DevOps / ArgoCD interview questions

What are the core components of ArgoCD?

ArgoCD is composed of several distinct components that work together to deliver GitOps continuous delivery:

API Server — Exposes the gRPC and REST API consumed by the ArgoCD UI, CLI (argocd), and any external tooling. It handles authentication, authorization (RBAC), and surfaces application status and operations.

Repository Server — Responsible for cloning Git repositories and rendering manifests. It supports Helm, Kustomize, Jsonnet, and plain YAML. It caches rendered manifests to reduce load on Git and templating engines. All manifest generation happens here in isolation from the rest of the system.

Application Controller — The core reconciliation engine. It continuously compares the live cluster state (via the Kubernetes API) against the desired state (rendered by the repo server) and determines sync status (Synced, OutOfSync, Unknown). It triggers sync operations and manages application health assessment.

ApplicationSet Controller — A separate controller that manages ApplicationSet CRDs, automatically generating and maintaining multiple Application resources from a single template and generator definition.

Dex (optional) — An identity provider proxy bundled with ArgoCD for SSO integration (GitHub, LDAP, SAML, OIDC). Can be replaced by an external OIDC provider.

Redis — Used as a caching layer for application state, reducing repeated calls to the Kubernetes API server and Git repositories. Not a persistent store — ArgoCD can rebuild its state from the cluster.

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Which ArgoCD component is responsible for cloning Git repos and rendering Helm or Kustomize manifests?Application Controller

✗ Try again — the Application Controller handles reconciliation, not manifest rendering.

Repository Server

✓ Well done! The Repository Server clones repos and renders manifests for all supported tooling.

API Server

✗ Try again — the API Server handles requests and auth; it does not clone repos.

Redis

✗ Try again — Redis is a cache layer, not a rendering engine.

What role does Redis play in an ArgoCD deployment?It is the primary persistent database for all ArgoCD application state

✗ Try again — Redis is a cache; ArgoCD rebuilds state from Kubernetes if Redis is lost.

It caches application state and manifest renders to reduce API server and Git load

✓ Well done! Redis acts as a performance cache; ArgoCD does not rely on it for durable storage.

It queues incoming webhook events for the Application Controller

✗ Try again — webhook events are handled by the API Server, not queued through Redis.

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DevOps / ArgoCD interview questions

What are the core components of ArgoCD?

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