Orchestration under pressure
Kubernetes Interview Questions
Pods, deployments, services, autoscaling, storage and debugging for Kubernetes workloads.
40 questions10 easy22 medium8 hard0/40 learned
01What is Kubernetes and what problem does it solve?Easykubernetes · orchestration · containers02How is a Kubernetes cluster architected?Mediumarchitecture · control-plane · nodes03What runs in the control plane and why does it matter?Mediumcontrol-plane · etcd · scheduler04What is a node and what does kubelet do?Easynodes · kubelet · container-runtime05What is a pod and when would you put multiple containers in one?Easypods · containers · sidecars06How does a Deployment work?Easydeployments · rollouts · replicasets07What is a ReplicaSet and how does it reconcile replicas?Easyreplicasets · controllers · reconciliation08When do you need a StatefulSet?Mediumstatefulsets · stateful · storage09What is a DaemonSet used for?Mediumdaemonsets · nodes · agents10How do Jobs and CronJobs work?Easyjobs · cronjobs · batch11How does a Kubernetes Service route traffic to pods?Easyservices · networking · endpoints12Compare ClusterIP, NodePort and LoadBalancer ServicesMediumservices · networking · load-balancing13What does an Ingress do and what does it require?Mediumingress · http · routing14How do ConfigMaps work and how do updates propagate?Easyconfigmaps · configuration · pods15Are Kubernetes Secrets actually secret?Mediumsecrets · security · encryption16What are namespaces good for and what do they not isolate?Easynamespaces · isolation · multi-tenancy17How do labels and selectors work?Easylabels · selectors · metadata18How do resource requests and limits affect scheduling and runtime?Mediumresources · scheduling · qos19When should you use liveness, readiness and startup probes?Mediumprobes · health · reliability20How do you run a safe rolling update?Mediumrolling-updates · deployments · zero-downtime21How do rollbacks work and what are their limits?Mediumrollbacks · deployments · revisions22How does the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler work?Mediumhpa · autoscaling · metrics23How does cluster autoscaler decide to add or remove nodes?Mediumcluster-autoscaler · nodes · capacity24How do node and pod affinity/anti-affinity work?Hardaffinity · scheduling · topology25How do taints and tolerations control scheduling?Hardtaints · tolerations · scheduling26How does a PodDisruptionBudget protect availability?Hardpdb · availability · disruptions27How do PersistentVolumes and PersistentVolumeClaims work?Mediumstorage · persistent-volumes · pvc28How do StorageClasses enable dynamic provisioning?Mediumstorageclasses · storage · provisioning29How do NetworkPolicies work and what are their limits?Hardnetwork-policies · security · networking30How does Kubernetes RBAC work in practice?Hardrbac · authorization · security31What is a ServiceAccount and how should pods use one?Mediumservice-accounts · identity · tokens32What does Helm add on top of raw Kubernetes manifests?Mediumhelm · packaging · releases33What is a Kubernetes Operator and when should you build one?Hardoperators · controllers · automation34What are CustomResourceDefinitions and how do you use them safely?Mediumcrds · api · extensibility35How do you debug a pod that will not start?Mediumdebugging · pods · troubleshooting36How do you work with logs and events in Kubernetes?Mediumlogs · events · observability37What should you monitor in a Kubernetes cluster?Mediummonitoring · observability · metrics38How do you harden a pod with securityContext?Hardsecurity-context · pod-security · hardening39What are the most common Kubernetes production mistakes?Hardproduction · mistakes · reliability40What Kubernetes practices do you insist on in production?Mediumbest-practices · production · operations
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