Containerization and Orchestration Fundamentals Questions

Practical understanding of container technology and orchestration platforms. Topics include container image creation and registries, container runtime basics, core orchestration concepts such as pods, services, deployments, replicas, stateful sets, persistent storage, configuration management, service discovery and networking, scaling and autoscaling, rolling updates and rollbacks, self healing, resource management, and common deployment patterns. Emphasis is on how containers and orchestrators change deployment and operations practices and on at least one major platform such as Kubernetes or a cloud managed service.

EasyTechnical

48 practiced

What is a Kubernetes Pod? Describe its purpose, lifecycle phases, and what it means for multiple containers to run inside the same pod. Explain scheduling basics (how the scheduler chooses nodes), networking implications (shared network namespace), and storage considerations for pod-local vs persistent volumes.

MediumTechnical

55 practiced

Describe how to implement a canary deployment in Kubernetes using a traffic router (for example Istio, Linkerd, or nginx-plus). Outline the steps to shift traffic gradually, the metrics you would monitor to decide progression (error rate, latency, business KPIs), and how to automate promotion or rollback.

MediumTechnical

62 practiced

Explain Kubernetes Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) and Cluster Autoscaler. Provide an example HPA manifest that scales a Deployment between 2 and 10 replicas based on 60% CPU utilization. Explain how HPA uses metrics-server or custom metrics and how the Cluster Autoscaler reacts when pods cannot be scheduled due to insufficient node capacity.

HardSystem Design

53 practiced

Design a hybrid architecture that integrates on-prem Kubernetes clusters with a cloud-managed EKS environment to enable bursting to cloud capacity. Address secure network connectivity (VPN/Direct Connect), unified authentication and RBAC, image registries and caching, data replication strategies, CI/CD pipelines that deploy across both environments, and operational considerations for monitoring and policy enforcement.

HardSystem Design

57 practiced

A customer runs a monolithic Java application on VMs with local disk and wants to move to Kubernetes. Propose a migration plan that minimizes downtime: containerization approach, handling local disk state, session management, database migration strategies, incremental rollout (strangler pattern), and rollback strategy. Identify primary risks and mitigation steps.

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