Kubernetes Interview Questions
128 questions
The most extensive topic on this site: RBAC and security context, storage (PV/PVC/StorageClass), workloads and controllers (Deployments, StatefulSets, DaemonSets, Jobs, CronJobs), autoscaling (HPA/VPA), scheduling and affinity, networking, cluster architecture, CRDs and operators, admission control, and cluster security hardening. Every question is a realistic production scenario — a pod stuck Pending, a webhook silently breaking scheduling, a StatefulSet rollout behaving unexpectedly — not a bare definition.
What's the difference between kube-apiserver, kube-scheduler, and kube-controller-manager, and what breaks if each is unavailable?
IntermediateKubernetes6 min
The API server responds slowly to all requests — how do you determine whether etcd, the API server, or something else is the bottleneck?
ExpertKubernetes9 min
How would you design a highly-available control plane, and what breaks with only one control-plane node?
IntermediateKubernetes7 min
How would you design backup/DR for etcd, and what's actually recoverable from a snapshot versus what isn't?
AdvancedKubernetesEtcd8 min
How does etcd's quorum requirement affect control-plane node count, and why is an even number a bad choice?
IntermediateKubernetesEtcd6 min
What's etcd's actual role in a cluster, and what happens if it becomes unavailable?
BeginnerKubernetesEtcd5 min
How would you safely drain and remove a node without disrupting running workloads?
IntermediateKubernetes6 min
What's the difference between a static pod and a normal pod, and why does the control plane often run as static pods?
IntermediateKubernetes5 min
How would you design multi-cluster architecture — when does an org actually need multiple clusters instead of namespaces?
AdvancedKubernetes8 min
A cluster upgrade needs zero workload downtime — walk through sequencing control-plane and node upgrades safely.
AdvancedKubernetes8 min