General DevOps Interview Questions
1. What do you know about DevOps?
DevOps is a set of practices that combines software development and IT operations. It aims to shorten the systems development life cycle and provide continuous delivery with high software quality. DevOps is complementary with Agile software development; several DevOps aspects came from Agile methodology.
2. How is DevOps different from agile methodology?
DevOps is a culture that allows the development and the operations team to work together. This results in continuous development, testing, integration, deployment, and monitoring of the software throughout the lifecycle.
Agile is a software development methodology that focuses on iterative, incremental, small, and rapid releases of software, along with customer feedback. It addresses gaps and conflicts between the customer and developers.
DevOps addresses gaps and conflicts between the Developers and IT Operations.
3. Which are some of the most popular DevOps tools?
The most popular DevOps tools include:
- Selenium
- Puppet
- Chef
- Git
- Jenkins
- Ansible
- Docker
4. 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.
5. 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
6. 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:
Stage 1
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.
Stage 2
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.
Stage 3
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.
7. What is the difference between continuous delivery and continuous deployment?
Continuous Delivery Ensures code can be safely deployed on to production
Continuous Deployment Every change that passes the automated tests is deployed to production automatically
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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.
