CI/CD Pipeline Concepts & Stages Flashcards
CompTIA AutoOps+ AT0-001 Flashcards

| Front | Back |
| Artifact registry role | Store and version build outputs |
| Artifact retention policy | Define how long artifacts are kept and cleaned |
| Benefit of pipeline as code | Versioned reproducible pipeline changes |
| Best trigger for CI | Pull request or push to mainline |
| Blue Green deployment concept | Run two identical environments and switch traffic |
| Branching strategy gitflow | Feature release and hotfix branches with strict flow |
| Branching strategy trunk based | Short lived branches and frequent merges to main |
| Build artifact signing why | Verify origin and integrity of artifacts |
| Build cache purpose | Speed up repeated builds by reusing layers |
| Build reproducibility requirement | Deterministic builds from same inputs |
| Build stage purpose | Compile and assemble artifacts |
| Canary analysis metrics | Error rate latency and user experience indicators |
| Canary deployment concept | Gradual rollout to subset of users |
| Common gate types | Tests lint security and approvals |
| Compliance evidence in pipeline | Store audit logs signed artifacts and approvals |
| Container image tagging best practice | Include version and immutable tag |
| Continuous delivery requirement | Ready to deploy automatically but manual release step |
| Continuous deployment requirement | Automated deploys to production on pass |
| Contract testing purpose | Ensure integrations match expected interfaces |
| Dependency scanning goal | Detect vulnerable libraries early |
| Downstream pipeline concept | Trigger dependent pipelines after success |
| End to end test drawback | Slow brittle and high maintenance cost |
| Environment parity importance | Keep dev staging and prod similar |
| Failure isolation practice | Break pipeline into small focused stages |
| Fast feedback principle | Run fast tests early to reduce developer time to fix |
| Feature branch lifetime best practice | Keep short lived and frequently integrate |
| Feature flag purpose | Toggle features without deploys |
| Flaky test strategy | Quarantine and fix then reenable |
| Gating definition | Block promotion until checks pass |
| Hosted runner benefit | Managed infrastructure and easy scaling |
| Idempotent deployment meaning | Multiple runs produce same result |
| Immutable artifact meaning | Artifact cannot be changed after creation |
| Immutable infrastructure benefit | Predictable and versioned environments |
| Incremental build benefit | Reduce build time by rebuilding changed parts only |
| Integration test environment requirement | Run against realistic dependencies or mocks |
| Manual approval use case | Business or safety critical deploys |
| Merge strategy purpose | Choose linear history or use merge commits |
| Observability in pipelines | Collect logs metrics and traces for debugging |
| Parallelization benefit | Run independent jobs concurrently to speed pipeline |
| Pipeline artifact promotion | Promote same artifact across environments |
| Pipeline as code definition | Storing pipeline configuration in version control |
| Pipeline cost control | Limit concurrency and use spot or preemptible agents |
| Pipeline monitoring alerts | Notify on failures long running jobs or flakiness |
| Pipeline optimization strategy | Cache artifacts parallelize and skip unchanged steps |
| Pipeline triggers common types | Push pull request schedule and manual |
| PR validation best practice | Run pipeline and tests before merge |
| Primary goal of CD | Automated delivery of releasable artifacts to environments |
| Primary goal of CI | Fast feedback and merging of changes |
| Promoting artifacts across regions | Replicate registry artifacts not rebuild |
| Promotion vs rebuild principle | Always promote not rebuild for consistency |
| Quiet periods and throttling use | Prevent overload from rapid commits |
| Release health monitoring | Use real user metrics SLOs and alerts |
| Resource isolation practice | Use ephemeral agents or containers per job |
| Rollback strategy | Automated rollback to last known good artifact |
| Rolling deployment concept | Incremental replace of instances to update fleet |
| Secrets management best practice | Use a secure vault not source control |
| Security scanning placement | Run SAST and dependency scans early in pipeline |
| Self hosted runner benefit | Custom tooling access and cost control |
| Semantic versioning purpose | Communicate compatibility and release ordering |
| Shift left meaning | Move testing and security earlier in development |
| Skip unchanged steps technique | Use checksum based conditional execution |
| Source control integration purpose | Trigger builds and track provenance |
| Static code analysis goal | Find defects and enforce standards |
| Test data management approach | Use synthetic isolated reproducible datasets |
| Test parallelism caveat | Shared resources can cause nondeterministic failures |
| Test pyramid base types | Unit tests fast and isolated |
| Test pyramid middle types | Integration tests verify component interactions |
| Test pyramid top types | End to end tests slow and brittle |
| Trunk based CI benefit | Easier automation fewer merge conflicts |
| Upstream pipeline concept | Produce artifacts consumed by downstream pipelines |
About the Flashcards
Flashcards for the CompTIA AutoOps+ exam focus on CI/CD pipeline terminology and core practices to review before the test. Cards cover pipeline-as-code, common triggers, build and artifact management (immutable artifacts, registries, semantic versioning), reproducible builds, promotion vs rebuild, and branching and merge strategies used to validate changes.
They also reinforce testing and gating concepts-unit, integration, and end-to-end roles, flaky-test handling, and contract testing-alongside deployment patterns (canary, blue-green, rolling), feature flags and rollback tactics, security and shift-left scans, secrets management, observability, and pipeline optimization like caching, parallelism, and skipping unchanged steps.
Topics covered in this flashcard deck:
- CI/CD pipeline fundamentals
- Builds, artifacts, versioning
- Testing and gating strategies
- Deployment patterns and rollbacks
- Security, scanning, secrets
- Optimization and observability