Configuration Management and Operational Rigor Questions

Practices and processes for managing system and network configurations with operational discipline. Topics include version control for configurations, secure configuration backups, automated testing of configuration changes, rollback and recovery mechanisms, detecting and remediating configuration drift, documentation and runbook development, change windows and impact assessment, stakeholder communication for changes, and balancing operational rigor with deployment velocity. Interviewers may probe tooling, automation strategies, validation and testing approaches, and how the candidate ensures repeatability, auditability, and safe change promotion across environments.

HardTechnical

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You have multiple microservices that must receive a coordinated configuration change simultaneously to preserve API compatibility. Propose an orchestration approach to perform atomic or near-atomic promotions across services, including versioning strategies, orchestration tooling, rollback approaches, and how to minimize customer-visible disruption.

MediumTechnical

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Case study: Your team experiences repeated rollbacks after configuration promotions from staging to prod. Analyze potential root causes across people, process, and tools and propose a prioritized remediation plan including quick wins and longer-term investments. Include metrics to prove remediation success.

MediumSystem Design

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Design a secure, versioned configuration backup and storage solution for sensitive system configs. Requirements: immutable historical versions, encrypted at rest with key rotation, access logging for audits, retention policies, and fast retrieval for rollback. Describe storage choices, access control, and how to integrate with CI/CD for automatic backups pre-deployment.

EasyTechnical

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Given a simple promotion flow dev -> staging -> prod, describe an automated promotion strategy that balances safety and velocity. Include gating checks you would automate, what requires manual approval, how you would use canaries or feature flags, and how to enforce rollbacks when metrics degrade. Explain where to put configuration validation and who owns the gate decisions.

HardTechnical

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You need to recover from a malicious configuration commit that injected a backdoor into multiple services and was merged into the main branch. Describe immediate containment, artifact revocation, secrets rotation, rebuild and verification strategies, and long-term changes to prevent recurrence. Include communication and legal considerations where appropriate.

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