Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) Interview Preparation Guide

This repository is an attempt to consolidate useful resources for Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) interview preparation.

Contributing

Please take a look at the contribution guidelines first. Contributions are always welcome!

Basics

• d Simple: What happens when you type in ‘www.cnn.com’ in your browser?
• d Detailed: What happens when you type google.com into your browser's address box and press enter?

Linux

• d Introduction to Linux – Full Course for Beginners
• d What every SRE should know about GNU/Linux shell related internals: file descriptors, pipes, terminals, user sessions, process groups and daemons
• d SRE deep dive into Linux Page Cache

Boot Process

• u How Does Linux Boot Process Work?
• u An introduction to the Linux boot and startup processes
• u What happens when we turn on computer?
• u What happens when we turn on computer?
• u From Power up to login prompt

Filesystem

• u Understanding Inodes
• u Understand UNIX / Linux Inodes Basics with Examples
• u Understanding proc filesystem
• u Common Mount Options
• u Understanding Linux filesystems: ext4 and beyond

Kernel

• u Explain the basics of Linux kernel
• u Kernel Space and User Space
• u Linux Kernel Process Management
• u Linux Addressing
• u Linux Kernel Memory Management
• u STACK AND HEAP
• u Paging and Segmentation
• u Linux Kernel System Calls
• u The Virtual Filesystem
• u Concurrency and Race Conditions
• u Memory Leak
• u What is a kernel Panic?
• u Book about the linux kernel
• u Processes in Linux - Everything You Need to Know

Troubleshooting

• u Linux troubleshooting tools
• u Linux Performance Analysis in 60,000 Milliseconds
• u strace
• u lsof
• u Linux system debugging
• u SaaS where users can test their Linux troubleshooting skills

Networking

• u The Internet explained from first principles
• u Network protocols for anyone who knows a programming language
• u Introduction to Linux interfaces for virtual networking
• u Multi-tier load-balancing with Linux
• u Introduction to modern network load balancing and proxying
• u Load Balancing Algorithms

Containers

• u Introduction to Docker and Containers
• u Containers Patterns
• u Docker Container Anti Patterns
• u Anti-Patterns When Building Container Images

Kubernetes

• u Deploying and Scaling Microservices with Docker and Kubernetes
• u Demystifying the Kubernetes Iceberg
• u What happens when ... Kubernetes edition!
• u Kubernetes Production Patterns
• u Kubernetes production best practices
• u A Guide to the Kubernetes Networking Model
• u 47 Things To Become a Kubernetes Expert
• u Kubernetes Best Practices 101
• u 15 Kubernetes Best Practices Every Developer Should Know
• u THE KUBERNETES NETWORKING GUIDE
• u The life of a DNS query in Kubernetes
• u Kubernetes YAML tips and tricks
• u Kubernetes Learning Roadmap

Infrastructure as code / Configuration management

• u Terraform
• d A Comprehensive Guide to Terraform
• u Ansible
• c Getting Started With Terraform on AWS
• u Google Cloud: Best practices for using Terraform
• u Terraform Roadmap

Databases

• u Things You Should Know About Databases
• u 7 Database Paradigms
• u CAP theorem
• u Evolutionary Database Design
• u ACID vs BASE in Databases
• u Understanding Database Sharding
• u Database Replication
• u SQL vs. NoSQL Database: When to Use, How to Choose
• u How do database indexes work?
• u Redis Explained
• u Database Sharding Explained
• u Kafka 101

CI/CD

• u Continuous Integration
• u 7 Pipeline Design Patterns for Continuous Delivery
• u CI/CD patterns
• u Six Strategies for Application Deployment

Clouds

• u The Open Guide to Amazon Web Services
• u Learning Azure
• u Hands-On Training with GCP

Programming

Python

• u Python Basics
• u Python For Everyone
• u Complete Python Tutorial

Go (Golang)

• u A tour of Go
• u Go by Example
• u Go Tutorials & Examples
• u Learn Go with Tests
• u Getting up and running with Go
• u Effective Go
• u Go Design Patterns
• u Go Memory Management
• u Style Guide
• u Style Decisions
• u Best Practices
• u 50 Shades of Go: Traps, Gotchas, and Common Mistakes for New Golang Devs

Big O Notation, Algorithms and Data Structures

• u AlgoExpert
• u Hacking a Google Interview – Handout 1
• u Hacking a Google Interview – Handout 2
• u Hacking a Google Interview – Handout 3

System design

• u SystemsExpert course from AlgoExpert
• u System Design 101
• u Grokking the System Design Interview
• u The System Design Primer
• u Crack the System Design Interview
• u System design interview for IT companies
• u Web Architecture 101
• u What's in a Production Web Application?
• u Distributed systems
• u Failover
• u Monoliths, Service Architecture, and Microservices
• u Scale From Zero To Millions Of Users

System design examples

• u Designing WhatsApp
• u Designing Uber
• u Designing Tinder
• u Designing Instagram
• u Designing Netflix

Monitoring

• u Implementing SLOs
• u Setting up Service Monitoring — The Why’s and What’s
• u How NOT to Measure Latency
• u The four Golden Signals of Kubernetes monitoring

Prometheus

• u Introduction to Prometheus
• u Prometheus Relabeling Training
• u Avoid These 6 Mistakes When Getting Started With Prometheus
• u A Deep Dive Into the Four Types of Prometheus Metrics
• u How Prometheus Querying Works
• u PromQL Cheat Sheet

Processes

• u The practical guide to incident management
• u Incident Response
• u Postmortems
• u Runbooks
• u Identifying and tracking toil using SRE principles
• u Building SRE from Scratch
• u SRE at Google: Our complete list of CRE life lessons
• u Incident Management vs. Incident Response - What's the Difference?
• u Practical Guide to SRE: Using SLOs to Increase Reliability
• u Practical Guide to SRE: Automating On-Call
• u Going from Zero to SRE
• u An Incident Command Training Handbook
• u Howie guide to post‑incident investigations
• u Rundown of LinkedIn’s SRE practices
• u Rundown of Uber’s SRE practice
• u SRE in the Real World
• u SRE Engagement Models
• u SRE Checklist
• u Why bother with SLI and SLO?
• u The System Resiliency Pyramid
• u 10 Tips for Onboarding New SRE Hires
• u Starting SRE at startups and smaller organizations
• u Things That Makes a Good Site Reliability Engineer
• u How SRE teams are organized, and how to get started

Resume

• u SRE Complete Resume Writing Guide

Interview

SRE interview process

• u How to hire talent
• u Recruitment process for a Google job (SRE, Site Reliability Engineer)

Interview Questions

• u A collection of questions to practice with for SRE interviews
• u SRE Interview Questions
• u Sysadmin Test Questions
• u Kubernetes job interview questions
• u DevOps Guide
• u Questions I ask in SRE interviews
• u DevOps Roadmap: Learn to become a DevOps Engineer or SRE
• u The Must-Know Terraform Interview Questions

Blogposts

• u SRE Interviews in Silicon Valley
• u Preparing the SRE interview
• u How to Get Into SRE
• u My Job Interview at Google
• u Path to Site Reliability Management
• u Becoming a Site Reliability Engineer
• u How I get a job at Google as SRE
• u Become A DevOps Engineer in 2023: [Detailed Guide]
• u How to Get an SRE Role
• u DevOps Career Path
• u Key DevOps Engineer Skills You Need in 2024

Books

SRE books

• u Site Reliability Engineering
• u The Site Reliability Workbook
• u Seeking SRE
• u Building Secure and Reliable Systems
• u Implementing Service Level Objectives

Linux

• u Linux Kernel Development (3rd Edition)
• u UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook (5th Edition)
• u Linux Pocket Guide, 3rd Edition

Networking

• u TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1

Troubleshooting and Performance

• u Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud
• u Systems Performance, 2nd Edition

Courses

• u Site Reliability Engineering: Measuring and Managing Reliability
• u School of SRE