Best practices

Intermediate Level

Mid-level best practices and real-world scenarios covering advanced deployment strategies, security, and system architecture.

Intermediate Level

This section covers more advanced concepts in DevOps best practices, including configuration management, high availability, security, and microservices architecture.

How do you handle configuration management in DevOps?

Using tools like Ansible, Puppet, and Chef to automate configurations.

How do you ensure high availability in a cloud-based architecture?

Using load balancing, auto-scaling, multi-region deployments, and failover mechanisms.

What is the difference between monolithic and microservices architectures?

  • Monolithic: A single large application.
  • Microservices: Independent services communicating over APIs.

How do you monitor microservices effectively?

Using distributed tracing (Jaeger), centralized logging (ELK), and service mesh (Istio).

How do you secure a CI/CD pipeline?

  • Use least privilege access.
  • Store secrets securely.
  • Scan dependencies for vulnerabilities.
  • Implement code signing.

What are some common DevOps anti-patterns?

  • Siloed teams
  • Manual deployments
  • Lack of monitoring
  • Ignoring security

How do you implement DevSecOps?

Integrate security into every stage of development using tools like SonarQube, Snyk, and Trivy.

What is a Service Level Agreement (SLA)?

An SLA defines the expected level of service, including uptime and response times.

How do you ensure compliance in DevOps?

By automating security checks, auditing, and following regulatory frameworks like GDPR and SOC 2.

What is a chaos engineering experiment?

Intentionally injecting failures into a system to test its resilience (e.g., Netflix's Chaos Monkey).

How do you reduce deployment downtime?

Using rolling updates, blue-green deployments, and zero-downtime migrations.

How do you handle database migrations in CI/CD?

Using tools like Flyway, Liquibase, or Django migrations in an automated pipeline.

What is an API gateway, and why is it used?

An API gateway manages API requests, security, and load balancing in microservices.

How do you implement infrastructure testing?

Using tools like Terratest (for Terraform), InSpec, and Pester.

How do you manage multi-cloud deployments?

Using Terraform, Kubernetes, and cloud-agnostic tools like HashiCorp Vault and Istio.

What is the difference between SLO and SLI?

  • SLO (Service Level Objective): A target level of reliability (e.g., 99.9% uptime).
  • SLI (Service Level Indicator): A measurable metric (e.g., response time < 200ms).

How do you manage dependencies in DevOps?

Using dependency managers like pip, npm, Maven, and scanning tools like Snyk and OWASP Dependency-Check.

How do you handle rollback in a Kubernetes environment?

Using kubectl rollout undo deployment <deployment_name>.

What are the best practices for writing Dockerfiles?

  • Use lightweight base images.
  • Minimize layers.
  • Avoid hardcoding secrets.
  • Use multi-stage builds.

What is FinOps in cloud computing?

A practice for optimizing cloud costs and budgeting efficiently.

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