1. What is Kubernetes?

This is one of the most basic Kubernetes interview questions yet one of the most important ones! Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration tool or system that is used to automate tasks such as the management, monitoring, scaling, and deployment of containerized applications. It is used to easily manage several containers (since it can handle grouping of containers), which provides for logical units that can be discovered and managed.

2. What are K8s? 

K8s is another term for Kubernetes. 

3. What is orchestration when it comes to software and DevOps? 

Orchestration refers to the integration of multiple services that allows them to automate processes or synchronize information in a timely fashion. Say, for example, you have six or seven microservices for an application to run. If you place them in separate containers, this would inevitably create obstacles for communication. Orchestration would help in such a situation by enabling all services in individual containers to work seamlessly to accomplish a single goal. 

4. How are Kubernetes and Docker related?

This is one of the most frequently asked Kubernetes interview questions, where the interviewer might as well ask you to share your experience working with any of them. Docker is an open-source platform used to handle software development. Its main benefit is that it packages the settings and dependencies that the software/application needs to run into a container, which allows for portability and several other advantages. Kubernetes allows for the manual linking and orchestration of several containers, running on multiple hosts that have been created using Docker. 

5. What are the main differences between the Docker Swarm and Kubernetes?

Docker Swarm is Docker’s native, open-source container orchestration platform that is used to cluster and schedule Docker containers. Swarm differs from Kubernetes in the following ways:

• Docker Swarm is more convenient to set up but doesn’t have a robust cluster, while Kubernetes is more complicated to set up but the benefit of having the assurance of a robust cluster
• Docker Swarm can’t do auto-scaling (as can Kubernetes); however, Docker scaling is five times faster than Kubernetes 
• Docker Swarm doesn’t have a GUI; Kubernetes has a GUI in the form of a dashboard 
• Docker Swarm does automatic load balancing of traffic between containers in a cluster, while Kubernetes requires manual intervention for load balancing such traffic  
• Docker requires third-party tools like ELK stack for logging and monitoring, while Kubernetes has integrated tools for the same 
• Docker Swarm can share storage volumes with any container easily, while Kubernetes can only share storage volumes with containers in the same pod
• Docker can deploy rolling updates but can’t deploy automatic rollbacks; Kubernetes can deploy rolling updates as well as automatic rollbacks