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.
Why should a CRD's status be a separate subresource from spec, and what belongs in status versus spec?
IntermediateKubernetes6 min
A custom resource is stuck in Terminating status indefinitely after being deleted — what's a finalizer, and how does it cause this?
AdvancedKubernetes7 min
How does an operator's reconciliation loop actually work, and why is it designed to be idempotent and level-triggered rather than event-driven?
IntermediateKubernetes6 min
Custom resources are being created and updated, but the operator managing them appears to have silently stopped reconciling — how do you diagnose it?
AdvancedKubernetes8 min
For distributing a complex application, when would you package it as a Helm chart versus building a dedicated operator for it?
AdvancedKubernetesHelm7 min
A custom resource is deleted, but the Deployments and Services an operator created for it are left orphaned in the cluster — why doesn't Kubernetes clean them up automatically?
IntermediateKubernetes6 min
How would you test a custom operator's reconcile logic without needing a full live cluster for every test run?
AdvancedKubernetes7 min
A CRD needs a breaking schema change, but existing custom resources and consumers depend on the old shape — how do you version a CRD safely?
ExpertKubernetes8 min
What's actually different about a CustomResourceDefinition versus a built-in Kubernetes resource like a Deployment?
BeginnerKubernetes5 min
A team wants to automate a repetitive operational task with a custom Kubernetes operator — when is that actually the right tool versus overkill?
AdvancedKubernetes7 min