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Quiz

2827 questions of the kind that actually get asked — in interviews, in architecture review boards, and by the person who has to run the thing at 3 AM. Every answer states the trade-off rather than the slogan, and says when the obvious choice is the wrong one.

All areas2827 Architecture Fundamentals91 Distributed Systems101 Data Architecture90 Cloud Architecture87 Networking86 API & Integration Architecture87 Reliability & Resilience99 Observability92 Performance & Capacity Engineering90 Security Architecture95 Cost Architecture & FinOps92 Business Architecture93 Architecture Communication91 Enterprise Architecture100 Legacy Modernization92 AI-Era Architecture96 Software Architecture & Engineering93 Architecture Patterns84 Architecture Decision-Making101 The Architect's Meta-Skills92 Delivery & Release Engineering103 Platform Engineering & Developer Experience92 Testing & Quality Architecture102 Data Platform Architecture98 Streaming & Real-Time Data93 Data Governance & Semantics91 Frontend & Experience Architecture101 Edge, Mobile & IoT98 Regulatory & Data Protection Architecture99 Assurance, Audit & Model Risk98
Difficulty Any beginner intermediate advanced

2827 questions.

  1. GitOps advanced

    During an incident an engineer edits a live Kubernetes resource and the change is reverted a minute later by the GitOps controller. The incident continues. What is your position?

    2 min answer gitopsincidentoperationsreconciliation
  2. GitOps advanced

    On 14 March 2023 a Kubernetes upgrade at Reddit caused an outage of about 314 minutes. The upgrade removed a node label that an internal network component had been selecting on, and that component's configuration had been hand-edited through a CLI and committed nowhere. Where do you start investigating, and what is the diagnosis?

    3 min answer redditgitopsundocumented-statekubernetes
  3. GitOps intermediate

    You are adopting GitOps. Someone asks how secrets work, since the repository is the source of truth. What are the options and which do you choose?

    2 min answer gitopssecretssecurity
  4. GitOps advanced

    Your CI system holds cluster-admin credentials for 14 production clusters and deploys by applying manifests at the end of each pipeline. You must move to in-cluster reconcilers pulling from Git, with no change freeze and no loss of the ability to deploy while the migration runs. Sequence it.

    3 min answer gitopsreconciliationcredentialsfield-ownership
  5. Graceful Degradation advanced

    A payments platform's fraud service is degraded during a peak commerce event. Should the payment path wait, skip the check, use cached risk scores, fall back to simpler rules, or fail? What should determine the answer?

    2 min answer phonepedegradationfraudfallback
  6. Graceful Degradation intermediate Multiple choice

    A recommendation service is unavailable during a high-traffic period. Should the application show popular items, cached recommendations, results from an older model, or nothing at all?

    2 min answer graceful-degradationfallbackpersonalisationreddit
  7. Graceful Degradation intermediate

    A streaming service's homepage assembles rows from a dozen personalisation services. One returns 4-second latency instead of 40 ms. What happens, and what should have been designed?

    2 min answer netflixfallbacktail-latencyfan-out
  8. Graceful Degradation intermediate

    The recommendation service is down. Walk through every level of degraded response and say who decides which one is used.

    2 min answer degradationfallbacknetflixproduct
  9. Graceful Degradation intermediate

    What distinguishes a real graceful-degradation capability from an aspiration, and how do you design and validate a degradation ladder?

    3 min answer degradationkill-switchfallbackresilience
  10. Graceful Degradation intermediate

    What happens to your marketplace if the payment provider is unavailable for two hours during peak?

    2 min answer marketplacedependencydegradationbusiness
  11. GraphQL advanced

    A commerce platform moves its primary API from REST to GraphQL. What genuinely improves for third-party developers, and what new problems does the platform acquire?

    2 min answer graphqlquery-costn-plus-oneapi-design
  12. GraphQL advanced Multiple choice

    A shared API is a bottleneck for four client teams. Does a flexible query language fix it?

    1 min answer graphqlownershipconways-lawcaching