CI/CD Pipeline Design
How would you design a CI/CD pipeline for a microservices application? What stages would you include?
How would you design a CI/CD pipeline for a microservices application? What stages would you include?
A comprehensive pipeline includes: 1) Build stage - compile code, install dependencies. 2) Test stage - unit tests, integration tests, code coverage. 3) Security scanning - SAST, dependency scanning, container scanning. 4) Artifact creation - build and push Docker images. 5) Deploy to staging - automated deployment with smoke tests. 6) Performance/E2E tests - load testing, end-to-end tests. 7) Deploy to production - with approval gates, canary or blue-green deployment. Include notifications, rollback mechanisms, and artifact versioning throughout.
Pipeline design impacts developer productivity, deployment frequency, and system reliability. A well-designed pipeline catches issues early, provides fast feedback, and enables confident production deployments. This is a core DevOps competency.
GitHub Actions pipeline example
- Skipping tests to deploy faster
- Not having environment parity between staging and production
- Missing rollback mechanisms
- How do you handle database migrations in a CI/CD pipeline?
- What is the difference between continuous delivery and continuous deployment?
- How do you implement rollback in your pipelines?
More CI/CD interview questions
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