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Kubernetes Architecture and Core Components Questions

Fundamental architecture of Kubernetes and its core components: control plane design including API server, etcd distributed state store, scheduler, controller manager, and cloud controller manager; worker node components including kubelet, kube proxy, and the container runtime; core objects and abstractions such as pods, services, deployments, stateful sets, daemon sets, jobs, config maps, and secrets; cluster state management, service discovery, health checks, and self healing. Candidates should understand how components interact, data flow, failure modes, and how to design for availability and scalability at the component level.

HardTechnical
75 practiced
Explain how controller-manager leader election works in Kubernetes and how it ensures only one instance performs leader-only tasks. Discuss failure modes such as lease TTL skew, clock drift, API server unavailability, and mitigation strategies to reduce flapping or split leadership.
HardTechnical
60 practiced
Describe how you would implement a simple Kubernetes controller/operator in Go using client-go that watches a CRD named 'ExternalBucket' and ensures an S3 bucket exists for each resource. Outline the reconciliation loop, informers, workqueue usage, error handling, idempotency, and required RBAC rules. Full code not required; provide pseudo-code and critical code paths.
MediumTechnical
101 practiced
You must deploy a stateful database that requires a schema migration to run exactly once before new application pods receive traffic. Design a safe deployment strategy using Kubernetes primitives (Jobs, StatefulSets, InitContainers, Readiness probes) ensuring migrations run atomically during rolling updates and can be rolled back safely.
MediumTechnical
121 practiced
Design health check configurations for a distributed microservice that requires a 10 minute warm-up, depends on an external DB, and maintains in-memory caches. Explain how you would configure startupProbe, livenessProbe, and readinessProbe with specific sensible values and how they influence rolling updates and restarts.
EasyTechnical
78 practiced
Describe Kubernetes Service types (ClusterIP, NodePort, LoadBalancer, ExternalName). Explain how each type routes traffic to pods, typical cloud provider integrations, operational limitations, and how kube-proxy implementation affects packet forwarding behavior.

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