Microsoft Infrastructure Interview: Container Orchestration

You will be evaluated on practical knowledge of container orchestration and how Docker and Kubernetes fit into an infrastructure foundation. Expect questions that probe both concepts and operational trade-offs.

Core content: You should be able to explain Docker's architecture (Engine, images, containers, registries) and Kubernetes core components (control plane, kube-apiserver, controller-manager, scheduler, kubelet, nodes, pods, deployments, services). Interviewers will look for clear distinctions between container runtimes and orchestration platforms and how images move from CI to registry to cluster.

Flow or stages: Interviews often start with high-level conceptual questions, move to a design/whiteboard stage (design a deployment or HA cluster), then a troubleshooting or scenario stage (debugging CrashLoopBackOff, autoscaling under load). You may be asked to justify tool selection (Docker Swarm vs Kubernetes) and explain operational procedures for upgrades, rollbacks, and rollouts.

Skill signals: Demonstrate hands-on familiarity with Kubernetes features—Horizontal Pod Autoscaler, Cluster Autoscaler, networking (CNI, Services, Ingress), storage (PersistentVolumes, PVCs, StorageClasses), security (RBAC, NetworkPolicies, Secrets), and management primitives (ConfigMaps, rolling updates, Operators). Show knowledge of monitoring, logging, high availability, and practical troubleshooting steps.

Preparation tips: Use scenario examples to explain trade-offs, cite metrics and failure modes, and describe CI/CD integration and observability choices for production workloads.