CDM Cheat Sheet 2026

The 30 highest-yield CDM facts, distilled from real exam questions. Print it, save it as a PDF, or study it here — free, no sign-up.

1. Which cloud service model gives a DevOps team the most control over the operating system and runtime environment? → IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)
2. What Ansible construct allows you to define and reuse a set of tasks with its own variables, files, and handlers? → Role
3. Which Ansible module is best suited for ensuring a specific line exists in a configuration file without duplicating it? → lineinfile
4. When assessment results for a Certified DevOps Master evaluation are inconclusive, the BEST practice is to: → Conduct additional assessment using alternative methods
5. In Certified DevOps Master practice, what is the CORRECT sequence when performing a technical procedure? → Plan, prepare, execute, verify, and document
6. What is a build pipeline? → Automated code process
7. Which foundational principle is MOST important for success in Certified DevOps Master? → Commitment to continuous learning, ethical practice, and quality outcomes
8. What role does calibration play in maintaining technical accuracy for Certified DevOps Master professionals? → It ensures instruments produce accurate, consistent results over time
9. What is the role of audit logging in a DevSecOps-compliant system? → To provide a tamper-evident record of who did what and when for compliance and forensics
10. Which of these is a benefit of a DevOps culture? → Faster delivery and better quality
11. What does Continuous Delivery (CD) enable? → Automated release to production
12. Which of the following is the best approach for managing secrets (API keys, passwords) in a CI/CD pipeline? → Use a dedicated secrets manager such as HashiCorp Vault or AWS Secrets Manager
13. What is a 'fork' in the context of Git collaboration platforms like GitHub? → A copy of a repository in your own account, used to propose changes via pull requests
14. Which type of organizational structure does DevOps most strongly advocate against? → Siloed functional departments
15. In a DevOps culture, who is ultimately responsible for the quality and reliability of a software service? → The entire cross-functional team collectively
16. Which cultural shift does DevOps encourage regarding failure? → Use failure as a learning opportunity and invest in resilience
17. When documenting assessment findings in CDM practice, which approach is MOST appropriate? → Record objective findings, measurements, and observations factually
18. In Grafana, what feature allows you to annotate a dashboard with a vertical marker at the exact time a deployment was made? → Event annotations
19. What does 'observability' mean in a DevOps context? → The ability to understand a system's internal state from its external outputs
20. What is the MOST important factor when selecting assessment tools for CDM certification work? → Validity, reliability, and appropriateness for the specific context
21. In a blameless postmortem, what is the primary goal of the 'five whys' technique? → To iteratively ask 'why' to trace from symptoms to root systemic causes
22. Which practice ensures that database schema changes do not break a CI/CD pipeline during a zero-downtime deployment? → Using backward-compatible, multi-phase migrations (expand/contract pattern)
23. In the context of DevSecOps, what is a 'threat model'? → A structured analysis of potential threats, attack vectors, and mitigations for a system
24. What is an incident response plan? → Procedure for managing incidents
25. What is the MOST important reason for maintaining equipment maintenance logs in CDM practice? → To track maintenance history, predict failures, and demonstrate compliance
26. Which tool is commonly used for CI/CD pipelines? → Jenkins
27. Which metric measures the time taken from code commit to deployment? → Lead time
28. Which DevOps practice involves developers and operations staff sharing on-call responsibilities? → Shared on-call rotation
29. A team practicing 'you build it, you run it' (YBIYRI) is adopting which DevOps principle? → Developer accountability for production systems
30. A team's CI build takes 45 minutes, causing developers to avoid committing frequently. What is the best remediation? → Parallelize test execution and split the pipeline into fast and slow test suites