SRE is becoming a popular profession in tech, but it goes far beyond hype. It is a relatively recent technique that enhances problem-solving and system administration. This idea is a novel approach to system management. Under this paradigm, duties that are typically completed by the operations team are done by software developers.
SRE engineers are in charge of capacity planning, availability, latency, performance, efficiency, change management, monitoring, and emergency response, as well as ensuring that applications are delivered and deployed without a hitch. You must also explore SRE Practitioner Training and Certification, which will help you prepare for the interview.
The number of job advertisements for SRE engineers has significantly increased in the past few years. Large tech companies such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon used to have several SRE positions available regularly. Today, we will explore the interview questions that were asked in the interview. It will help you to understand the patterns of questions and how you should give answers to pass the interview successfully.
- Describe what is meant by SLO.
A Service Level Objective (SLO), typically represented as a percentage, is a gauge of how excellent or poor the quality of the services is. It displays the degree to which the service level's performance matches expectations. Management may specify a SLO and the customer as a performance monitoring tool.
SLOs are crucial because they may assist companies in identifying areas where they are falling short of expectations and establishing growth goals. Setting goals gives management something to aim for and inspires workers to put in more effort.
- What is Observability?
The capacity of an organisation to monitor real-time data and events within a system is called observability. More observable systems can collect data from inside devices like tablets and cell phones. The firm may then use this data to track things like how many workers check in to work every day.
- What is meant by virtualisation?
Virtualisation is the practice of running numerous virtual computers on a single physical system. Businesses that wish to combine their computer resources and run them around the clock without needing to purchase additional gear frequently employ it. Additionally, testing may be done using virtualisation for things like software development and system performance.
- Does SRE need to be coded?
Unlike software engineers, SREs do not code the complete system. They must, however, write the code necessary to automate particular tasks. Thus, it is true that the SRE writes code; however, it could be for system automation rather than system creation.
- What does SRE's future hold?
If a system is unreliable, it cannot be deemed exceptional. Thus, the Site Reliability Engineer is responsible for ensuring the system's dependability and effectiveness. These days, businesses are concentrated on obtaining the best technology at the most affordable price. Because of this, the SRE has a great chance to learn and show off their skills.
- What are an SRE's primary responsibilities and roles?
Since the SRE function is still evolving into a specialised position, its particular responsibilities are subjective. For instance, in some businesses, SREs are vital to programming and software development, while in others, their primary focus is on operations.
The site reliability engineer serves as a liaison between the development and operations teams. The job entails merging software engineering elements to create scalable and very dependable software systems and using them to solve infrastructure and operations difficulties.
SREs create and implement code to increase infrastructure and application resilience. They are also in charge of improving system health visibility to gain deeper insights and prepare teams for incident response and remediation.
- How Does Your Current Deployment Pipeline Look? What Are the Biggest Issues?
Our deployment pipeline begins with code development, followed by code review, automated testing, integration testing, and deployment to production. However, significant issues include slow testing, dependency management challenges, and manual intervention requirements. These bottlenecks delay feedback and deployment.
- How Does Your Team Monitor Their System and Track Success?
Our team monitors our system using tools like Prometheus and Grafana to track key metrics like response times and error rates, with alerts set up for real-time issue detection. We also employ logging solutions such as the ELK stack for detailed analysis. Post-deployment reviews and retrospectives help assess success, identifying areas for improvement. Through continuous monitoring and evaluation, we ensure system reliability and strive for ongoing enhancement of our deployment pipeline.
- What Programming Languages, Tools, and Architecture Are You Familiar With?
I'm familiar with various programming languages, tools, and architectures. Some common programming languages include Python, JavaScript, Java, C++, and many others. As for tools, I'm well-versed in various development environments like Visual Studio Code and Git for version control. In terms of architecture, I understand concepts such as microservices, monolithic architecture, serverless architecture, and containerisation using technologies like Docker and Kubernetes. My knowledge extends to web development frameworks like React, Angular, and Flask, as well as backend frameworks such as Django, Node.js, and Spring Boot.
- Describe CDN.
A network of computers called a CDN (material Delivery Network) stores and delivers material to customers. These servers may increase performance by lowering latency, guaranteeing that the material is available when needed, and ensuring it is delivered on time. CDNs are usually found in data centres.
Although dynamic material like HTML or JavaScript can also be stored on CDNs, static content like photos and videos is the type of content most frequently stored on them. Additionally, material can be sent via CDNs from one place to another, such as from a website to a mobile device.
Because they enable material to be shared online, CDNs are a crucial component of the Internet architecture.
- What’s the Difference between SRE and DevOps?
Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) and DevOps are both approaches to improving software development and operations collaboration, but they differ in focus and methodology.
SRE is a discipline pioneered by Google that emphasizes the reliability and stability of large-scale systems. SREs ensure that services are reliable, scalable, and efficient by applying software engineering principles to operations tasks. They focus on automating operations tasks, implementing monitoring and alerting systems, and conducting inquests to learn from incidents.
On the other hand, DevOps is a cultural and organizational philosophy that promotes collaboration between development and operations teams throughout the software development lifecycle. DevOps aims to streamline the development process, increase deployment frequency, and improve the reliability of software releases. DevOps practitioners emphasize practices such as continuous integration, continuous delivery, and automation of the entire software delivery pipeline.
- What is Service Level Indicators?
The SLI stands for Server Level Indicator. It measures the service offered by the service provider to the consumer. It is the form of service level objectives, which in turn form the basis of service level agreements. An SLI can also be known as an SLA metric.
- What are the Linux signals you know?
SIGHUP, SIGINT, SIGQUIT, SIGFPE, SIGKILL, SIGALRM, SIGTERM.
- Elaborate DHCP?
The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is the network management protocol used on Internet Protocol networks. A DHCP server dynamically assigns an IP address and other network configuration parameters to each device on the network so that it can communicate with other IP networks.
What are the different ways to secure your docker containers?
To secure the Docker container, it's essential to choose third-party containers carefully, enable Docker content trust, set resource limits for your containers, consider a third-party security tool, and make sure to use Docker bench security.
Conclusion:
Understanding the type of question most often asked in an interview is essential to understanding the pattern of the questions and how to answer them. The above questionnaire will not only help you pass the interview but also validate your knowledge of SRE.
