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

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

Linux

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

Boot Process

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

Filesystem

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

Kernel

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

Troubleshooting

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

Networking

• The Internet explained from first principles
• Network protocols for anyone who knows a programming language
• Introduction to Linux interfaces for virtual networking
• Multi-tier load-balancing with Linux
• Introduction to modern network load balancing and proxying
• Load Balancing Algorithms
• What every SRE should know about GNU/Linux resolvers and Dual-Stack applications
• Beej's Guide to Networking Concepts

Containers

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

Kubernetes

• Deploying and Scaling Microservices with Docker and Kubernetes
• Demystifying the Kubernetes Iceberg
• What happens when ... Kubernetes edition!
• Kubernetes Production Patterns
• Kubernetes production best practices
• A Guide to the Kubernetes Networking Model
• 47 Things To Become a Kubernetes Expert
• Kubernetes Best Practices 101
• 15 Kubernetes Best Practices Every Developer Should Know
• THE KUBERNETES NETWORKING GUIDE
• The life of a DNS query in Kubernetes
• Kubernetes YAML tips and tricks
• Kubernetes Learning Roadmap
• Kubernetes networking: service, kube-proxy, load balancing
• From Linux Primitives to Kubernetes Security Contexts
• Server-side apply: what happens when you run kubectl apply

Infrastructure as code / Configuration management

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

Databases

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

CI/CD

• Continuous Integration
• 7 Pipeline Design Patterns for Continuous Delivery
• CI/CD patterns
• Six Strategies for Application Deployment
• What Is GitOps?

Clouds

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

Programming

Git

• Useful git commands for SRE and DevOps engineers

Python

• Python Basics
• Python For Everyone
• Complete Python Tutorial

Go (Golang)

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

Big O Notation, Algorithms and Data Structures

• AlgoExpert
• Hacking a Google Interview – Handout 1
• Hacking a Google Interview – Handout 2
• Hacking a Google Interview – Handout 3
• Big O

System design

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

System design examples

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

Monitoring

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

Prometheus

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

Processes

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

Resume

• SRE Complete Resume Writing Guide

Interview

SRE interview process

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

Interview Questions

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

Blogposts

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

Books

SRE books

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

Linux

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

Networking

• TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1

Troubleshooting and Performance

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

Courses

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