Kubernetes
296 bites tagged Kubernetes: interview questions with model answers, and 60-second explainers.
Test yourself: Top 30 Kubernetes interview questions →Multiple choice, with the correct answer and why it is correct on every question. Free, no sign-in.CNCF argues agents should propose system state, not receive production root
A CNCF Ambassador argues that agents should express changes as versioned system state and pass them through review, build and deployment controls instead of receiving unrestricted production root.
Kubernetes 1.37 adds a native unused-PVC condition
Kubernetes 1.37 promotes PVC unused tracking to Beta, adding an Unused condition managed by the PVC protection controller.
Zero-downtime blue-green deploys on Kubernetes
Run blue and green deployments, switch a Service or ingress selector to the new color after readiness probes pass, drain old pods gracefully, and handle backward-compatible DB migrations.
Managing secrets for containerized Node.js on Kubernetes
Use Kubernetes Secrets or an external vault, mount as files not env, encrypt at rest, rotate.
LitmusChaos
LitmusChaos is an open-source, Kubernetes-native chaos engineering platform that runs fault experiments as custom resources. It injects failures like pod kills, network latency, and resource stress to validate that services stay resilient under real-world…
Alerting on under-replicated Deployments
Write an alerting rule comparing kube_state_metrics available vs desired replicas with for: 5m, Prometheus evaluates and fires to Alertmanager, which dedupes/routes/notifies.
PromQL for top 5 CPU-consuming pods
Apply rate() to the counter over 15m, sum by pod to combine containers, then wrap in topk(5); rate handles counter resets.
EFK centralized logging architecture
Fluentd runs as a DaemonSet collecting node container logs, parses and forwards to Elasticsearch for indexed storage, and Kibana queries and visualizes them.
Auto-discovering app pods for Prometheus scraping
Use kubernetes_sd_configs with role pod, relabel on pod annotations like prometheus.io/scrape to filter, and set path and port; with the Operator use a PodMonitor or ServiceMonitor.
kube-state-metrics versus node-exporter
Kube-state-metrics exposes API object state (deployment replicas, pod phase, restarts) from the control plane, while node-exporter exposes OS-level hardware metrics (CPU, memory, disk) per…
Viewing pod logs and durable log collection
Kubectl logs (with -c, --previous, -f) reads container stdout/stderr; because that storage is ephemeral, run a node-level logging agent as a DaemonSet shipping logs to a central store.
Multi-tenant isolation with a monitoring exception
Apply default-deny ingress per tenant namespace, allow same-namespace traffic, then add an ingress rule permitting the monitoring namespace via namespaceSelector on the metrics port.
Binding a ClusterRole with a RoleBinding
A RoleBinding referencing a ClusterRole grants those rules only within the binding's namespace; reuse built-in roles like view per-team without duplicating definitions.
Root and NET_ADMIN under Pod Security Standards
Set runAsUser 0 and capabilities add NET_ADMIN in the container securityContext; this is rejected by Restricted and Baseline, so the namespace must use the Privileged profile.
Write a frontend-to-backend NetworkPolicy
Set podSelector to app=backend, policyTypes Ingress, one ingress rule with from podSelector app=frontend and ports TCP 8080; the implicit deny handles the rest.
Namespace-scoped RBAC for a ServiceAccount
Create a Role in production granting create on deployments (apps group) and services (core group), then a RoleBinding tying that Role to the ServiceAccount.
Troubleshooting an RBAC forbidden error
Use kubectl auth can-i with --as impersonation to check the verb, inspect RoleBindings and ClusterRoleBindings, and read the role rules.
First NetworkPolicy flips a pod to default-deny
Once any policy selects a pod for a direction, that direction becomes default-deny and only explicitly allowed traffic passes; unselected pods stay open.
Role versus ClusterRole in RBAC
Role is namespaced, ClusterRole is cluster-wide and covers cluster-scoped resources, and you grant either via a RoleBinding (namespaced) or ClusterRoleBinding (cluster-wide) to a subject.
Topology spread constraints versus pod anti-affinity
Spread constraints balance pod counts per domain bounded by maxSkew, anti-affinity is all-or-nothing co-location avoidance, and maxSkew caps the difference between fullest and emptiest…
tolerationSeconds and graceful eviction on NoExecute
TolerationSeconds is how long a tolerating pod may stay after the taint applies; once it elapses eviction starts, then terminationGracePeriodSeconds governs the SIGTERM-to-SIGKILL window.
Pinning exclusive CPU cores to a pod
Set kubelet CPU Manager policy to static, make the pod Guaranteed QoS with integer CPU limits equal to requests, so it gets exclusive dedicated cores.
Taints and tolerations versus node affinity
Taints repel pods from nodes (reserve hardware), affinity attracts pods to nodes, and you combine both so only tolerating pods land AND only those pods seek the node.
Spreading replicas across availability zones
Use topologySpreadConstraints on topology.kubernetes.io/zone with a small maxSkew, choose DoNotSchedule or ScheduleAnyway, and confirm nodes carry zone labels.
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