SRE INTERVIEW PREPARATION

Programming
○ Python basics (skip videos if you already know the concepts)
■ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHtjvDEdlas&list=PLhqPDa2HoaAZN9pG0c
UugTmgAddRtF3zK
○ Solve basic questions in Python - hackerrank easy
○ In case you are stuck in any problem, look at the editorial, discussions and other’s
solutions for help. Use google search for help. Follow this rule for every question.
○ Advanced Python tutorial
■ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLTdOEn79Rc&list=PLqnslRFeH2UqLwzS0
AwKDKLrpYBKzLBy2
○ Solve more advance level questions
■ hacker rank advance easy
■ hacker rank advance medium
○ Classes in Python
■ https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-osiE80TeTsqhIuOqKhwlXsIBIdSeYtc
○ DSA with Python
■ https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzgPDYo_3xukPJdH6hVQ6Iic7KiJuoA-l
○ Take 30 day coding challenge
■ https://www.hackerrank.com/domains/tutorials/30-days-of-code
○ Solve more basic DSA questions gain more confidence
■ Leetcode basic free questions
○ After solving problems in the links given, you should be good with the basics of Python
and DSA.
○ If you want to solve more DSA problems
■ https://workat.tech/problem-solving/practice/topics
■ Start with easy problems first in the topic you select
○ Python scripting
■ https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLckUzKjgYDgaMCzGIvdcyOlcUTx1sBBtR
(Complete till 14th video)
■ This will require basic knowledge of operating systems and networking.
■ This is helpful if you are interested in DevOps/SRE areas.
Operating system basics
● Operating system basics -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UvZ2BPIPX0&list=PLhqPDa2HoaAZLws7PFYWl4
MnzCyHf8do- (These videos should be more than enough for interviews)
● Linux kernel development by Robert Love is one of the best books to read for diving into
the internals of Linux. (optional)
● The end goal here is to understand how the operating system works.
● After going through the above video, you should be able to explain:
○ What is OS? Difference between OS and kernel
○ Intro to Linux, Linux distributions
○ System calls
○ Interrupts and signals
○ Process management
■ Program vs Process
■ Process states and PCB
■ Process scheduling and context switch
■ Process creation - fork(), exec(), wait()
■ Zombie and orphan process
■ Process vs Threads
○ Race condition, deadlock, mutex, and semaphore
○ Memory management
■ Logical address vs physical address
■ Paging
■ Virtual memory
■ TLB
○ File system management
■ Files, directories, special files, links, sockets
■ File system layout
■ Proc file system
■ VFS
■ Common file operations - read, write, append, open, close
■ Inodes
■ Volumes and partition
■ RAID
● Detailed topics list -
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vy2EUAgIShloS6gcSWPdVCg5vhsYWZHl686h9x
AkYOA
Linux commands
● https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/linux-commands
● The above link should be enough to cover basic Linux commands.
● Try to practice all the commands on your system. If you do not have Linux on your
system, install it by dual boot or use a virtual machine. Install red hat Linux.
● After covering the above videos and blogs, you should be comfortable with the concepts
below.
● What happens when you run a command - https://youtu.be/sL7h1rOn0K0
● Reading manual pages - man command
● File system navigation
○ cd
○ pwd
○ ls
○ less
○ more
○ file
○ tail
○ head
○ cat
● Manipulating files
○ cp
○ mv
○ rm
○ mkdir
○ touch
○ echo
● Users and groups
○ useradd
○ passwd
○ usermod
○ userdel
● Sudo user
● File permissions
○ chmod
○ chown
○ chgrp
● I/O redirection and pipes
● sort, uniq, awk, sed, grep
● ssh, scp, smtp
● Package management
● Process management commands
○ /proc/PID/
 ○ top
○ ps
○ Background and foreground process - fg, bg, jobs
○ Kill
● Memory management commands
○ /proc/meminfo
○ free
○ Vmstat
● File system management
○ Searching files - find
○ Disk usage - df
○ Files usage - du
● Networking commands
○ Application layer - telnet, curl, wget, ssh, sftp, scp, dig, nslookup
○ Transport layer - nc, tcpdump, netstat(ss)
○ Network layer - ping, traceroute, route, ip addr, iptables, nmap
○ Data link layer - arp
● Managing system services - systemd
● Detailed list of topics -
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BCJ3iRYAif4MGxEn9j5N6dyu8-0YGA5xgHq-ldnV
3po/

Computer networking
○ Computer networking basics -
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhqPDa2HoaAYYXjiIdRsf5-tKmJUlZx4o
○ Computer networking animation videos -
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhqPDa2HoaAYXaCph61kioSbJS7lwcwUt
○ Focus on understanding the following:
■ Layers in TCP/IP model
■ Functions of each layer
■ How these layers help in moving data from one machine to another
■ Application layer protocols like HTTP, DNS, SSH, HTTPS, TLS, etc
■ Transport layer protocols like TCP and UDP
● Difference between TCP and UDP
● TCP 3-way handshake
● TCP connection termination
■ Network layer - subnet, CIDR, and IP addresses
■ Other networking protocols like ICMP, DHCP, ARP, etc are important
 ■ After reading the above, you should be able to answer what happens when you
type www.google.com on your browser and hit enter? -
https://jvns.ca/networking-zine.pdf
■ Networking commands like telnet, curl, dig, ping, traceroute, netcat etc
● Detailed list of topics -
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1S84HYWNL52ZUdcoweOWiBBcJcWlxc7RTrzK03
SVKqVg

System design
● System design basics by Gaurav Sen(must watch) -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpDnVSmNFX0&list=PLMCXHnjXnTnvo6alSjVkgxV-
VH6EPyvoX
● System design primer(examples + concepts) -
https://github.com/donnemartin/system-design-primer
● Go through both the links above
● Designing a distributed system - https://youtu.be/ohtqI3AHR0k
● Focus on understanding the following:
○ How do big companies design their infrastructure?
○ Important concepts:
■ Load balancer
■ Vertical vs horizontal scaling
■ Reverse proxy
■ CDN
■ What is reliability?
■ CAP theorem
■ Caching
■ Database
● sql vs nosql databases
● ACID properties
● Database sharding
● Database replication
■ Full list -
https://github.com/donnemartin/system-design-primer#system-design-topi
cs-start-here

System troubleshooting
● Debugging performance issues on a single server
○ https://syedali.net/2013/08/20/linux-troubleshooting-tools/
 ○ https://netflixtechblog.com/linux-performance-analysis-in-60-000-milliseconds-acc
c10403c55
● How to troubleshoot issues in production
○ https://sre.google/sre-book/effective-troubleshooting/ [must read]
● Read Julia Evans zines/blogs on debugging [must read]
○ https://jvns.ca/debugging-zine.pdf
○ https://jvns.ca/perf-zine-print.pdf
○ https://jvns.ca/tcpdump-zine.pdf
○ https://jvns.ca/debugging-zine.pdf
○ https://jvns.ca/strace-zine-v3-print.pdf
○ https://jvns.ca/blog/2014/04/20/debug-your-programs-like-theyre-closed-source/
○ https://jvns.ca/blog/2021/04/03/what-problems-do-people-solve-with-strace/

Tools
● DevOps interview preparation course from kodekloud(paid course) -
https://kodekloud.com/courses/devops-interview-prep-course/
● The above course covers:
○ Github
○ AWS
○ Docker
○ Terraform
○ Jenkins
○ Kubernetes
○ Monitoring

SRE interview questions and experiences

● https://github.com/mxssl/sre-interview-prep-guide
● https://github.com/michaelkkehoe/sre-interview
● https://amiralisobhgol.medium.com/i-received-sre-offers-from-facebook-and-google-with
out-a-university-degree-here-is-how-224f06b49e7d
● Go through all the blogs here -
https://github.com/mxssl/sre-interview-prep-guide#blogposts
● https://danrl.com/srm/#screen
● Hiring SRE at dropbox - https://youtu.be/ucCSRY-KOCI
● Hiring SRE at LinkedIn - https://youtu.be/ZemNg9GYvOA