SRE Interview Questions and Answers

Last updated on Jan 04, 2023
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SRE Interview Questions

Site Reliability Engineering is usually used to create the platform between development and the operations departments. It is a method that is used for incorporating all the facets of software engineering and then apply them to the problems of infrastructure and operations. Isn’t it sound interesting? If you are looking to enhance yourself in this career, do read all the frequently asked SRE interview questions and answers listed in this article and get one step closer to your next job!

Most Frequently Asked SRE Interview Questions

Here in this article, we will be listing frequently asked SRE Interview Questions and Answers with the belief that they will be helpful for you to gain higher marks. Also, to let you know that this article has been written under the guidance of industry professionals and covered all the current competencies.

Q1. Tell me the difference between DevOps & SRE.
Answer
DevOps SRE
They focus on both the departments: Dev and Ops to bridge these two worlds. SRE considers Ops like a software engineering problem.
They are more focused on automation. They are focused on grasping consistent technologies.
The primary focus of DevOps is on the performance and getting the improvement in their results on the basis of the feedback. They require evaluation of the SLOs as principal metrics.
Q2. Why do you think that you will become a Site Reliability Engineer?
Answer

With this question, the interviewer is interested to know about your will and knowledge about the role. The perfect answer to this question can be as below.

I have experienced in the same role with a deep understanding of:

  • The principles behind SRE.
  • Relationship of SRE with DevOps among other popular frameworks.
  • Experienced with SLI’s (Service Level Indicators)
  • Practical knowledge in eliminating toil.
  • Error budgets and the policies associated with them.
  • SRE tools, techniques of performing automation, and the importance of security.

Hence, with all this information and knowledge I feel this is the perfect role for me.

Q3. What are Error Budgets? And for what error budgets are used?
Answer

Error budgets are basically used to define the maximum amount of time that a technical system can fail without any contractual consequences.

Error budgets are used to strengthen the teams to reduce the real incidents and increases innovation by taking more risks within the acceptable limits.

Q4. How do you differentiate between process and thread?
Answer
Process Thread
The process is admitted as an occurrence of the computer program that is being executed. The thread is known as the component of the process that is considered the smallest execution unit.
The process is not lightweight Threads are light-weighted
Creation of process takes more time Creation of thread takes less time
The process does not share the data Threads share the data with each other
In context switching, the process takes more time. In context switching, the thread takes less time.
Q5. What activity means Reducing Toil?
Answer

Below are the activities that can reduce the toil:

  • Creating internal automation
  • Creating external automation
  • Enhance the services so that they do not need maintenance interference.
Q6. Have you ever heard of TCP? Please enlist some TCP connection states
Answer

TCP is the Transmission Control Protocol which is one of the important protocols of the Internet protocol suite. It is a communication standard that is used to enable the application programs and computing devices for exchanging messages over the network.

TCP connections states are listed below.

  • LISTEN
  • SYNC-SENT
  • SYNC-RECEIVED
  • ESTABLISHED
Q7. What is the Linux kill command? Enlist all the Linux to kill commands with their functions.
Answer

The kill command in Linux is the command used for sending the signals to the specified processes or process the groups.

Below listed are the kill commands:

  • Killall: This command is being used to kill all the processes with a particular name.
  • Pkill: This command is very much similar to the Killall command, the only difference is it kills processes with partial names.
  • Xkill: This command allows the users to kill the command simply by clicking on the window.
Q8. What is cloud computing?
Answer

Cloud computing is the immediate possibility of the computer system resources, especially the cloud or the data storage, and the computing power, without being active directly in the management by the user. This term is generally being used for describing the data centers that are available to multiple users over the internet.

Q9. What is DHCP, for what it used?
Answer

DHCP is abbreviated as Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. It is known as the protocol for network management that is used on IP networks by which a DHCP server effectively assigns the IP address and other configurations on the network parameters to every individual device on the network; so that they can easily communicate with the other IP networks.

The DHCP server is being used for:

  • Diminishing the requirement for a network administration or a client to physically assign IP addresses to all the network devices.
  • Requesting the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses and the parameters of networking from the ISP (Internet Service Provider).
Q10. How will you secure your Docker containers?
Answer

For securing the docker container, one must follow the below guidelines:

  • Third-party containers should be chosen carefully.
  • Enables the docker content trust.
  • One should need to set the resource limit for their containers.
  • Third-party security tools should be considered.
  • Docker bench security should be used.

Conclusion:

From the above list of SRE interview questions and their appropriate answers, we hope you must have got the theoretical and practical knowledge that is going to help you in all the ways to clear an SRE interview. Now you need to practice these questions hardly to crack your interview.

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