1.

CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment)

1. What is the purpose of CI/CD in a DevOps pipeline?

2. How do you set up a CI/CD pipeline using GitLab/GitHub Actions?
3. What is the difference between continuous delivery and continuous deployment?
4. How do you handle secrets in your CI/CD pipeline?
5. What are some best practices to speed up CI/CD pipelines?
6. What is artifact management in CI/CD?
7. How do you roll back a failed deployment in your pipeline?
8. Explain canary vs blue-green deployment.
9. How do you implement test automation in your CI/CD pipeline?
10. What happens if one stage of the CI/CD pipeline fails?
11. What is CI/CD and how have you implemented it?
12. Explain the difference between blue-green and rolling deployments.
13. How do you handle failed builds in your pipeline?
14. What are some common GitLab/GitHub Actions stages in your pipeline?
15. How do you handle environment-specific configurations in a CI/CD pipeline?
16. Explain how you would set up CI/CD for a microservices-based application.
17. How do you manage pipeline failures due to flaky tests?
18. How do you implement approvals before production deployment in GitLab/GitHub Actions?
19. How do you use caching in CI/CD to speed up build times?

2. Git / Version Control

20. What is the difference between `git pull` and `git fetch`?
21. How do you resolve conflicts in a Git merge?
22. Explain the concept of rebasing in Git.
23. What is a detached HEAD in Git?
24. What is a Git tag and how is it used?
25. What are Git hooks and when do you use them?
26. What is a `.gitignore` file?
27. Describe a branching strategy you have used in a project.
28. How do you undo a commit that is already pushed?
29. What is the difference between `git stash` and `git reset`?
30. How do you resolve a merge conflict?
31. Difference between `rebase` and `merge`?
32. What is the purpose of `.gitignore`?
33. Explain Git branching strategy you follow (e.g., Git Flow).
34. How do you squash commits before merging a pull request?
35. How do you handle Git merge conflicts in a collaborative team?
36. What is the difference between `git revert` and `git reset` in practical use?
37. How do you tag and version a release in Git?
38. How do you enforce commit message standards across a team?
3. Docker & Containers

39. What is Docker and how is it used in DevOps?

40. Explain Dockerfile instructions like `FROM`, `RUN`, `CMD`.
41. What is a Docker volume and how is it different from a bind mount?
42. How do you build and push a Docker image?
43. What is the difference between Docker Compose and Kubernetes?
44. How do you secure Docker containers?
45. What is the use of `.dockerignore` file?
46. How can you optimize a Docker image?
47. What is the purpose of Docker networking?
48. How do you debug a non-starting Docker container?
49. Difference between Docker image and container?
50. What is a multi-stage Docker build?
51. How do you handle secrets in Docker containers?
52. How to reduce Docker image size?
53. How do you debug a container that keeps restarting?
54. How do you use multi-stage builds in Dockerfiles?
55. How do you reduce the size of a Docker image?
56. What are the pros and cons of running containers in privileged mode?
57. How do you manage sensitive data like credentials inside a Docker container?

4. Kubernetes (K8s)

58. What is a Pod in Kubernetes?

59. How do Deployments differ from StatefulSets?
60. How do you expose a Kubernetes service externally?
61. What is a ConfigMap and how is it different from a Secret?
62. How do you scale a Kubernetes deployment?
63. Explain how liveness and readiness probes work.
64. What is a namespace in Kubernetes?
65. What is the use of Helm in Kubernetes?
66. How do you handle Kubernetes RBAC (Role-Based Access Control)?
67. What is the difference between ClusterIP, NodePort, and LoadBalancer?
68. Explain Pods, ReplicaSets, Deployments.
69. What is the role of a Kubelet and kube-proxy?
70. How do you update a running Kubernetes application?
71. What is a Helm chart?
72. How do you troubleshoot a CrashLoopBackOff pod?
73. How do you update a live application in Kubernetes with zero downtime?
74. How do you configure persistent storage in Kubernetes?
75. What steps do you take to secure a Kubernetes cluster?
76. How do you monitor resource usage (CPU/memory) of a pod?
5. Terraform / Infrastructure as Code

77. What are the benefits of using Terraform?

78. How do you organize your Terraform project using modules?
79. What is the difference between `terraform apply` and `terraform destroy`?
80. What is a remote backend in Terraform?
81. What are data sources in Terraform?
82. How do you manage state files securely?
83. What is the difference between count and for\_each in Terraform?
84. How do you handle secrets in Terraform?
85. What is `terraform import` used for?
86. What are some common Terraform errors and how do you troubleshoot them?
87. What are `terraform plan`, `apply`, and `destroy`?
88. Difference between `terraform state` and `terraform output`?
89. What is the purpose of `remote backend`?
90. How do you manage Terraform modules?
91. How do you handle resource dependencies in Terraform?
92. How do you use workspaces in Terraform for different environments?
93. What happens when a resource is deleted from the `.tf` file but still exists in the state?
94. How do you manage versioning of Terraform modules?
95. How do you use `terraform taint` and when is it useful?

6. AWS / Cloud Services

96. What is the difference between EC2, ECS, and EKS?

97. How do you create a secure VPC with public and private subnets?
98. What are IAM roles and how are they different from IAM users?
99. How do you implement auto-scaling in AWS?
100. How do you store and retrieve secrets in AWS?
101. What is the difference between S3 Standard and S3 Glacier?
102. What are security groups and how do they differ from NACLs?
103. What is an AWS ELB and how does it work with EC2?
104. How do you back up and restore an RDS database?
105. How do you automate infrastructure provisioning on AWS?
106. Difference between EC2 and Lambda?
107. How do you secure access to an S3 bucket?
108. What is an Auto Scaling Group and how does it work?
109. How do you create a VPC with public and private subnets?
110. How do you troubleshoot an EC2 instance that isn't accessible via SSH?
111. How do you restrict access to an S3 bucket from a specific IP range?
112. How do you configure auto-scaling policies based on custom CloudWatch metrics?
113. What are the key differences between Security Groups and NACLs?
114. How do you configure a highly available multi-AZ RDS setup?
7. Monitoring & Logging

115. What is the difference between monitoring and alerting?

116. What tools have you used for monitoring applications?
117. How do you integrate application logs with Datadog/Splunk?
118. What are the key metrics you monitor in a production system?
119. How do you set up custom metrics in Prometheus?
120. What is the difference between push and pull-based monitoring?
121. How do you handle alert fatigue?
122. What is log aggregation and why is it important?
123. How do you set up centralized logging for microservices?
124. What is the use of Grafana in monitoring?
125. What tools have you used for monitoring?
126. How do you monitor application performance?
127. What is the difference between logs and metrics?
128. How does alerting work in tools like Prometheus or Datadog?
129. How do you monitor application-level metrics in Prometheus?
130. What steps do you take when a system alert fires in Datadog?
131. How do you create and use alert thresholds for infrastructure?
132. How do you set up anomaly detection alerts in a monitoring tool?
133. How do you trace a user request across services using distributed tracing?

8. Ansible / Configuration Management

134. What is Ansible and why is it used?

135. What is the difference between a role and a playbook in Ansible?
136. How do you define and use variables in Ansible?
137. How do you create an Ansible inventory file?
138. What are Ansible facts?
139. How do you use conditionals in an Ansible task?
140. What is the use of `ansible-vault`?
141. How do you run only a specific task or tag in a playbook?
142. What is idempotence in Ansible?
143. How do you troubleshoot a failing Ansible playbook?
144. Difference between Ansible roles and playbooks?
145. How do you run a playbook on a specific host?
146. What is an Ansible inventory file?
147. How do you use `ansible-vault`?

9. General DevOps Practices

148. How do you handle environment drift?

149. What is the 12-factor app?
150. Explain "immutable infrastructure."
151. What is shift-left testing?
152. What is the purpose of a service mesh?
153. Explain the concept of “Infrastructure as Code”.
154. What is the difference between DevOps and SRE?
155. How do you manage multiple environments like dev/stage/prod?
156. What is the principle of least privilege?
157. How do you ensure high availability in a microservices architecture?

10. Linux

158. How do you check CPU and memory usage on a Linux server?
159. What is the difference between a process and a thread in Linux?
160. How do you find which process is using a particular port?
161. How do you schedule a cron job to run every 15 minutes?
162. What is the difference between a hard link and a soft link?
163. How do you check disk space usage and free in Linux?
164. How do you manage permissions using `chmod`, `chown`, and `chgrp`?
165. What is the purpose of `/etc/fstab`?
166. How do you search for a string inside files under a directory?
167. What are runlevels or targets in Linux, and how do you change them?
168. How do you analyze and tune system performance using top, htop, vmstat, or iostat?
169. How do you find and kill processes consuming too much memory?
170. How do you troubleshoot login failures or SSH timeouts?
171. How do you configure a service to auto-start on boot using systemctl?
172. How do you safely restart a production Linux server with active services?
NEW

🔧 1. CI/CD (Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, etc.)

What is the difference between pipeline stages and steps?
How do you implement blue-green or canary deployment?
How do you manage secrets in your CI/CD pipeline?
How does GitLab CI/CD runner work?
What is the use of artifacts and cache in CI/CD?
How do you rollback a failed deployment in Jenkins/GitLab?
What are self-hosted runners? When should you use them?
How do you trigger a pipeline manually and automatically?
How do you version your artifacts (semantic-release or manual tagging)?
How do you ensure zero downtime deployment?

🐳 2. Docker & Containerization

Difference between Docker image and container?
How do you reduce Docker image size?
What are multi-stage builds in Docker?
Explain the use of Docker volumes vs bind mounts.
What is the difference between COPY and ADD in Dockerfile?
How do you handle Docker container logs?
How do you update a running container with new code?
What is the role of .dockerignore file?
What is Docker Compose and how does it help in development?
Explain docker inspect and when you use it.

☸️3. Kubernetes (K8s)

Difference between Deployment, StatefulSet, and DaemonSet?
What is a ConfigMap and Secret in Kubernetes?
How do readiness and liveness probes work?
How do you perform rolling update and rollback in K8s?
What is a namespace and why is it used?
What is the use of kubectl top?
Explain Ingress vs LoadBalancer service.
How do you monitor a Kubernetes cluster?
How do you scale a Kubernetes application?
How do you debug a CrashLoopBackOff pod?

☁️4. AWS / Cloud

Difference between S3 Standard and S3 IA?
What is the difference between EC2 and Lambda?
What is Auto Scaling Group (ASG) and how does it work?
How do you secure access to an RDS instance?
What are IAM roles and policies?
How do you setup ALB with ECS?
What is the difference between NAT Gateway and Internet Gateway?
What is CloudFormation and when do you use it?
Explain lifecycle policy in S3.
How do you troubleshoot high CPU in EC2?

📦 5. Terraform / Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

What is the difference between terraform apply and terraform plan?
What is a Terraform module?
How do you manage state files securely?
What are workspaces in Terraform?
What is the use of terraform taint?
What happens when you delete a resource manually from the console?
How do you manage different environments (dev/stage/prod)?
Explain remote backend and how it helps in team collaboration.
What is a data source in Terraform?
What are meta-arguments like count, for_each, depends_on?

🔐 6. Monitoring / Logging (Datadog, Prometheus, ELK, etc.)

How do you monitor application metrics?
What is the difference between logs and metrics?
How do you set up alerting in Datadog/Prometheus?
What is APM and how does it help?
How do you enable log forwarding in containers?
What is log rotation and why is it important?
How do you identify memory leak using metrics?
How do you integrate Prometheus with Grafana?
What is the use of dashboards in monitoring tools?
How do you monitor Docker and Kubernetes containers?

⚙️7. Ansible / Configuration Management

What is the difference between roles and playbooks?
How do you use Ansible Vault?
How does Ansible handle idempotency?
What are handlers and when to use them?
What is dynamic inventory in Ansible?
How do you pass variables in Ansible?
How do you debug an Ansible playbook?
What is the purpose of when and with_items?
How do you create reusable Ansible roles?
How do you run a playbook on a specific host?

🧪 8. General DevOps / Linux / Networking

What is the difference between TCP and UDP?
How do you troubleshoot a server not reachable issue?
Explain the use of netstat, ss, top, and htop.
What is a reverse proxy and how does Nginx work?
What are common HTTP response codes you encounter?
How do you check open ports on a Linux server?
How do you check disk usage and clean up space?
How do you set environment variables for a service?
What is a cron job and how do you schedule one?
Explain basic shell scripting (loop, if-else, functions).
extra: deleted terraform state file locally?,

how do you setup custom matrics suppose for hard disk?

lifecycle policies in s3?