CS DevOps & Deployment 4

Question 1

What advantage do containers have over traditional virtual machines for deployment?

Accepted Answer

Containers share the host OS kernel, making them lighter and faster to start

Answer

Containers virtualize at the OS level and share the host kernel, so they use fewer resources and start in seconds compared to VMs.

Question 2

A team uses feature flags in their deployment process. What is the main benefit?

Accepted Answer

Code can be deployed to production but activated for users independently of the release

Answer

Feature flags decouple deployment from release, letting teams toggle functionality on or off without redeploying.

Question 3

In the context of high availability, what does an SLA of 99.9% uptime allow in downtime per year (approximately)?

Accepted Answer

About 8.8 hours

Answer

Three nines (99.9%) permits roughly 8.76 hours of downtime per year, since 0.1% of 8,760 hours is about 8.8 hours.

Question 4

What is the role of an artifact repository (such as Nexus or Artifactory) in a deployment pipeline?

Accepted Answer

Storing versioned build outputs so the same artifact can be promoted across environments

Answer

Artifact repositories store immutable versioned binaries, ensuring the exact artifact tested in staging is deployed to production.

Question 5

Which practice best describes 'shift left' in DevOps?

Accepted Answer

Moving testing and security checks earlier in the development lifecycle

Answer

Shifting left means catching defects and security issues earlier in the pipeline, where they are cheaper to fix.

(CS) Computer Science Practice Test