Back End Developer Mock Interview
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Question 18 of 30
What is Containerization? What advantages does it offer over virtualization?
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William Swansen has worked in the employment assistance realm since 2007. He is an author, job search strategist, and career advisor who helps individuals worldwide and in various professions to find their ideal careers.
This is an example of a technical question. Technical questions ask you to define the topic, concept, process, or work term used in your profession. They may also ask you to define the advantages of the concept or compare one concept to another. When answering technical questions, you should keep your response brief and to the point. The interviewer will ask you a follow-up question if they need additional information or want to explore the topic in more detail.
William Swansen has worked in the employment assistance realm since 2007. He is an author, job search strategist, and career advisor who helps individuals worldwide and in various professions to find their ideal careers.
"Containerisation is a virtualization strategy that developers use to replace hypervisor-based virtualization. When using containerization, the OS is shared by each container. This is more efficient than cloning the OS for each virtual machine. It also makes them easier to manage by the systems administrators."
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Virtualization is the simulation of the hardware of a machine including a kernel, VMware, for example. Containerization is a simulation of only the operating system; Docker and Kubernetes are examples of containerization services. Containerization is much more lightweight than virtualization, and multiple applications can run on the same hardware/VM since isolation occurs at the process level. Containerization allows portability; the application can be built and run in any environment (cloud or onsite) without extensive system configuration. I have used Docker images to deploy applications I have built to Heroku and AWS cloud hosting services where the build and process were defined by a config file in my directory and run in isolation in the cloud.
Marcie's Feedback
Excellent! You have provided strong definitions of both containerization and virtualization. Mentioning generic examples of each is also helpful and displays your knowledge in this area, and the personal example you've included makes your answer more meaningful. You've also done a good job of showing why containerization is sometimes advantageous over virtualization. Good job!
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