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DevOps Online Assessment Questions & Answers

40 questions for the online assessment stage — 18 easy, 22 medium.

About the online assessment round

Most companies start with an online test: aptitude and reasoning, a few MCQs on core DevOps concepts, and one or two short hands-on tasks. It filters a large number of applicants, so speed and accuracy both count.

Tips for the online assessment round

  • Practise under a timer: about one minute per MCQ and 15-20 minutes per hands-on task.
  • Read every option before answering; tests often include two nearly correct choices.
  • Use a stable internet connection, keep your camera on and avoid switching tabs in proctored tests.
  • Attempt the questions you are sure about first, then return to the harder ones.
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01

What is the difference between kill, kill -15 and kill -9?

Linux and Shell ScriptingEasy
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kill sends SIGTERM (15) by default, which asks the process to stop so it can close files, finish requests and clean up. kill -9 sends SIGKILL, which the kernel enforces immediately; the process cannot catch it, so data may be lost and temp files left behind. Always try SIGTERM first and use SIGKILL only when the process does not respond.
02

How do you manage a service with systemd?

Linux and Shell ScriptingEasy
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systemctl status nginx sudo systemctl start nginx sudo systemctl restart nginx sudo systemctl enable nginx # start at boot sudo systemctl disable nginx journalctl -u nginx -f # follow service logs sudo systemctl daemon-reload # after editing a unit file Unit files live in /etc/systemd/system. enable creates the symlink for the boot target, while start only runs it now.
03

Explain Docker network types.

Docker and ContainersMedium
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bridge is the default: containers get private IPs on a virtual bridge and reach outside through NAT; user-defined bridges also provide DNS by container name. host shares the host's network stack directly, with no port mapping. none disables networking. overlay connects containers across multiple hosts in Swarm. macvlan gives a container its own MAC address on the physical network.
04

What is Infrastructure as Code and what are its benefits?

Infrastructure as Code (Terraform and Ansible)Easy
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Infrastructure as Code means defining servers, networks, databases and other resources in version-controlled files instead of clicking in a console. Benefits are repeatable environments, code review for infrastructure changes, history and rollback through Git, fewer manual mistakes, faster provisioning and easy disaster recovery. Common tools are Terraform and OpenTofu for provisioning and Ansible for configuration management.
05

Write an IAM policy that gives read-only access to one S3 bucket.

AWS Cloud for DevOpsMedium
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{ "Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": ["s3:ListBucket"], "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::acme-reports" }, { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": ["s3:GetObject"], "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::acme-reports/*" } ] } ListBucket applies to the bucket ARN and GetObject to object ARNs, so both resources are needed.
06

Which Docker commands do you use to debug a running container?

Docker and ContainersEasy
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docker ps # running containers docker logs -f --tail 100 api # follow logs docker exec -it api sh # shell inside docker inspect api # config, IP, mounts, env docker stats # live CPU and memory docker top api # processes inside docker cp api:/app/log.txt . # copy a file out docker events # daemon events Use sh for alpine images, where bash may not exist.
07

What is a DaemonSet and when is it used?

KubernetesEasy
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A DaemonSet makes sure one copy of a pod runs on every node, or on a selected group of nodes. When a node joins the cluster, the pod is added automatically. It is used for node-level agents such as log collectors like Fluent Bit, monitoring agents like the Prometheus node exporter, and CNI or storage plugins.
08

What is remote state and state locking in Terraform?

Infrastructure as Code (Terraform and Ansible)Medium
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Remote state stores the state file in a shared backend such as an S3 bucket, Azure Storage or Terraform Cloud, so the whole team and CI use the same state. Locking prevents two runs from changing state at the same time, avoiding corruption; on S3 it uses a lock file or a DynamoDB table. Enable versioning and encryption on the backend for recovery and security.
09

Your app fails to start with 'address already in use' on port 8080. What do you do?

Linux and Shell ScriptingEasy
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Find what is holding the port with ss -ltnp | grep 8080 or lsof -i :8080. If it is an old instance of the same app that did not shut down, stop it gracefully or fix the service manager so only one runs. If it is another service, change one app's port through configuration rather than hard coding. Then restart and confirm with curl localhost:8080.
10

What is an artefact repository and why is it used?

CI/CD PipelinesEasy
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An artefact repository such as Nexus, JFrog Artifactory or a container registry stores versioned build outputs like JAR files, npm packages and Docker images. The pipeline builds once and promotes the same artefact through dev, staging and production, so what you tested is exactly what you deploy. It also caches public dependencies, speeds up builds and keeps release history for rollbacks.
11

Write a Prometheus alerting rule for a high error rate.

Monitoring, Logging and SREMedium
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groups: - name: api-alerts rules: - alert: HighErrorRate expr: | sum(rate(http_requests_total{job="api",status=~"5.."}[5m])) / sum(rate(http_requests_total{job="api"}[5m])) > 0.05 for: 10m labels: severity: page annotations: summary: "API error rate above 5 percent" runbook: "https://wiki.example.com/runbooks/api-errors" for: 10m ignores short spikes; Alertmanager routes by the severity label.
12

Write an Ansible playbook to install and start nginx.

Infrastructure as Code (Terraform and Ansible)Easy
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- name: Configure web servers hosts: web become: true tasks: - name: Install nginx ansible.builtin.apt: name: nginx state: present update_cache: true - name: Deploy site config ansible.builtin.template: src: site.conf.j2 dest: /etc/nginx/conf.d/site.conf notify: Reload nginx - name: Ensure nginx is running ansible.builtin.service: name: nginx state: started enabled: true handlers: - name: Reload nginx ansible.builtin.service: name: nginx state: reloaded
13

Explain the Kubernetes Service types ClusterIP, NodePort and LoadBalancer.

KubernetesMedium
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A Service gives pods a stable IP and DNS name and load balances across them using label selectors. ClusterIP, the default, is reachable only inside the cluster. NodePort also opens a port, 30000 to 32767, on every node. LoadBalancer additionally asks the cloud provider to create an external load balancer pointing to the service. Each type builds on the previous one.
14

What is Helm and what are its basic commands?

KubernetesMedium
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helm repo add bitnami https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami helm repo update helm install my-redis bitnami/redis -n cache --create-namespace helm upgrade my-redis bitnami/redis -f values-prod.yaml helm list -A helm rollback my-redis 1 helm uninstall my-redis -n cache helm template ./mychart -f values.yaml # render locally Helm is the package manager for Kubernetes. A chart is a set of templated manifests, and values files customise it per environment.
15

How do you undo the last commit but keep the changes?

Git and Version ControlEasy
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git reset --soft HEAD~1 # undo commit, keep changes staged git reset HEAD~1 # undo commit, keep changes unstaged # only fix the message or add a missed file git add missed-file.txt git commit --amend Use these only on commits not yet pushed. For a pushed commit on a shared branch, use git revert instead.
16

How do you configure Prometheus to scrape a target?

Monitoring, Logging and SREEasy
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# prometheus.yml global: scrape_interval: 15s scrape_configs: - job_name: node static_configs: - targets: ['10.0.1.10:9100', '10.0.1.11:9100'] - job_name: api metrics_path: /metrics static_configs: - targets: ['api.internal:8080'] # validate and reload promtool check config prometheus.yml curl -X POST http://localhost:9090/-/reload Port 9100 is the node exporter default. In Kubernetes, use service discovery or ServiceMonitors instead.
17

What is the difference between git merge and git rebase?

Git and Version ControlMedium
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Merge joins two branches with a merge commit and keeps the true history, including when work happened in parallel. Rebase replays your commits on top of the target branch, giving a clean linear history but new commit hashes. Rebase local feature branches to stay current, but never rebase commits others have already pulled, because it rewrites shared history.
18

Write a multi-stage Dockerfile for a Java Spring Boot application.

Docker and ContainersMedium
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FROM maven:3.9-eclipse-temurin-21 AS build WORKDIR /src COPY pom.xml . RUN mvn -B dependency:go-offline COPY src ./src RUN mvn -B package -DskipTests FROM eclipse-temurin:21-jre-alpine WORKDIR /app COPY --from=build /src/target/*.jar app.jar RUN adduser -D appuser USER appuser EXPOSE 8080 ENTRYPOINT ["java", "-jar", "app.jar"] The final image has only the JRE and the JAR, not Maven or source.
19

How much downtime does a 99.9 percent availability SLO allow?

Monitoring, Logging and SREEasy
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Allowed downtime = (1 - SLO) x period 99.9 percent over 30 days: 0.001 x 30 x 24 x 60 = 43.2 minutes per month 99.9 percent over a year = about 8.76 hours 99.95 percent per month = about 21.6 minutes 99.99 percent per month = about 4.3 minutes Each extra nine cuts the budget tenfold and usually needs much more redundancy and automation, so pick an SLO that matches real user needs.
20

How does the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler work?

KubernetesMedium
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The HPA periodically reads metrics from the metrics server or a custom metrics adapter and changes the replica count of a Deployment or StatefulSet to keep a target, for example 70 percent average CPU. It calculates desired replicas from current usage divided by the target, within min and max bounds, with stabilisation windows to avoid flapping. CPU-based HPA needs resource requests set.
21

What is a webhook and how does it trigger a build?

CI/CD PipelinesEasy
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A webhook is an HTTP callback: when an event happens in the Git server, such as a push or pull request, it sends a POST request with event details to a configured URL. Jenkins or another CI tool receives it and starts the matching pipeline immediately. This is better than polling the repository every few minutes, which wastes resources and delays feedback.
22

The application cannot connect to an RDS database. What do you check?

AWS Cloud for DevOpsMedium
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Confirm the endpoint, port, username and password. Check that the RDS security group allows inbound traffic on the database port from the application's security group, and that both are in reachable subnets of the same VPC or peered networks. Test with nc -zv endpoint 5432 from the app host. Also check the instance status, max connections and SSL requirements.
23

What is the Terraform state file and why is it important?

Infrastructure as Code (Terraform and Ansible)Medium
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terraform.tfstate maps the resources in your code to real resources in the cloud, storing their IDs and attributes. Terraform compares code, state and reality to decide what to create, change or destroy. Without it Terraform would not know what it manages. It may contain secrets in plain text, so store it in a secure remote backend, never in Git.
24

You need to bring existing manually created cloud resources under Terraform. How?

Infrastructure as Code (Terraform and Ansible)Medium
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Write the resource blocks in code, then import the real resources into state. Since Terraform 1.5 you can declare import blocks with the resource ID and run plan; terraform plan -generate-config-out can even draft the configuration. Older versions use the terraform import CLI command. Run plan until it shows no changes, which proves code matches reality.
25

Write a Deployment manifest with 3 replicas, resource limits and a readiness probe.

KubernetesMedium
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apiVersion: apps/v1 kind: Deployment metadata: name: api spec: replicas: 3 selector: matchLabels: app: api template: metadata: labels: app: api spec: containers: - name: api image: registry.example.com/api:1.4.2 ports: - containerPort: 8080 resources: requests: {cpu: 250m, memory: 256Mi} limits: {cpu: 500m, memory: 512Mi} readinessProbe: httpGet: {path: /health, port: 8080} periodSeconds: 5
26

Compare blue-green, canary and rolling deployments.

CI/CD PipelinesMedium
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Blue-green runs two full environments and switches traffic from old to new at once; rollback is instant but costs double capacity. Rolling replaces instances in batches with no extra environment, but old and new versions run together for a while. Canary sends a small share of traffic, say 5 percent, to the new version and widens it as metrics stay healthy, limiting blast radius.
27

What is a detached HEAD state in Git?

Git and Version ControlMedium
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HEAD normally points to a branch name. In detached HEAD, it points directly to a commit, for example after git checkout <hash> or checking out a tag. You can look around and even commit, but new commits belong to no branch and can be lost when you switch away. To keep them, create a branch with git switch -c new-branch.
28

What is the difference between git revert and git reset?

Git and Version ControlMedium
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git revert creates a new commit that undoes the changes of an earlier commit, leaving history intact, so it is safe on shared branches like main. git reset moves the branch pointer backwards and removes commits from the branch history, which is fine locally but forces others to deal with rewritten history if already pushed. Use revert for anything already public.
29

Write a GitHub Actions workflow that runs tests on every pull request.

CI/CD PipelinesMedium
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name: CI on: pull_request: branches: [main] jobs: test: runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: - uses: actions/checkout@v4 - uses: actions/setup-node@v4 with: node-version: 20 cache: npm - run: npm ci - run: npm test Add this as .github/workflows/ci.yml and make the job a required status check in branch protection.
30

What are the typical stages of a CI/CD pipeline?

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A common pipeline is checkout, build or compile, unit tests, static analysis and security scans, packaging into an artefact or container image, pushing to a registry, deploying to a test or staging environment, running integration or smoke tests, an approval gate, and production deployment with monitoring. Fast checks run first so developers get feedback within minutes and slow tests run later.
31

How do you create a release tag and push it?

Git and Version ControlEasy
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git tag -a v1.2.0 -m "Release 1.2.0" git push origin v1.2.0 # push all tags git push origin --tags # list and inspect git tag -l "v1.*" git show v1.2.0 Annotated tags (-a) store author, date and message and are preferred for releases. Many CI pipelines trigger production builds on tags matching v*.
32

What is the difference between continuous integration, continuous delivery and continuous deployment?

CI/CD PipelinesEasy
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Continuous integration means developers merge small changes often and every merge is automatically built and tested. Continuous delivery goes further: every passing build is packaged and ready to release, but a human approves the production push. Continuous deployment removes that manual step, so every change that passes all checks goes to production automatically. Each stage needs more test confidence than the last.
33

Write a Docker Compose file for a web app with a PostgreSQL database.

Docker and ContainersMedium
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services: web: build: . ports: - "8000:8000" environment: DATABASE_URL: postgres://app:secret@db:5432/appdb depends_on: db: condition: service_healthy db: image: postgres:16 environment: POSTGRES_USER: app POSTGRES_PASSWORD: secret POSTGRES_DB: appdb volumes: - pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data healthcheck: test: ["CMD", "pg_isready", "-U", "app"] interval: 5s volumes: pgdata:
34

How do you create a new branch, push it and set the upstream?

Git and Version ControlEasy
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git switch -c feature/payment-retry # make changes git add . git commit -m "Add retry for failed payments" git push -u origin feature/payment-retry After -u (set upstream), plain git push and git pull work on this branch without naming the remote. Then open a pull request against main.
35

What is git stash and when do you use it?

Git and Version ControlEasy
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git stash saves your uncommitted changes and cleans the working directory, so you can switch branches for an urgent fix. git stash list shows saved entries, git stash pop reapplies the latest and removes it, and git stash apply keeps it. Use git stash -u to include untracked files. It is a short-term tool; for longer work, commit on a branch.
36

What are Ansible roles?

Infrastructure as Code (Terraform and Ansible)Medium
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A role is a standard folder structure that packages tasks, handlers, templates, files, variables and defaults for one purpose, for example a nginx or postgres role. Playbooks then just list roles for host groups, keeping them short and reusable across projects. Roles can be shared through Ansible Galaxy or collections, and tested with Molecule.
37

What is the difference between a ConfigMap and a Secret?

KubernetesEasy
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Both inject configuration into pods as environment variables or mounted files, keeping config out of images. ConfigMaps hold non-sensitive data like URLs and feature flags. Secrets hold sensitive values like passwords and tokens; they are only base64 encoded by default, so you should enable encryption at rest, restrict access with RBAC, or use an external secrets manager.
38

A pod is stuck in Pending state. What could be the reasons?

KubernetesMedium
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Pending means it has not been scheduled or its volumes are not ready. kubectl describe pod shows the scheduler's reason. Common causes are insufficient CPU or memory on nodes for the requests, node selectors, affinity or taints that no node satisfies, a PersistentVolumeClaim that cannot bind, or a resource quota being exceeded. Fix the spec or add nodes with the cluster autoscaler.
39

How do you run a matrix build in GitHub Actions?

CI/CD PipelinesMedium
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jobs: test: runs-on: ${{ matrix.os }} strategy: fail-fast: false matrix: os: [ubuntu-latest, windows-latest] python: ['3.11', '3.12'] steps: - uses: actions/checkout@v4 - uses: actions/setup-python@v5 with: python-version: ${{ matrix.python }} - run: pip install -r requirements.txt - run: pytest This creates four parallel jobs; fail-fast false lets all finish so you see every failure.
40

Write a script that alerts when any disk partition is above 80 percent used.

Linux and Shell ScriptingMedium
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#!/bin/bash THRESHOLD=80 df -hP | awk 'NR>1 {gsub("%","",$5); print $5, $6}' | while read -r used mount; do if [ "$used" -ge "$THRESHOLD" ]; then echo "WARNING: $mount is ${used}% full on $(hostname)" fi done df -P keeps each entry on one line, awk strips the percent sign, and the loop compares each value with the threshold.

Frequently asked questions

What happens in the DevOps online assessment round?

Most companies start with an online test: aptitude and reasoning, a few MCQs on core DevOps concepts, and one or two short hands-on tasks. It filters a large number of applicants, so speed and accuracy both count.

How do I clear the online assessment round?

Practise under a timer: about one minute per MCQ and 15-20 minutes per hands-on task. Read every option before answering; tests often include two nearly correct choices. Use a stable internet connection, keep your camera on and avoid switching tabs in proctored tests.

Which round comes next?

A typical order is online assessment, telephonic screening, one or two technical rounds, a managerial round and HR. Use the other round pages to practise each stage.

Practise every interview round

Telephonic Interview questionsTechnical Round questionsManagerial Round questionsRapid-Fire questionsHR & behavioural questionsFull mock interview

More ways to practise

Company-wise DevOps questionsExperience-wise DevOps questionsRole-wise DevOps questionsCity-wise DevOps questionsMost asked DevOps questionsScenario-based questionsPractical / hands-on questionsHR & behavioural questionsDevOps mock interviewOnline assessment questionsTechnical round questionsManagerial round questionsDevOps topic sheets