mastercard

Technical Interview Assignment for Mastercard

DevOps Engineer Code Test

Simply run docker-compose up in 1_nginx_apache, modify your /etc/hosts file to include something like 127.0.0.1 example.com www.example.com and navigate to https://www.example.com/?foo and http://www.example.com:8080/?bar

1. In any Linux based system (CentOS/RHEL preferred):

   a. Configure logrotate to rotate /var/log/httpd/access_log (or equivalent) hourly

Doing this in a Docker container is a bit clunky, and I generally wouldn't ever actually configure log rotation in a container like this

b. Configure an Apache HTTPD VirtualHost to do all of:

    i. Show a test page at https://example.com,

    ii. Redirect http to https, while maintaining all URL parameters,

    iii. Redirect www.example.com to example.com.

c. Configure nginx as a load balancer to a local Apache HTTPD listening on 8080-8090

I couldn't tell whether it's NGINX or Apache that should be listening on 8080-8090 - so I just went with NGINX

2. In your favourite programming language (PHP or Python preferred):

   a. Write code that will find a duplicate value in an array.

   b. Do the same for dictionaries.

3. We need to troubleshoot our website at https://www.mastercard.ca/. In any Linux based system, use CLI tools to do the following (send us commands + outputs):

   a. Test if port 443 is answering at the IP address of our website.

   b. Check when the SSL certificate expires.

   c. Connect to http://www.mastercard.com/ using telnet and “GET /” (note: not https).

4. Package managers can be used to install software packages such as RPMs. Generally, companies and individuals host mirrors and package repositories in a website or ftp. An alternative is to use a system like AWS S3 to host a repository.

   While public repositories are great, sometimes a privately hosted repository is desired for internal software. In these situations, you could host a private web server in your environment.

   Alternatively, a “serverless” approach could be to use S3 with an authentication scheme like IAM through the usage of a yum plugin. Write a value state / formula for a configuration management tool (SaltStack preferred) to install a S3 yum plugin (https://github.com/seporaitis/yum-s3-iam) and configure it.

Wasn't able to finish this. It was my plan to configure a working solution that used Minio to host a private S3-based Yum repository that could be accessed from another container. The Minio Yum repository would contain the RPM produced in problem #5. -- I'd need at least a few more hours for this.

5. Building an RPM for easy management of internal software is a common strategy to deploy software. Create an RPM of a command line tool that prints out “Awe$ome”. Bonus: install this in a fashion like #4 above.

Enter 5_rpm and issue docker-compose up to build the RPM

Zip up all relevant files and send back to us.

Best regards, and good luck!