Implementing DevOps Solutions and Practices Using Cisco Platforms (DEVOPS) Free Sample Questions

A multi-stage build is the ideal solution. It allows you to use one stage with a full JDK and Maven to compile the application and build the JAR file, and a second, final stage that starts from a minimal JRE base image and copies only the compiled application artifact. This ensures no build tools or intermediate files are present in the final image, directly addressing both security and size requirements.

HashiCorp Vault is a dedicated secrets management tool designed to be cloud-agnostic. By deploying a central Vault cluster, you create a single source of truth for secrets. The Vault Agent Injector can be deployed to both Kubernetes clusters, allowing pods to authenticate using their Kubernetes Service Account and receive secrets dynamically via a sidecar container. This approach is highly secure, centralized, and avoids vendor lock-in, making it the best choice for a multi-cloud scenario.

This statement is false. While 'golden image' can refer to a VM template in a traditional infrastructure context, in the context of containerized application deployment for Kubernetes, it refers to a standardized, pre-configured base container image. This base image would be stored in a container registry (like Docker Hub or ECR) and would include common dependencies, security configurations, and monitoring agents required by the organization.

The terraform plan command is used specifically to create an execution plan. It compares the desired state defined in the Terraform configuration files with the actual state of the remote infrastructure and outputs the set of changes that will be made. This 'dry run' capability is essential for pre-check validation in a CI/CD pipeline, allowing for review and approval before any changes are applied with terraform apply.

A Kubernetes Service provides a stable network abstraction layer for a set of pods. It creates a single, stable IP address and DNS name (e.g., my-service.default.svc.cluster.local) that other applications within the cluster can use to access the pods managed by the Deployment. The Service automatically handles load balancing across the pods, even as they are created or destroyed. An Ingress is for external access, a Pod is the workload itself, and a ConfigMap is for configuration data.

The primary goal of chaos engineering is to build confidence in the system's ability to withstand turbulent conditions in production. By injecting latency, the team is proactively testing whether the application's built-in resilience patterns (like timeouts, retries, and circuit breakers) behave as expected. This helps uncover hidden weaknesses before they cause a real-world outage.

Static Application Security Testing (SAST) analyzes an application's source code, bytecode, or binary code for security vulnerabilities without executing the program. Because it works directly on the code, it can be integrated very early in the SDLC, such as upon a code commit or pull request, to find issues like SQL injection or buffer overflows before the application is even built. DAST requires a running application, IAST combines both, and penetration testing is typically a later-stage manual or automated process.

Jenkins is renowned for its massive plugin ecosystem, which allows for extensive customization and integration with virtually any tool. It is an open-source, self-hosted solution, which satisfies the security compliance requirement. Its long history has resulted in a very large and active community, providing ample support and resources. While Drone is also self-hosted, its plugin ecosystem is smaller. Travis CI is primarily a cloud-based SaaS offering.

This is a classic transitive dependency conflict. The requests library itself depends on urllib3. If version 2.25.1 of requests requires a version of urllib3 that is outside the =1.25.4 range, pip will be unable to find a compatible set of packages, leading to a resolution error. This highlights the complexity of managing dependencies in modern applications.