#OpenShift

Last updated    - V4 (16-Sep-2025)

Key Concepts

Topic	Sub-Topics	Basic	Intermediate	Advanced	Expert
OpenShift Basics	Introduction, Features, Architecture, Components	✅	✅
Installation & Configuration	Prerequisites, CLI Tools, Cluster Setup, Authentication	✅	✅	✅
Pods & Deployments	Pods, ReplicaSets, Deployments, DeploymentConfig	✅	✅	✅
Services & Networking	Services, Routes, Ingress, DNS, Load Balancing	✅	✅	✅	✅
Storage Management	Persistent Volumes, PVC, Storage Classes, Dynamic Provisioning	✅	✅	✅	✅
Security & RBAC	Authentication, Authorization, SCC, RBAC Policies	✅	✅	✅	✅
Build & Image Management	BuildConfig, ImageStream, Source-to-Image (S2I), Dockerfiles	✅	✅	✅	✅
CI/CD Integration	Jenkins Pipeline, GitOps, Webhooks, Tekton Pipelines		✅	✅	✅
Operators & CRDs	Operators, OperatorHub, Custom Resource Definitions		✅	✅	✅
Logging & Monitoring	Cluster Logging, Metrics, Prometheus, Grafana, Alerts		✅	✅	✅
Scaling & Auto-healing	HPA, VPA, Cluster Autoscaler, Self-healing		✅	✅	✅
Multi-tenancy & Projects	Namespaces, Quotas, Limits, Resource Management	✅	✅	✅	✅
Cluster Administration	Node Management, Master/Worker Nodes, Certificates		✅	✅	✅
Upgrades & Maintenance	Patching, Version Upgrades, Backup/Restore, Disaster Recovery		✅	✅	✅
Hybrid & Multi-cloud	OpenShift on AWS, Azure, GCP, Hybrid Cloud, OpenShift Virtualization			✅	✅
Service Mesh & Networking	Istio, Service Mesh, Sidecar, Traffic Management			✅	✅
Advanced Security	OAuth, LDAP, NetworkPolicies, Compliance, Security Scanning		✅	✅	✅
Performance & Optimization	Resource Tuning, Node Affinity, Pod Scheduling, QoS			✅	✅
Troubleshooting & Debugging	Pod Debugging, Node Issues, Network Issues, Logging Analysis	✅	✅	✅	✅
Real-world Use Cases	Enterprise Deployments, Microservices, Event-driven Apps		✅	✅	✅

Interview question

1. OpenShift Basics & Architecture

1. What is OpenShift, and how does it differ from Kubernetes?
2. Explain the core components of OpenShift architecture.
3. What is the role of the Master Node in OpenShift?
4. What is the role of the Worker Node in OpenShift?
5. Explain the purpose of etcd in OpenShift.
6. What is an OpenShift Project vs Namespace?
7. What are the advantages of OpenShift over vanilla Kubernetes?
8. Explain OpenShift API Server functionality.
9. What is OpenShift CLI (oc), and how does it differ from kubectl?
10. What are Templates in OpenShift?
11. Explain the Source-to-Image (S2I) concept.
12. How does OpenShift support multi-tenancy?
13. What are the default roles in OpenShift?
14. How does OpenShift support hybrid cloud environments?
15. Explain OpenShift Routes.
16. What is the difference between OpenShift Online, Dedicated, and Container Platform?
17. What is the OperatorHub in OpenShift?
18. Explain Service Catalog in OpenShift.
19. What is OpenShift Virtualization?
20. How does OpenShift integrate with DevOps practices?

---

2. Installation & Configuration

1. What are the prerequisites for installing OpenShift?
2. How do you install OpenShift on-premises?
3. How do you install OpenShift on AWS, Azure, or GCP?
4. What is the difference between IPI and UPI installation in OpenShift?
5. How do you set up the OpenShift CLI (oc)?
6. How do you verify OpenShift cluster installation?
7. How do you configure authentication providers in OpenShift?
8. Explain the bootstrap node in OpenShift installation.
9. How do you configure networking during installation?
10. What is the role of the installer-provisioned infrastructure (IPI)?
11. How do you upgrade an OpenShift cluster?
12. How do you perform a rolling upgrade of nodes?
13. How do you back up etcd before upgrading OpenShift?
14. Explain the role of kubeconfig in OpenShift.
15. How do you add new worker nodes to an OpenShift cluster?
16. How do you configure custom certificates in OpenShift?
17. How do you enable FIPS mode in OpenShift?
18. Explain single-node OpenShift use cases.
19. How do you configure Ingress Controllers during installation?
20. How do you integrate OpenShift with LDAP or Active Directory?

---

3. Pods, Deployments & Workloads

1. What is a Pod in OpenShift?
2. How do you create a Pod using CLI in OpenShift?
3. Explain DeploymentConfig in OpenShift.
4. What is the difference between Deployment and DeploymentConfig?
5. What are ReplicaSets in OpenShift?
6. How do you perform a rolling update in OpenShift?
7. What are StatefulSets, and when do you use them?
8. How do you restart a Pod in OpenShift?
9. Explain the Pod lifecycle in OpenShift.
10. What are DaemonSets in OpenShift?
11. How do you debug a failed Pod?
12. How do you check Pod logs in OpenShift?
13. What is an Init container?
14. How do you run Jobs and CronJobs in OpenShift?
15. What is the difference between stateless and stateful workloads?
16. How do you run batch jobs in OpenShift?
17. Explain horizontal scaling of Pods in OpenShift.
18. How do you configure Pod affinity and anti-affinity?
19. What are labels and selectors in OpenShift Pods?
20. How do you expose an application Pod to external traffic?

---

4. Services & Networking

1. What are Services in OpenShift?
2. What is the difference between ClusterIP, NodePort, and LoadBalancer?
3. What is OpenShift Route, and how is it different from Ingress?
4. How do you configure TLS termination on Routes?
5. What is the default network plugin in OpenShift?
6. Explain the OpenShift SDN.
7. How do you troubleshoot networking issues in OpenShift?
8. How do you connect Pods across multiple nodes?
9. What is Multus CNI in OpenShift?
10. How do you assign static IPs to Pods?
11. What are NetworkPolicies in OpenShift?
12. How do you secure inter-Pod communication?
13. What is DNS resolution in OpenShift networking?
14. How do you configure load balancing in OpenShift?
15. What is Egress IP in OpenShift?
16. How do you configure External IPs in OpenShift?
17. How does OpenShift handle service discovery?
18. What is MetalLB in OpenShift?
19. What are service meshes in OpenShift networking?
20. How does Istio integrate with OpenShift?

---

5. Storage & Persistent Data

1. What are Persistent Volumes (PV) in OpenShift?
2. What are Persistent Volume Claims (PVC)?
3. How do you dynamically provision storage in OpenShift?
4. What is a StorageClass in OpenShift?
5. How do you mount a PVC to a Pod?
6. What is ephemeral storage in OpenShift?
7. How do you configure NFS storage in OpenShift?
8. How do you configure Ceph or GlusterFS with OpenShift?
9. What is OpenShift Container Storage (OCS)?
10. How do you back up Persistent Volumes?
11. How do you share storage between multiple Pods?
12. What is ReadWriteMany (RWX) mode in PVCs?
13. How do you expand PVC size?
14. How do you reclaim Persistent Volumes?
15. How do you migrate storage across clusters?
16. What is dynamic volume provisioning?
17. How do you use CSI drivers in OpenShift?
18. What are ephemeral vs persistent volumes?
19. How do you monitor storage utilization in OpenShift?
20. How do you troubleshoot PVC binding issues?

---

6. Security & RBAC

1. How does OpenShift manage authentication?
2. What are Security Context Constraints (SCC) in OpenShift?
3. How do you restrict container privileges in OpenShift?
4. What is RBAC in OpenShift?
5. How do you assign roles to users?
6. What are the default roles in OpenShift?
7. How do you create a custom role in OpenShift?
8. What is OAuth in OpenShift?
9. How do you integrate OpenShift with Keycloak?
10. What is the difference between ClusterRole and Role?
11. How do you apply NetworkPolicies for security?
12. What are secrets in OpenShift?
13. How do you mount secrets into Pods?
14. How do you encrypt data at rest in OpenShift?
15. How do you enable audit logging in OpenShift?
16. What is SELinux in OpenShift security?
17. How do you enforce image signing in OpenShift?
18. What are compliance operators in OpenShift?
19. How do you secure container images in OpenShift?
20. What is PodSecurityPolicy (PSP) vs SCC in OpenShift?

---

7. CI/CD & DevOps Integration

1. How does OpenShift support CI/CD?
2. What is Source-to-Image (S2I) in OpenShift?
3. How do you integrate Jenkins with OpenShift?
4. What are OpenShift Pipelines (Tekton)?
5. How do you trigger builds using webhooks in OpenShift?
6. How do you configure GitOps in OpenShift?
7. How does ArgoCD integrate with OpenShift?
8. How do you implement Blue-Green deployments in OpenShift?
9. How do you implement Canary deployments in OpenShift?
10. How do you roll back failed deployments in OpenShift?
11. How do you integrate SonarQube with OpenShift CI/CD?
12. How do you build Docker images inside OpenShift?
13. How do you automate testing with OpenShift Pipelines?
14. How do you integrate Nexus or Artifactory with OpenShift?
15. What are BuildConfigs in OpenShift?
16. How do you use Jenkins agents in OpenShift?
17. How do you schedule pipeline runs in OpenShift?
18. How do you manage pipeline secrets securely?
19. What are triggers in BuildConfig?
20. How do you monitor CI/CD pipelines in OpenShift?

---

8. Operators & Custom Resources

1. What is an Operator in OpenShift?
2. What is the OperatorHub?
3. How do you deploy an Operator in OpenShift?
4. What are Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs)?
5. How do you write a custom Operator?
6. What is OLM (Operator Lifecycle Manager)?
7. How do you upgrade Operators?
8. How do you monitor Operator health?
9. What is the difference between cluster-scoped and namespace-scoped Operators?
10. How do Operators simplify application management?
11. How do you manage Operator dependencies?
12. How do you troubleshoot Operator failures?
13. What are the advantages of Operators over Helm charts?
14. What is Operator SDK?
15. How do you secure Operators in OpenShift?
16. What are day-2 operations in Operators?
17. How do you configure CRDs in OpenShift?
18. What are built-in OpenShift Operators?
19. How do you rollback Operator versions?
20. How do you use Operators for monitoring and logging?

---

9. Logging, Monitoring & Troubleshooting

1. What are the logging options in OpenShift?
2. How do you configure EFK stack (Elasticsearch, Fluentd, Kibana) in OpenShift?
3. How do you configure Prometheus in OpenShift?
4. How do you configure Grafana in OpenShift?
5. How do you monitor cluster health?
6. What are metrics exposed by OpenShift?
7. How do you collect application logs in OpenShift?
8. How do you troubleshoot Pod crashes?
9. How do you troubleshoot failed Deployments?
10. How do you debug networking issues?
11. What is oc describe command used for?
12. How do you trace resource usage of a Pod?
13. How do you enable audit logging in OpenShift?
14. What is cluster logging operator?
15. How do you set up alerts in OpenShift?
16. How do you troubleshoot failed Builds in OpenShift?
17. How do you analyze etcd performance issues?
18. How do you monitor control plane nodes?
19. How do you troubleshoot Route errors?
20. How do you diagnose API server performance issues?

---

10. Scaling, Performance & Best Practices

1. How do you scale Pods in OpenShift?
2. What is Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA)?
3. What is Vertical Pod Autoscaler (VPA)?
4. What is Cluster Autoscaler in OpenShift?
5. How do you configure resource requests and limits?
6. What is Quality of Service (QoS) in OpenShift?
7. How do you implement Pod affinity rules for performance?
8. How do you optimize container images for OpenShift?
9. How do you monitor resource utilization in OpenShift?
10. How do you tune etcd performance?
11. What is the best practice for managing namespaces?
12. How do you configure node selectors in OpenShift?
13. How do you configure taints and tolerations in OpenShift?
14. What is pod disruption budget in OpenShift?
15. How do you optimize scheduling policies?
16. How do you design OpenShift for high availability?
17. How do you optimize networking performance?
18. How do you manage large-scale OpenShift clusters?
19. What are some best practices for OpenShift upgrades?
20. What are enterprise-level best practices for OpenShift adoption?

---

Related Topics