Mixed Deck — All DevOps Topics Flashcards

What is GitOps?

Answer: Using Git as the single source of truth for declarative infrastructure and application configuration, with automated sync to the cluster

In GitOps, all desired state is stored in Git, and operators like Argo CD or Flux continuously reconcile cluster state with the repository, making Git the control plane.

What is chaos engineering?

Answer: Deliberately injecting failures into a system to test its resilience and identify weaknesses before they cause incidents

Chaos engineering (e.g., Netflix's Chaos Monkey) proactively breaks things in controlled ways to discover failure modes and verify that systems handle them gracefully.

What is the role of a 'build server' in a CI pipeline?

Answer: To compile source code, run tests, and produce deployable artifacts automatically

A build server automates the process of compiling code, running tests, and packaging artifacts whenever changes are pushed to the repository.

What is a VPC (Virtual Private Cloud)?

Answer: An isolated virtual network within a cloud provider where you control IP ranges, subnets, and routing

A VPC lets you define your own network topology in the cloud, controlling CIDR blocks, subnets, routing tables, and access controls for your resources.

What is 'toil' in SRE terminology?

Answer: Manual, repetitive operational work that is automatable, tactical, and scales with service growth

SRE defines toil as work that is manual, repetitive, automatable, tactical, and grows proportionally with service load — teams aim to keep toil below 50% of work time.

What is a 'microservices' architecture?

Answer: An architectural style that structures an application as a collection of small, independently deployable services

Microservices architecture organizes an application as loosely coupled, independently deployable services each responsible for a specific business capability.

What is the principle of least privilege in cloud IAM?

Answer: Granting users and services only the minimum permissions required to perform their tasks

Least privilege minimizes the blast radius of credential compromise or misconfiguration by ensuring no identity has more access than it needs.

4. Which of the following teams represents the development part of DevOps stakeholders?

Answer: Product Manager

In a DevOps context, the 'development' part encompasses all roles involved in defining, designing, and building the product. A Product Manager is crucial here as they represent the customer, define requirements, prioritize features, and guide the product's direction. They embody the strategic and business-oriented aspect of development, ensuring the right product is built to meet market needs.

What is 'policy as code' in a DevOps context?

Answer: Encoding compliance and security rules as machine-readable code enforced automatically in pipelines

Policy as code tools like OPA (Open Policy Agent) and Sentinel encode governance, security, and compliance rules as code that can be tested and enforced in CI/CD pipelines.

What is Azure DevOps?

Answer: A Microsoft platform offering CI/CD pipelines, repos, boards, and artifact management

Azure DevOps provides integrated tools for planning (Boards), source control (Repos), CI/CD pipelines (Pipelines), and package management (Artifacts) in one platform.

What is etcd in a Kubernetes cluster?

Answer: A distributed key-value store that holds all cluster state and configuration

etcd is the backing store for all Kubernetes cluster data — every object, configuration, and state change is persisted in etcd.

What is a 'golden signal' in SRE monitoring?

Answer: One of four key metrics: latency, traffic, errors, and saturation

Google SRE defined four golden signals — latency, traffic, errors, and saturation — as the most critical metrics to monitor for any service.

What is a Docker image?

Answer: A read-only template used to create Docker containers

A Docker image is a read-only, layered template built from a Dockerfile that serves as the blueprint for creating containers.

What is the '12-Factor App' methodology?

Answer: A methodology for building scalable, maintainable cloud-native applications across 12 principles

The 12-Factor App methodology defines 12 principles for building SaaS applications that are scalable, portable, and maintainable, covering topics from codebase to logging.

Which flag in `docker run` maps a host port to a container port?

Answer: -p host_port:container_port

The `-p` (publish) flag maps a specific host port to a container port so external traffic can reach the containerized service.

Which tool is commonly used for collecting and querying time-series metrics?

Answer: Prometheus

Prometheus is a widely used open-source system for collecting and querying time-series metrics.

What is a ConfigMap in Kubernetes?

Answer: An object for storing non-sensitive configuration data as key-value pairs

ConfigMaps decouple configuration from container images, letting you inject environment variables or config files into Pods at runtime.

22. An lT organization wishes to test their new DevOps practices on an upcoming release. Which of the following does NOT constitute a good pilot?

Answer: Enough to demonstrate the return on investment in DevOps.

A good pilot project for new DevOps practices should be manageable, have a high chance of success, and be large enough to demonstrate the benefits and earn the right for future improvements. While demonstrating ROI is a long-term goal of DevOps, a pilot project itself might not be 'enough' to fully quantify the comprehensive ROI across the entire organization. Its primary purpose is to prove the concept, learn, and build confidence, not necessarily to provide a complete financial justification.

What is the main benefit of using Infrastructure as Code (IaC)?

Answer: Reproducible, version-controlled infrastructure provisioning

IaC lets infrastructure be defined in code so it is reproducible, reviewable, and version controlled.

What does a Kubernetes liveness probe do?

Answer: Periodically checks if a container is still running correctly and restarts it if not

A liveness probe detects when a container has entered an unrecoverable state and triggers a restart to restore service.