With the growing level of cloud technology in Microsoft, there has been the introduction of the latest skills and areas that individuals are trying to master. As a result, the interest in clearing the Microsoft Azure certifications for enhancing new skills has shown a rapid increase. But, on the other side, this has also increased the level of competition in the job market because everyone is fighting for the same job. So, you must know that with earning a certification it is equally important to prepare for the job interview as well.
Related to this, for those who are preparing to become Azure Professional or those who have just started. In this blog, we will be discussing the topmost questions to help you pass the interview.
Top Microsoft Azure Interview Questions
Basic Questions:
1. What is Microsoft Azure?
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform that provides 200+ products and cloud services planned in a way to help in bringing new solutions to life for solving challenges and creating the future. This also provides the solutions for building, running, and managing applications over multiple clouds, on-premises, and at the edge using the tools and frameworks of your choice.
2. According to you, what makes Azure a better cloud provider?
- Firstly, the important thing is to trust your cloud. Microsoft Azure provides security from the ground up with a team of experts and proactive compliance.
- Secondly, here you can use the hybrid smoothly. This offers on-premises over multiple clouds and at the edge. There you can integrate and manage your environments with services made for the hybrid cloud.
- Thirdly, with having the support of all languages and frameworks, you can create the way you want and deploy where you want to.
- Lastly, Microsoft’s continuous innovation supports your development today and your product visions for tomorrow.
3. You have selected the Microsoft Azure service, do you think it is secure?
Yes, Azure puts security and privacy as a priority. That is to say, Microsoft has always committed to offer the highest levels of trust, transparency, standards conformance, and regulatory compliance. This offers the most comprehensive set of compliance offerings of any cloud service provider.
4. Name some of the top customers who are using Azure?
Of the Fortune 500 companies, 95 percent depend on Azure for trusted cloud services. However, companies of all sizes and maturities use Azure in their digital transformation. Some of them include:
- ASOS
- eBay
- Daimler AG
- McKesson
- Samsung
- BMW
5. Is Microsoft Azure only available for Windows apps and services?
No, Azure has support for open source technologies that provide you access to use various tools and technologies. Moreover, this lets you run any application virtually using your data source on your operating system or on your device.
6. Is Azure cost-effective?
Yes, with having no upfront cost Azure follows the pay for what you use model. This provides flexible purchasing and pricing options for all your cloud scenarios which include the Azure Hybrid Benefit and offers extensive tools for helping you in managing your cloud spend.
7. According to you, what makes Azure different from other clouds?
Azure is the only compatible hybrid cloud that delivers unparalleled developer productivity. This is the ability for providing comprehensive, multilayered security and the largest compliance coverage of any cloud provider. Moreover, in this, you have to pay less for Windows Server and SQL Server.
8. Explain the difference between AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud on the basis of Availability Zones?
These cloud providers are well known for hosting in multiple locations worldwide. But, there is a difference between them in the availability zones.
- Firstly, AWS has 66 availability zones with 12 more on the way.
- Secondly, Microsoft Azure has 54 regions globally and is available in 140 countries.
- Lastly, GCP has been available in 20 regions around the world with 3 more on their way.
Technical Questions
9. Explain the types of roles in Microsoft Azure?
There are three types of roles:
1. Web Role
This is for deploying websites by using language that supports the IIS platform customized for running the web apps.
2. Worker Role
This is for executing the process that runs in the background by
3. VM Role
This helps in scheduling the windows services and tasks.
10. Explain Azure Active Directory (AD) service?
Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) refers to a multi-tenant cloud-based identity and directory management service which is a mixture of core directory services, application access management, and identity protection.
11. What is the main role of the Azure Service Level Agreement (SLA)?
Azure SLA service makes sure that while sending two or more role instances for each role, access to your cloud service will be maintained 9 out of 10 times. This explains Microsoft’s commitments for uptime and connectivity.
12. What is the role of Azure Diagnostics API?
Azure Diagnostics API is used for collecting diagnostic data like performance monitoring, and system event log from the applications that are running on Azure. Further, it can be used for:
- Firstly, monitoring of the data
- Secondly, building visual chart representations
- Thirdly, creating performance metric alerts.
13. What is the Azure storage key?
Azure storage key helps in authentication for validating access for the azure storage service in order for controlling access of data depending on the project requirements. However, while creating a storage account, Azure generates two 512-bit storage account access keys. These keys further use shared key authorizations for authorizing access to data in the storage account.
14. Define SQL Azure database.
Azure SQL Database refers to a fully managed platform as a service (PaaS) database engine that controls most of the database management functions like upgrading, patching, backups, and monitoring without user involvement. This always running on the latest stable version of the SQL Server database engine. Moreover, it consists of PaaS capabilities that help in focusing on the domain-specific database administration and optimization activities that are critical for your business.
15. What is cmdlet in Azure?
A cmdlet is basically a command used in the Microsoft Azure PowerShell environment. The cmdlets are collected by the Azure PowerShell that automates the script in the command line. However, Azure PowerShell is a set of cmdlets for managing Azure resources directly from the PowerShell command line.
16. What is the use of the migration assistant tool in Microsoft Azure?
The migration assistant tool validates the IIS installation and identifies the sites that can be migrated to the Azure websites. This also spots the elements that cannot be migrated or are unsupported on the platform. Moreover, it migrates your websites and associated databases to Azure with just a few clicks.
17. Which service in Azure can be used to manage resources?
Azure Resource Manager manages the resources in Microsoft Azure. It uses a simple JSON script for deploying, managing, and deleting all the resources together.
18. Explain Virtual Machine scale sets in Azure.
VM scale sets refer to the Azure compute resource whose function is to deploy and manage a set of identical VMs. These scale sets provide a simple process for creating large-scale services targeting big compute, big data, and containerized workloads if all the VMs configured the same.
19. Can you name the principal segments of the Azure platform?
There are three principal segments in Azure:
1. Windows Azure Compute
This segment provides code that a hosting environment manages. Moreover, it consists of three roles which are Web Role, Worker Role, and VM Role.
2. Windows Azure Storage
This provides storage solutions using the services like Queue, Tables, Blobs, and Windows Azure Drives (VHD).
3. Windows Azure AppFabric
This consists of services like Service bus, Access, Caching, Integration, and Composite.
20. Define autoscaling in Azure?
Azure is well known for providing scaling services that work automatically when required. The scaling depends on the use, time, and traffic that comes to our application. For example – The traffic will be higher during the validation on any application or website. Then Azure automatically modifies the setting and provides the resources as needed.
21. What are Windows virtual machines in Azure?
Azure Virtual Machines (VM) or Windows Virtual Machines refers to an on-demand, scalable computing resource that Azure provides. VM helps in taking over the control of the computing environment. Moreover, the Azure VM provides the flexibility of virtualization without having any need for buying and maintaining the physical hardware running it. But, there is a need for maintaining the VM during performing tasks like configuring, patching, and installing the software running it.
22. I want to create a VM. What things should I consider before creating a VM?
There is always a multitude of design considerations while creating an application infrastructure in Azure. However, before starting, take a look at the following aspects of a VM:
- Firstly, the names of your application resources
- Secondly, the location where the resources are stored
- Thirdly, the size of the VM
- Then, the maximum number of VMs that can be built
- After that, the operating system that the VM runs
- Next, the configuration of the VM after it starts
- Lastly, the related resources that the VM requires
23. What are the essential things to be considered before selecting a cloud provider?
- Firstly, the provider should have a track record of stability and be in a healthy financial position with sufficient capital for operating successfully over the long term. They must have established risk management policies and a formal process for assessing third-party service providers and vendors.
- Secondly, the providers should be able to promise you a basic level of service that you are comfortable with. They must provide the performance reports and control access for tracking and monitoring services.
- Thirdly, they must have mechanisms for easily deploying, managing, and upgrading your software and applications. Also, they should use standard APIs and data transforms for building connections to the cloud.
- Lastly, there must be a comprehensive security infrastructure for all levels and types of cloud services. They must offer policies and procedures for ensuring the integrity of customer data should be in place and operational.
24. Can you provide the name of the services that Azure offers?
The Azure cloud platform provides cloud services designed for helping in building, running, and managing applications over multiple clouds using various tools and frameworks. However, some of the top services include:
- Compute
- Mobile
- Web
- Storage
- Data Analytics
- Networking
- AI and Machine Learning
- Media and content delivery network (CDN)
- Integration.
25. Define Azure Cognitive Search.
Azure Cognitive Search refers to a cloud search service with in-built AI capabilities that enhance all types of information for helping you in identifying and exploring relevant content at scale. This comes with cognitive skills for vision, language, and speech, or for using custom machine learning models in order for uncovering insights from all types of content. Further, this also provides semantic search capability, which uses advanced machine learning techniques for understanding user intent and contextually rank the most relevant search results.
26. Describe Service fabric stateful and stateless micro-services?
Service Fabric helps in creating applications that consist of microservices. However, the stateless micro-service doesn’t maintain a mutable state outside a request. For example, Azure Cloud Service’s worker role. On the other hand, a stateful microservice maintains a mutable, authoritative state after the request and its response.
27. Is it possible for building a VM using Azure Resource Manager in a Virtual Network developed using classic deployment?
No, the Azure portal does not support this.
28. Define Availability Set?
An availability set refers to a logical grouping of VMs that provides access to Azure for understanding how your application is created for providing redundancy and availability. It is recommended that two or more VMs are built within an availability set for providing a highly available application and for meeting the 99.9% Azure SLA. However, there is no such cost for the Availability Set, you only pay for each VM instance that you create.
29. What is the role of an Azure resource manager?
Azure Resource Manager refers to a deployment and management service for Azure. Thus offers a management layer for helping in creating, updating, and deleting resources in your Azure account. This is loaded with management features such as access control, locks, and tags for securing and organizing your resources after deployment.
30 Which service should I use for achieving high availability by autoscaling to create thousands of VMs in minutes?
Virtual Machine Scale Sets can be used. This helps in creating large-scale services for batch, big data, and container workloads. Further, you can create and manage a group of heterogeneous load-balanced virtual machines (VMs). Moreover, here you can increase or decrease the number of VMs automatically in response to demand or depending on a schedule you define. This also helps in centrally managing, configuring, and updating thousands of VMs and provides higher availability and security for your applications.
31. I want to accelerate app development using an event-driven, serverless architecture. Which Azure service should I use?
You can use the Azure function, it helps in developing more efficiently with Functions. In other words, this is an event-driven serverless compute platform used for solving complex orchestration problems. Moreover, you can create and debug locally without any need for additional setup, deploy and operate at scale in the cloud and integrate services using triggers and bindings.
32. Define Azure Cloud Services.
Azure Cloud services refer to Platform as a service (PaaS) technology designed for deploying web and cloud applications that are scalable, reliable, and inexpensive to operate. This has the support of many languages. And, using this you can simplify the management of your applications while ensuring high availability. Moreover, it lets you scale your environment automatically depending on the demand and reduce costs. Further, it comes with integrated health monitoring and load balancing.
33. Differentiate Fault Domain and Update Domain?
- Fault domain defines the group of the underlying hardware that has the option to shares a common power source and network switch. Every fault domain consists of some racks with each having a VM. While creating a virtual machine within an availability set, your VM’s are automatically distributed across the fault domains in the Azure platform.
- An update domain defines the group of the underlying hardware which has the ability to reboot or can withstand maintenance. While creating a VM within an availability set, your VM’s are automatically distributed over the update domains by the Azure platform. Further, this makes sure that at least one instance of your applications always remains working.
34. What are Azure Service Bus Queues and Storage Queues?
1. Storage queues
Azure Queue Storage refers to a service for storing large numbers of messages. In this, you can have access to messages from anywhere globally via authenticated calls using HTTP or HTTPS. However, a queue message can be up to 64 KB in size. Further, it used for creating a backlog of work for processing asynchronously.
2. Service Bus queues
Service bus queues help in queuing, publishing, and subscribing advanced integration patterns. They are a general-purpose technology used for a wide variety of scenarios that includes the communication between web and worker roles in a multi-tier Azure application.
35. What is Azure Service Fabric?
Azure Service Fabric refers to a distributed platform created by Microsoft for facilitating the development, deployment, and management of highly scalable and customizable applications. The applications built in this environment contain the detached microservices which further communicate with each other using service application programming interfaces.
36. Define the following: CSPack and Csrun.
1. CSPack
This is basically a command-line tool used for generating a service package file (.cspkg). Further, it prepares an application for deployment, either to Windows Azure or for the compute emulator.
2. Csrun
This refers to a command-line tool used for deploying a packaged application to the Windows Azure compute emulator. And, it has the ability to manages the running service.
37. What is a Public Cloud?
Public clouds are basically owned and utilized by third-party cloud service providers. They further deliver their computing resources, like servers and storage, over the Internet. For example, Microsoft Azure is a public cloud. By using a public cloud, all hardware, software, and other supporting infrastructure is owned and managed by the cloud provider.
38. What is a Private cloud?
A private cloud refers to cloud computing resources that are used by a single business or organization. This can be physically located on the company’s on-site data center. However, some companies also pay third-party service providers for hosting their private cloud.
39. Define Hybrid cloud.
Hybrid clouds refer to the combination of public and private clouds bounded together by technology. However, by allowing data and applications for moving between private and public clouds, a hybrid cloud gives your business greater flexibility, more deployment options, and helps in optimizing your existing infrastructure, security, and compliance.
40. What is Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)?
IaaS uses a pay-as-you-go model for taking IT infrastructure, servers, and VM, storage, networks, operating systems from a cloud provider. This refers to a type of cloud computing service that offers essential compute, storage, and networking resources.
41. Define Platform as a service (PaaS).
Platform as a service refers to cloud computing services used for supplying an on-demand environment for developing, testing, delivering, and managing software applications. This is designed for making it easier for developers to build web or mobile apps, without any need for setting up or managing the underlying infrastructure of servers, storage, network, and databases needed for development.
42. What is the role of the dead letter queue in Azure?
The role of the dead-letter queue is to hold messages that can’t be delivered to any receiver, or messages that can no longer be processed. After this, messages can be removed from the DLQ and inspected. Using the help of an operator an application might correct issues and resubmit the message and log the fact that there was an error. However, the DLQ is mostly similar to any other queue, except that messages can only be submitted via the dead-letter operation of the parent entity.
43. What is the role of Table storage in Azure?
Azure Table storage refers to a service that stores non-relational structured data in the cloud by providing a key/attribute store with a schemaless design. This stores flexible datasets like user data for web applications address books, device information, or other types of metadata. Moreover, it has a tendency for storing large amounts of structured data. Being a NoSQL datastore, it accepts authenticated calls from inside and outside the Azure cloud.
44. Can you provide some of the uses of Azure table storage?
Further, the Common uses of Table storage include:
- Firstly, storing TBs of structured data having ability to serve web-scale applications
- Secondly, storing datasets that don’t need complex joins, foreign keys, or stored procedures and can be denormalized for fast access
- Then, using a clustered index for quickly querying data
- Lastly, using the OData protocol and LINQ queries with WCF Data Service .NET Libraries for accessing data.
45. Define NSG.
NSG or Network Security Group contains the list of ACL (Access Control List) rules which decide either to allow or deny the network traffic to subnets or NICs (Network Interface Card) connected to a subnet. However, when NSG is associated with a subnet, then the ACL rules are applied to all the Virtual Machines in that subnet.
46. What do you understand by the term Azure Redis Cache?
Azure Redis cache refers to an open-source, in-memory Redis cache system maintained by Azure. This is used for helping web applications in improving their performance by fetching data from the backend database. Then, storing the data into the Redis cache for the first request and fetching data from the Redis cache for all subsequent requests.
47. What steps will you perform if you face a drive failure?
For this,
- Firstly, ensure that the Azure Storage functions without fail and check if the drive is mounted or not.
- Then, quickly replace the drive for making it remount and begin the formatting process.
48. How can we deploy Azure virtual machines on a physical server that can only be used by your organization?
For this, you can use Azure Dedicated Host. This offers physical servers that host one or more Azure virtual machines. Using this, your server is dedicated only to your organization and workloads with no involvement of other customers. This host-level isolation further helps in addressing the compliance requirements. Lastly, after provisioning the host, you gain visibility and control over the server infrastructure and then, you can regulate the host’s maintenance policies.
49. Explain Transient errors (transient faults) in Azure?
A transient error or transient fault has an underlying cause that resolves itself. However, a random cause of transient errors is when the Azure system quickly shifts hardware resources for load-balancing various workloads. Most of these reconfiguration events finish in less than 60 seconds. During this reconfiguration time span, there can be issues with connecting to your database in SQL Database. Further, the applications that connect to your database should be created to expect these transient errors. And, for handling them, implement retry logic in their code instead of surfacing them to users as application errors.
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50. Define Azure Blob Storage.
Azure Blob storage refers to Microsoft’s object storage solution for the cloud. This is designed for storing massive amounts of unstructured data. This helps in:
- Firstly, serving images or documents directly to a browser.
- Secondly, storing files for distributed access.
- Thirdly, streaming video and audio.
- Then, writing to log files.
- Lastly, storing data for backup and restore disaster recovery, and archiving.
51. Define the following in Blob Storage.
1. Storage Account
A storage account is for providing a unique namespace in Azure for your data. Every object stored in Azure Storage has an address that includes your unique account name. Further, the combination of the account name and the Azure Storage blob endpoint creates the base address for the objects in your storage account.
2. Containers
A container is for organizing a set of blobs to a directory in a file system. There can be an unlimited number of containers in a storage account and a container can store an unlimited number of blobs.
3. Blobs
Azure Storage has three types of blobs:
- Firstly, Block blobs for storing text and binary data.
- Secondly, Append blobs. They are built from blocks like block blobs but they perform append operations.
- Lastly, Page blobs for storing random access files up to 8 TiB in size.
52. What is Azure Scheduler?
Azure Scheduler is used for invoking certain background trigger events or activities such as calling HTTP/S endpoints or posting a message on the storage queue on any schedule. Thus, making it complete for recurring actions like cleaning up logs, kicking off backups, and other maintenance tasks. This further, allows the integration of jobs into your applications that run immediately on a recurring schedule, or anytime in the future.
53. Define Azure Files.
Azure Files provides completely managed file shares in the cloud that are accessible via the industry standard Server Message Block (SMB) protocol or Network File System (NFS) protocol. The Azure file shares can be mounted at the same time by cloud or on-premises deployments. Further, you can access SMB and NFS file shares from Windows, Linux, and macOS clients.
54. What is Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)?
Azure Kubernetes Services for deploying and managing containerized applications easily. This provides:
- Firstly, a serverless Kubernetes
- Secondly, an integrated continuous integration
- Thirdly, continuous delivery (CI/CD) experience
- Lastly, enterprise-grade security and governance.
55. What is Serverless computing?
Serverless computing focuses on creating app functionality without spending time continually managing the servers and infrastructure required to do so. The cloud provider controls the setup, capacity planning, and server management for you. However, Serverless architectures are highly scalable and event-driven and they only use resources when a specific function or trigger occurs.
56. Explain the various Serverless application patterns in Azure?
1. Serverless functions
This helps in accelerating the development by using an event-driven model, with triggers that automatically run code to respond to events and bindings to smoothly integrate additional services.
2. Serverless Kubernetes
Developers bring their own containers to fully managed, Kubernetes-orchestrated clusters that have the ability to automatically scale up and down with sudden changes in traffic on spiky workloads.
3. Serverless workflows
This pattern takes a low-code/no-code approach for simplifying the orchestration of combined tasks. Moreover, developers can integrate various services without coding those interactions, or learning new APIs or specifications.
4. Serverless application environments
Using this, both the back end and front end are hosted on fully managed services that control scaling, security, and compliance requirements.
5. Serverless API gateway
This refers to a centralized, fully managed entry point for serverless backend services. Moreover, it helps developers for publishing, securing, managing, and analyzing APIs on a global scale.
57. Can you quickly explain why Azure is better than AWS?
- Firstly, the organizations globally recognize Microsoft Azure over Amazon Web Services (AWS) as the most trusted cloud for enterprise and hybrid infrastructure.
- Secondly, you need to pay less in Azure. That is to say, AWS is more expensive for Windows Server and SQL Server. Moreover, there are existing Windows Server and SQL Server licenses with Software Assurance which helps in reducing the pay rate.
- Thirdly, it provides full integration with Office 365 and Active Directory.
- Lastly, it offers three additional years of security updates for free when you move your Windows Server or SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 workloads to Azure.
58. What is the role of the hybrid cloud in Azure?
Hybrid clouds refer to the combination of public and private clouds bounded together by technology. However, by allowing data and applications for moving between private and public clouds, a hybrid cloud gives your business greater flexibility, more deployment options, and helps in optimizing your existing infrastructure, security, and compliance.
59. Define Azure Traffic Manager.
Azure Traffic Manager refers to a DNS-based traffic load balancer that provides access for distributing traffic to your public-facing applications over the global Azure regions. This also provides public endpoints with high availability and quick responsiveness. Moreover, it uses DNS for directing the client requests to the appropriate service endpoint depending on a traffic-routing method. Further, you can also keep a check on every endpoint using health monitoring. Lastly, it offers traffic-routing methods and endpoint monitoring options for suiting various application requirements and automatic failover models.
60. Define cloud service deployment.
A cloud service deployment refers to an instance of a cloud service deployed to the Azure staging or production environment. Using this, you can manage and maintain deployments in both staging and production.
Final Words
Above, we have covered the top Microsoft Azure interview questions best for both beginners and professionals. We know that Microsoft Azure is best known for providing solutions using its various services designed for all tasks. So, getting into this area will provide you only benefit without having to think about anything. But, for this, it is necessary that you should put your knowledge and skills together for covering all the questions and crack the interview. Just start your Microsoft Azure journey, use the questions above and enhance your level of knowledge, and don’t forget to comment if there is any doubt.
