next phase is when the code is successfully deployed in the cloud environment for further usage. So in case any changes are supposed to happen, let’s say if there is high traffic all of a sudden then they will no longer hinder the functioning of the website.
- Operate – The next phase is how the developed app operates. Is everything working smoothly?
- Monitor – Overall app performance is successfully monitored and changes are made just to meet the end-user’s requirements.
5. Is DevOps beneficial in the long run?
Of course, it is! DevOps tends to offer a wide range of benefits such as
- Continuous software delivery
- Less complex and complicated problems
- Quick detection of errors and corrections
- Faster delivery of features
- Stable operational environments
- Enhanced communication and collaboration
6. Is configuration management important in DevOps?
Yes of course the concept of configuration management is extremely important in DevOps. It assists well in several areas such as:
- Enabling management and ensuring easy changes to multiple systems
- Standardizes resource configurations
- Successfully managing multiple servers and maintaining the integrity of the entire infrastructure.
7. Are the chef and puppet different?
Yes of course they both are different. Ruby programming knowledge is required to handle the management of Chef whereas, for Puppet, DSL programming knowledge is needed.
Chef is mainly used by small and medium-sized companies whereas puppet is preferred by large corporations and enterprises. Error visibility can be difficult with Chef but with Puppet, that’s definitely not the case.
8. Explain the Selenium Tool Suite.
Selenium is a pretty well-known open-source software suite which is highly used for testing different web browsers as well as applications by automating many of these tasks.
The suite is available with a huge set of tools and libraries enabling developers as well as testers to automate certain functions which are seamlessly in sync with web browsers and applications. Selenium tool suite mainly comprises 4 components such as:
- Selenium IDE
- Selenium WebDriver
- Selenium Grid
- Selenium Remote control
9. Can you explain the 7 Cs of DevOps?
- Continuous integration – The code needs to be merged into a shared repository.
- Continuous Testing – The test needs to be run to ensure proper code quality.
- Continuous Delivery – Code needs to be present in a deployable state.
- Continuous Deployment – Automatic deployment is possible to production.
- Continuous monitoring – Overall system performance is considered and issues are identified in real-time.
- Continuous Feedback – Responding to user feedback.
- Continuous operations – Overall keeping the system well-maintained, and uptime via automation.
10. What is serverless computing?
One of the pretty well-known cloud computing models where it is possible for a cloud provider to seamlessly manage allocations and provisioning of servers. Here users tend to pay for the actual resources without worrying about server management.
The model successfully simplifies infrastructure management, enabling developers to easily focus on writing code. Also, serverless successfully reduces the overhead of managing servers, enabling faster development cycles and easier deployment.
Conclusion
And we are done for now! DevOps as a concept, as a career seems to be booming at a breathtaking pace, missing out on such an opportunity could be a huge loss. And I must say this concept certainly requires a comprehensive understanding of both technical and collaborative aspects.
Mastering core DevOps principles, developing proficiency with essential tools and technologies, and practical experience in implementing CI/CD pipelines, containerization, and infrastructure as code is crucial.
I hope the aforementioned questions and answers definitely would be of some help and you will be able to crack these interviews and gain relevant industry-based experience.
I hope you find the following post worth reading. In case you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comment section below. We will respond to you as soon as we can. Good luck with your interview
