Observability and operations interview questions
Structured logs, metrics and cardinality, tracing, SLOs and alerts, health checks, RED and USE, sensitive data in logs, incidents, postmortems and audit logs.
– interview-ready · 10 questions in this topic
– of 10 tried
Saved on this device. Interview-ready means you got it right on two different days. Guesses and hints count for less.
Questions
- Structured loggingPredict
- Metrics and label cardinalityPredict
- Distributed tracingOrder the steps
- SLOs, error budgets and alertsPredict
- Liveness and readiness checksPick the fix
- RED and USE dashboardsPick the fix
- Keeping secrets and personal data out of logsPredict
- Running an incidentOrder the steps
- Blameless postmortemsPick the fix
- Audit logsPick the fix
Practise this topic
Flashcards · 15
Flip, then say if you knew it. Needs JavaScript; every answer is also on its question page.
Quick quiz · 10 questions
One exercise per question, checked as you go. Needs JavaScript.
Mock interview · 2 sets
Timed, out loud, then tick what you covered. Needs JavaScript.
Quick facts
Recall the answer first, then tap Show to check.
99.9% budget
A 99.9% SLO over 30 days allows 43.2 minutes of full downtime.
Burn rate 14.4
On a 30-day window, burning at 14.4× for one hour uses 2% of the error budget.
traceparent
The W3C Trace Context header that carries trace and parent span ids between services.
RED
Rate, Errors, Duration: the request-side metrics for every service.
USE
Utilisation, Saturation, Errors: the metrics for every resource.
Printable cheat sheet · Review your weak spots in this topic
Share your progress
Sources: Topic outline informed by System Design Primer by Donne Martin and the Zalando RESTful API Guidelines, both licensed under CC BY 4.0. Every question and answer is written by Best Latest Apps. Credits and license