OpenShift Interview Questions

Top 25 OpenShift Interview Questions and Answers

Many organizations are adopting the DevOps movement without blinking an eye nowadays. Why? Not only improved tools but also improved processes and a culture of collaboration and engagement make DevOps appealing. OpenShift has become popular as one of the top DevOps tools. Therefore, you could find numerous search queries for OpenShift interview questions.

Since the majority of organizations adopt the latest technologies in DevOps culture, OpenShift also makes it to the squad. Individuals with promising skills in OpenShift are the priority of many noticeable employers in the present times. The functionality of OpenShift in the form of a Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Container as a Service (CaaS) make it one of the popular DevOps technologies.

So, you can find multiple job prospects with OpenShift expertise alongside the opportunity to advance your career in DevOps. The following discussion aims at presenting an outline of the top OpenShift interview questions. If you’re a beginner, you can start with the OpenShift tutorial and get ahead.

Let us take a look at the OpenShift interview questions and answers for freshers to test your knowledge and prepare for OpenShift interviews.

It is important to learn the basic concepts of OpenShift to crack an OpenShift interview. Enroll for the OpenShift Basics Course to learn the basics.

Frequently Asked OpenShift Interview Questions and Answers

Candidates will find this entry in almost every list of OpenShift interview questions. But let’s understand what is OpenShift before moving to our list of top OpenShift interview questions. OpenShift is a service platform of the Red Hat. The service platform is ideal for providing developers with many features, like auto-scaling.

The other features include security for deploying new applications and facilities of scalable resources with reliable configuration. OpenShift Enterprise also provides support for different programming languages and related frameworks, application lifecycle, and integrated tools.

Without any further delay, let’s move ahead to the most common OpenShift interview questions and answers for freshers.

1. What are the features of OpenShift?

Answer: You can find this entry as one of the most frequently asked OpenShift interview questions. The features of OpenShift include a rich command-line toolset, support for multiple databases and language, and an extensible cartridge system. The other features of OpenShift include the following.

  1. Multi-Environment support.
  2. One-click deployment.
  3. Responsive web console.
  4. Remote application debugging.
  5. Standardized workflow for developers.
  6. Rest API support.
  7. Support for remote SSH login to the application.
  8. In-built database services.
  9. Automatic application scaling.
  10. The facility of support for release management and continuous integration.
  11. IDE integration.

2. What are deployment strategies?

Answer: Deployment strategies are an important part of top OpenShift interview questions. Deployment strategies are instruments for modifying or upgrading an application. With the help of deployment strategies, modifications do not require any form of downtime. The most common deployment strategy is the blue-green deployment strategy.

In this strategy, users keep using the stable version denoted by green while changes are made in the new version denoted by blue. After testing and evaluating the new version in blue color, users can switch to the blue version. If any problem arises, then users could continue with the green version.

3. What are rolling deployments?

Answer: Candidates can find this question as a follow-up to the previous mention in this list of OpenShift interview questions. Rolling deployments involve the slow replacement of instances of the old version of an application by instances of a new version of the application. Rolling deployment depends on the readiness check for new pods before scaling down capacities of old components. In the case of significant issues, rolling deployment could be stalled.

4. What is the Downward API in OpenShift?

Answer: Candidates could find this entry among frequently asked OpenShift interview questions. Downward API is a mechanism for pods to retrieve metadata without the need to call into Kubernetes API. Downward API is ideal for retrieving metadata and configuration of running pods.

The metadata which Downward API can retrieve include labels, annotations, pod name, namespace, and IP address. Downward API can also retrieve information about Pod CPU or memory requests and limits. Downward API may mount certain information on the pod as an environment variable. On the other hand, certain information could also be accessed as files within a volume.

5. Define the OpenShift CLI.

Answer: Candidates should note the importance of CLI to form an OpenShift interview question. OpenShift CLI is a tool for the management of OpenShift applications from the command line. The OpenShift CLI provides abilities for the management of the end-to-end application lifecycle. It has the features for basic and advanced configuration for applications. Also, it includes functionalities for management, deployment, and adding applications.

6. What are the feature toggles?

Answer: Feature toggles are also frequent entries among OpenShift interview questions. These are techniques that help in including old and new versions of a feature in the same code base. However, the versions are surrounded by logic for execution or based on factors such as database switch or property value. Feature toggles help in separating the deployment from usage, single group, and legacy systems, and multiple server groups.

7. What the systems on the OpenShift environment running on AWS?

Answer: The OpenShift environment running on Amazon Web Services includes one master node and one infrastructure node. It also includes an NFS server and 24 application nodes.

You can also broaden your DevOps skills with the knowledge of OpenShift alternatives. Here are the 8 Best OpenShift Alternatives you should know about.

8. What can you run on OpenShift?

Answer: This entry is one of the practical and best OpenShift interview questions on this list. OpenShift is ideal for running existing Docker images and defining builds for producing new Docker images using Dockerfile.        

9. What type of security controls can you find on OpenShift?

Answer: OpenShift interview questions would also revolve around security concerns. The security policy of OpenShift follows certain precedents. Containers could not access host resources or run privileged. Containers have to run as non-root unique users separate from other users. Containers get CPU and memory limits according to definitions by the system administrator. Most important of all, regular users and admins could not change security quotas.

10. Outline the benefits of OpenShift Origin.

Answer: The benefits of OpenShift Origin may come up among the best OpenShift interview questions. The benefits include running PaaS locally on a system and behind a firewall. OpenShift Origin also helps in improving developer competences with PaaS and the expansion of skills.

11. Do you know about OpenShift cartridges?

Answer: OpenShift cartridges have also popped up as an important OpenShift interview question. OpenShift cartridges are central points for developing applications. Every cartridge has specific libraries, build mechanisms, source code, routing logic, and connection logic alongside pre-configured environment. All these factors help in running your application.

12. What is the difference between gear and container?

Answer: You can find the latest OpenShift interview questions focused on difference-based evaluations. The terms ‘container’ and ‘gear’ are interchangeable. Containers have a precise mapping involving one-to-one relations among images. However, in the case of gears, many cartridges can become part of a single gear. In the case of containers, pods fulfill the collocation concept.

13. What is the Source-to-Image (S2I) strategy?

Answer: This strategy involves the creation of source code images through downloading and compilation of the same container. The images are created from the same code, and with a custom strategy, rpm and jar get developed.

14. How OpenShift uses Docker and Kubernetes?

Answer: Kubernetes and Docker could work OpenShift in the form of a control system. You can find this question among the latest OpenShift interview questions commonly. The control system helps in enabling many deployment pipelines that are ideal for later use in auto-scaling, testing, and other processes.

15. What are the build strategies in OpenShift?

Answer: The common build strategies in OpenShift are Docker strategy, custom strategy, Source to Image strategy, and pipeline strategy.

16. Why do we need DevOps tools?

Answer: The applications of DevOps tools are ideal for improving flexibility in software delivery. In addition to this, DevOps tools also help in improving deployment frequency and reducing failure rates. Furthermore, DevOps tools also help in faster recovery and better time management between repairs.

Also Read: Difference between OpenShift and Kubernetes i.e. OpenShift vs Kubernetes

17. What is the difference between OpenShift and OpenStack?

Answer: Candidates can find this question among crucial OpenShift interview questions. The primary difference is that OpenStack provides Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Furthermore, OpenStack is different from OpenShift by providing object storage and block storage to a bootable virtual machine.

18. What are Build configurations?

Answer: Build configuration resources help in configuration and control of builds. Build configuration includes details about a specific build strategy and the source of developer-supplied artifacts like output image.

19. Name some identity providers in OAUTH.

Answer: The identity providers in OAUTH are HTTPassword, LDAP, Allow All, Deny All, and Authentication.

20. Do you know about OpenShift Online?

Answer: OpenShift online is the public service of Red Hat for cloud application development and hosting.

21. Which projects can claim a Persistent Volume (PV) object?

Answer: Candidates could also find some tough questions like this in OpenShift interviews. The answer suggests indications towards default projects, OpenShift projects, any project, and OpenShift-infra projects.

22. Name the network plugin for providing connectivity for pods across an entire cluster.

Answer: The network plugin that provides connectivity for pods across the entire cluster without any limitations is ‘ovs-subnet.’

23. What are the unique components you can find in OpenShift as compared to Kubernetes?

Answer: The components unique to OpenShift in comparison to Kubernetes are the Internal registry and Router as an ingress traffic control.

24. What is Volume Security?

Answer: Volume Security is ideal for the security of PV and PVC projects in OpenShift. Controlling access to volumes in OpenShift involves four main sections. The sections are Supplemental groups, fsGroup, seLinuxOptions, and runAsUser.

25. What do you know about the OpenShift pipeline?

Answer: OpenShift pipeline is a tool for obtaining control over developing, deployment, and promotion of applications on OpenShift. OpenShift pipeline depends considerably on the Jenkins Pipeline Build Strategy, OpenShift Domain Specific Language (DSL), and Jenkins files.

Red Hat OpenShift Platform 4 provides a robust, scalable, and flexible environment for the deployment of cloud applications. Don’t forget to check out the OpenShift 4 New Features before getting ready for the OpenShift interview.

Final Words

Now that you have taken a look at some of the important OpenShift interview questions, it is the right time to take the step forward. You can find diverse sources to read many interview questions and answers related to OpenShift. The interesting thing about these sources is that many of them have overlapping questions and answers.

It practically implies that a common share of questions is always expected in an OpenShift interview. However, your preparations should not lack in any manner. You can strengthen your preparations for the interview by referring to practice test questions. If you are a beginner, we’d recommend you to join the OpenShift Basics Course to understand productive approaches to address scenario-based questions on OpenShift. 

About Dharmalingam N

Dharmalingam.N holds a master degree in Business Administration and writes on a wide range of topics ranging from technology to business analysis. He has a background in Relationship Management. Some of the topics he has written about and that have been published include; project management, business analysis and customer engagement.

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