Top 50 CI/CD Tools Interview Question and Answers

05 Oct 2024 - Shyam Mohan

1. What is CI/CD in DevOps?

• Answer: CI/CD stands for Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment/Delivery, a DevOps approach that automates integration, testing, and deployment to streamline software releases.

2. Explain the benefits of CI/CD.

• Answer: CI/CD offers faster releases, higher quality code, reduced errors, early bug detection, and streamlined collaboration across teams.

3. What are the main components of CI/CD pipelines?

• Answer: The main components are source code management (SCM), build, test, and deploy stages.

4. How do you implement CI/CD pipelines?

• Answer: Implement CI/CD by using tools like Jenkins, GitLab CI, CircleCI, or GitHub Actions to automate steps such as code integration, testing, and deployment.

5. What is Jenkins?

• Answer: Jenkins is an open-source automation server for building CI/CD pipelines and integrating various DevOps processes.

6. What is GitLab CI/CD?

• Answer: GitLab CI/CD is a built-in CI/CD system in GitLab that automates testing, deployment, and continuous integration for GitLab repositories.

7. Describe CircleCI.

• Answer: CircleCI is a CI/CD tool that automates software builds, tests, and deployment, known for its ease of use with cloud and self-hosted options.

8. What are some popular CI/CD tools?

• Answer: Popular CI/CD tools include Jenkins, GitLab CI, CircleCI, Travis CI, Bamboo, and GitHub Actions.

9. What is Travis CI?

• Answer: Travis CI is a cloud-based CI/CD tool popular for open-source projects, providing automated testing and deployment integration.

10. How does GitHub Actions work?

• Answer: GitHub Actions automates workflows directly in GitHub by running jobs based on triggers like code commits or pull requests.

11. What is CodePipeline?

• Answer: AWS CodePipeline is a continuous integration and continuous delivery service for fast and reliable application updates on AWS.

12. What is ArgoCD?

• Answer: ArgoCD is a declarative GitOps continuous delivery tool for Kubernetes.

13. What is the use of Docker in CI/CD?

• Answer: Docker is used to containerize applications, ensuring consistent environments across development, testing, and production.

14. Explain the term “pipeline as code.”

• Answer: Pipeline as code refers to defining CI/CD pipeline configurations as code, usually in YAML format, for versioning and easier maintenance.

15. What is the role of a build server in CI/CD?

• Answer: A build server compiles code and runs tests to ensure that the codebase is functional and ready for deployment.

16. What is CodeBuild?

• Answer: AWS CodeBuild is a fully managed build service that compiles source code, runs tests, and produces software packages.

17. Explain Canary Deployment.

• Answer: Canary deployment is a strategy to gradually roll out new code to a subset of users, minimizing risk in production.

18. What is Blue-Green Deployment?

• Answer: Blue-Green deployment is a method of deploying updates by maintaining two identical environments and switching traffic to the new environment once verified.

19. What is continuous testing?

• Answer: Continuous testing involves automated testing at every stage of the CI/CD pipeline to ensure quality and reduce manual testing efforts.

20. What are the benefits of using GitLab CI over Jenkins?

• Answer: GitLab CI offers seamless integration with GitLab repositories, built-in features, and often simpler setup than Jenkins.

21. Explain the difference between CI and CD.

• Answer: CI focuses on code integration and testing, while CD extends to automated deployment, either continuously delivering to a repository or deploying to production.

22. What is a YAML file in CI/CD?

• Answer: YAML files are commonly used to define pipeline configurations in CI/CD, as they are readable and compatible with many CI/CD tools.

23. What is an artifact in CI/CD?

• Answer: Artifacts are files created during the build process, often used in deployment or testing, such as executables or code packages.

24. What is CodeDeploy?

• Answer: AWS CodeDeploy automates application deployment to various compute services like EC2, Lambda, and on-premises servers.

25. What is meant by a self-hosted CI/CD tool?

• Answer: Self-hosted CI/CD tools are hosted on-premises or on private cloud servers, giving more control over infrastructure.

26. What are environment variables in CI/CD?

• Answer: Environment variables are configuration values stored in the CI/CD system and used within pipelines for flexibility and security.

27. What is the purpose of caching in CI/CD?

• Answer: Caching in CI/CD saves previously downloaded dependencies or built components, reducing time for repeated tasks.

28. Explain “pipeline as code” using GitLab CI/CD.

• Answer: In GitLab CI/CD, pipelines are defined in .gitlab-ci.yml, allowing version control and reusability of pipeline steps.

29. What is the purpose of test automation in CI/CD?

• Answer: Test automation ensures code correctness and stability by running automated tests continuously throughout the pipeline.

30. What is Jenkinsfile?

• Answer: Jenkinsfile is a text file that contains the definition of a Jenkins pipeline, written in Groovy syntax.

31. What is the difference between Docker and Kubernetes in CI/CD?

• Answer: Docker containerizes applications for consistency, while Kubernetes manages the deployment and scaling of these containers in a CI/CD setup.

32. What is the function of CI/CD pipelines in DevOps?

• Answer: CI/CD pipelines automate code integration, testing, and deployment, streamlining and standardizing the release process.

33. What is Bitbucket Pipelines?

• Answer: Bitbucket Pipelines is a CI/CD service integrated with Bitbucket for building, testing, and deploying code.

34. What is Spinnaker?

• Answer: Spinnaker is an open-source continuous delivery platform for multi-cloud environments.

35. How do you handle secrets in CI/CD pipelines?

• Answer: Secrets are managed using secure storage solutions, such as AWS Secrets Manager, Vault, or encrypted environment variables.

36. What is Tekton?

• Answer: Tekton is a Kubernetes-native CI/CD pipeline framework that allows for highly flexible pipeline building.

37. What is the purpose of Jenkins agents?

• Answer: Jenkins agents execute jobs, allowing the main server to distribute tasks across multiple nodes.

38. What is Drone CI?

• Answer: Drone CI is a container-native CI/CD tool, ideal for building pipelines using a declarative YAML configuration.

39. What is the purpose of linting in CI/CD?

• Answer: Linting checks code for syntax errors and enforces style guidelines before deployment, improving code quality.

40. What is Azure DevOps Pipelines?

• Answer: Azure DevOps Pipelines is Microsoft’s CI/CD service that automates build, test, and deploy processes.

41. What is rollback in CI/CD?

• Answer: Rollback is reverting to a previous stable version in case of a deployment failure, minimizing downtime.

42. What is Codefresh?

• Answer: Codefresh is a CI/CD platform built for Kubernetes and Docker, focusing on DevOps automation for cloud-native applications.

43. What is the purpose of GitOps in CI/CD?

• Answer: GitOps automates infrastructure and application updates using Git as the source of truth for deployment configurations.

44. What is a multibranch pipeline in Jenkins?

• Answer: A multibranch pipeline automatically creates pipelines for all branches in a repository, ideal for CI/CD in branching workflows.

45. Explain post-deployment verification.

• Answer: Post-deployment verification checks if a deployment was successful, using tests or monitoring metrics to ensure stability.

46. What is Harness?

• Answer: Harness is a CI/CD tool focused on simplifying deployment, release, and rollback with features like continuous verification.

47. What is GoCD?

• Answer: GoCD is a free and open-source tool that specializes in modeling complex build workflows.

48. What are manual triggers in CI/CD?

• Answer: Manual triggers require human intervention to start, enabling control over certain steps in automated pipelines.

49. What is a webhook in CI/CD?

• Answer: A webhook triggers automated processes in response to events