Infrastructure Study Portal

Quick recall Q&A

1. Explain Terraform state and why it's important

• State tracks resource mapping between config and real infrastructure
• Enables plan/apply to determine what changes are needed
• Must be protected (sensitive data, locking for teams)
• Use remote backends (S3, Azure Blob) for team collaboration

2. What is GitOps?

• Infrastructure and application configs stored in Git
• Git as single source of truth
• Changes through pull requests
• Automated sync between Git and cluster
• Benefits: audit trail, rollback via git revert, declarative

3. Helm vs Kustomize - when to use each?

Helm:

• Complex templating needs
• Packaging for distribution
• Dependency management
• Release management with rollback

Kustomize:

• Simple overlays on base configs
• No templating complexity
• Built into kubectl
• Pure YAML, easier to understand

4. How do you manage secrets in IaC?

1. Don't commit secrets - use .gitignore
2. External secret management - Vault, AWS Secrets Manager
3. Encrypted secrets - SOPS, Sealed Secrets
4. Environment variables - injected at runtime
5. Terraform - sensitive variables, remote state encryption