Cloud computing is a booming industry in tech. Almost every other person wants to enter the cloud industry. You can land your dream job in the cloud with Microsoft Azure.
Microsoft Azure is one of the leading cloud service providers. It is the second most widely used cloud service provider after Amazon Web Services (AWS). Microsoft Azure is used by almost 80% of Fortune 500 companies.
In this blog, we have compiled the top most asked Microsoft Azure Interview questions with answers. This will make it easy for you to prepare for the interview round. If you have previously worked on a Windows server, Microsoft Azure is the best cloud service for you to learn!
For easy learning, we have divided this blog into the following 4 sections:
- Microsoft Azure Interview Questions for Beginners
- Microsoft Azure Interview Questions for 3 Years Experience
- SQL Azure Interview Questions
- Microsoft Azure Interview Questions for 5 Years Experience
Without further ado, let’s begin with the questions!
Azure Interview Questions for Beginners:
1. What is cloud computing?
- Cloud computing refers to the delivery of computing services – including servers, storage, networking, software, databases, analytics and intelligence over the Internet.
- It is done with a motive to provide faster innovation, resources and economies at scale.
- You can take advantage of many cloud computing services via the Internet.
- You do need to maintain your own servers, you can use the infrastructure provided and maintained by third-party vendors such as Microsoft, AWS, Google, etc.
- You can pay these vendors on the basis of the amount of time you use their servers, popularly known as the ‘pay-as-you-go’ model.
2. What is PaaS, SaaS and IaaS?
- PaaS: It stands for Platform as a Service. It allows you to get a platform to deliver without giving authorization to the OS software.
- SaaS: It stands for Software as a Service. It does not have platform infrastructure software that can be used without direct purchase.
- IaaS: It stands for Infrastructure as a Service. It allows you to get the hardware from the provider as the desired service that can be configured by the user.
3. What are the Azure Cloud services?
- Azure cloud services are a great example of Platform as a Service (PaaS).
- It is the best to support applications that need high scalability, reliability and availability with cost-effective solutions.
- These applications are hosted on virtual VMs and Azure.
- Azure cloud services are used for deploying multi-tier web-based applications in Azure.
- Azure services help in easier and flexible scalability of the application.
- Each role of cloud service has its own purpose and its own configuration files.
4. What is Azure Resource Manager?
- Azure Resource Manager is the deployment and management service for Microsoft Azure.
- You can create, update and delete resources in your Azure account with the help of the management layer.
- This is quite a useful feature when you need to do various tasks such as managing access controls, locks and making sure that the resources are secure after deployment.
5. What is a worker’s role?
Applications that are hosted within worker roles work asynchronous, long-running, or continuous tasks without the need for any user interaction or input.
6. What do you mean by diagnostics in Windows Azure?
- Windows Azure Diagnostic provides the facility to store diagnostic data.
- Data is stored in two forms in Azure. Some data is stored in a table while other is stored in a blob.
- The diagnostic monitor runs in Windows Azure and in the computer’s emulator for collecting data for a role instance.
7. What is a command task in Microsoft Azure?
A command task is an operational window that creates the flow of either single or multiple common while the system is running.
8. What is Azure Active Directory (Azure AD)?
- Azure AD is a cloud-based Identity and Access Management service.
- Through this service, employees of an organization can access external resources like Microsoft 365, the Azure portal, and thousands of other SaaS applications.
- You can also access apps on your corporate intranet network ad also other cloud apps developed for your own organization.
- The Azure AD is used by IT admins, App developers and Microsoft 365, Office 365, Azure, or Dynamics CRM Online subscribers.
9. What is Azure Service Level Agreement (SLA)?
- The SLA is a contract that makes sure that two or more role instances of a role are deployed on Azure, access to that cloud service is for sure!
- It also states that if the role instance process is not in the running state then the detections of such processes will take place.
- If these guarantees are not satisfied at any time then Azure credits a percentage of monthly fees to the user depending on the price model of the corresponding Azure services.
10. What are the instance types presented by Azure?
There are different types of instances on the basis of different needs they are useful in:
- General purpose: CPU to memory ratio is balanced. It provides low to medium traffic servers, small to medium databases. It is the best for testing and development. Largest instance size: Standard_D64_v3 256 GB Memory and 1600 GB SSD Temp Storage
- Compute Optimized: High CPU to memory ratio. It is the best for medium traffic web servers, application servers, and network appliances. Largest instance size: Standard_F72s_V2 144 GB Memory and 576 GB SSD Temp Storage
- Memory-Optimized: High memory to CPU ratio. It works the best for relational database servers, in-memory analytics and medium to large sized caches. Largest instance size: Standard_M128m 3892 GB Memory and 14,336 SSD Temp Storage
- Storage-Optimized: It provides high disk IO and throughput. It is the best suited for Big Data, NoSQL and SQL databases. Largest size instance: Standard_L32s 256 GB Memory and 5630 GB SSD Temp Storage
- GPU: These are the virtual machines (VMs) that have the heavy graphic rendering and video editing. It helps with model training and developing inferences with deep learning. Largest instance size: Standard_ND24rs 448 GB Memory and 2948 GB SSD Temp Storage 4 GPUs and 96 GB Memory
- High-Performance Compute: It provides Azure’s fastest and most powerful CPU virtual machine with optional high throughput interfaces. Largest instance size: Standard_L32s 224 GB Memory and 2000 GB Temp storage
Microsoft Azure Interview Questions for 3 Years Experience:
11. What are the various types of storage offered by Azure?
Azure Blob Storage:
Azure Blob (Binary Large Object) storage allows users to store unstructured data that can include pictures, music, video files, etc. along with metadata.
- It makes sure that the latest version of object is updated when it is changed.
- It provides maximum flexibility to fulfil user’s storage needs.
- REST-based object storage provides unstructured data.
Azure Table Storage:
Table storage allows users to perform deployment with semi-structured datasets and a NoSQL key-value store.
- It is used to build applications that need flexible data schema.
- It follows a strong consistency model, focusing on enterprises.
Azure File Storage:
It is file storage that offers file-sharing capabilities accessible by the SMB (Server Message Block) protocol.
- The data is protected by SMB 3.0 and HTTPS
- Azure manages hardware and Operating System deployments
- It improves on-premises performance and capabilities
Azure Queue Storage:
Queue storage offers messages queueing for large workloads
- It allows users to build flexible applications and separate functions
- It makes sure that the application is scalable and less prone to individual components failing
- It allows queue monitoring that makes sure that the customer needs are met
12. What options are available for deployment environments provided by Azure?
Azure provides two deployment environments. They are as follows:
- Staging environment:
- This type of environment is used for validating the changes of our application before making them go live in the main environment.
- The application is identified through GUID (Globally Unique Identifier) of Azure which has a URL: GUID.clpudapp.net
- Production environment:
- This is the main environment for the applications to go live and can be accessed by the target audience.
- It can be accessed by means of DNS friendly URL: appName.cloudapp.net
13. What is cspack in Azure?
- Cspack is a command-line tool.
- It is used for building service package foles.
- It also helps in preparing the application for deployment in Microsoft Azure or computer emulator.
Cspack tool is used to create .cscfg file which is a cloud service configuration file. It is mainly used to store the following:
- Number of role instances for the deployment of each role in the project.
- The thumbprint of the certificates.
- User-defined configuration and settings.
14. How to create a VM in Azure CLI?
This is how you can create a VM in Azure command-line:
Az vm create ‘
— resource-group myResourceGroup ‘
–name myVM –image win2016datacenter ‘
– -admin-usename Azureuser ‘
– -admin-password myPassword12
15. How to secure Azure Functions?
You can secure Azure functions through the following:
- Security Center
- Log and monitor
- HTTPS
- Functions access keys
- Authentication /authorization
- Permissions
- Secret management
- Data validation
- Set up usage quotas
- Error handling
- Store the data encrypted
- Restricted CORS access
- Disabled remote debugging
- Deployment credentials
- Disabled FTP
- Secure scm endpoint
- Continuous security validation
- Network security
SQL Azure Interview Questions:
16. What is SQL Azure?
- SQL Azure is a cloud-based relational database.
- It is presented by Microsoft itself.
- The service is based on SQL server technology.
17. How many replicas are maintained for each SQL Azure database?
Three replicas can be maintained for each SQL Azure database. One of them is a primary replica. It must be noted that when one replica goes down another replica is promoted.
18. What is SQL Server on Azure VM and what are its use cases?
With the help of SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines (VMs), users can deploy full version of SQL server without managing any underlying infrastructure. The only difference in managing on-premise SQL Server and SQL Server on Azure VM from DBA point of view is that the virtual machine is now in Azure infrastructure cloud.
We can use the SQL Server on Azure VM in the following cases:
- If we want complete control of SQL Server similar to on-prem SQL instance.
- If we use features not supported by Azure SQL Database, Azure managed instance.
- In cases of legacy applications migrations to Azure
- In the cases of lift-and-shift cloud migrations
- Extending on-prem Environments to the cloud
- Development and Test Environments
19. When can the workload on SQL schedule get throttled?
If the database reaches the maximum size then the operations for insert, update, and create will get throttled. Yet, there are policies that do not allow the workload to exploit the shared physical server.
20. What are the limitations of SQL Azure database size at the time?
Currently, the maximum SQL Azure database size can be 250 GB (s0, s1, s2 and s3) or 500 GB (p1, p2, p3 and p6) or 4tb (p11 and p15).
Microsoft Azure Interview Questions for 5 Years Experience:
21. What is Azure App Service?
- Azure App Service is a managed Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering for developers that have a number of arrangement of abilities to the web, mobile and integration scenarios.
- Mobile apps in Azure App Service provide a very adaptable, universally accessible mobile application development platform for Enterprise Developers and System Integrators.
22. What is meant by Azure Scheduler?
Azure Scheduler helps us to implement certain background trigger events or activities like calling HTTPS/S endpoints or to present a message on the queue on any schedule.
With the help of using Azure Schedule, the jobs present in the cloud call services present within and outside of the Azure to execute those jobs on-demand that are routinely on a repeated regular schedule or start those jobs ar a future specified date.
23. What are the differences between the Azure Table Storage and the Azure SQL service?
The difference between Azure Table Storage and Azure SQL Service are as follows:
Table Storage Service | Azure SQL Table |
1. It has a NoSQL type of storage on Azure. | 1. It has a relational storage structure on Azure. |
2. The data is stored in key-value format and is called Entity. | 2. The data is stored in rows and columns combination in an SQL table. |
3. The data schema is not enforced for storage. | 3. The data schema is enforced for storing data. Error occurs if schema is violated. |
4. The partition and row key combination are unnique for each identity. | 4. With the help of primary or unique key, uniqueness can be defined. |
5. There is no relationship between tables. | 5. Relationship between tables can be created with the help of foreign keys. |
6. The table storage service can be used gor storing log information or diagnostics data. | 6. The Azure SQL table can be used for transaction-based applications. |
24. What is dead letter queue?
Messages are placed on the dead-letter sub-queue by the messaging sstem in the following cases:
- Dead-lettering for expired messages is set to true in a queue or subscription when a message expires.
- When the max delivery count for a message is surpassed on a queue or subscription.
- When a filter evaluation exception happens in a subscription and dead-lettering takes over on filtering evaluation exceptions.
25. What feature of Azure can stop the issue of high load on the application when there is no man support on the flow?
The issue can be stopped by using VM Scale sets. It is done so by defining proper configuration and conditions to provide a new VM when the load to the application increases.
- Azure VM Scale Sets allows the developer to create and manage a group of VMs that are load balanced.
- They scale sets can be configured to increase or decrease the count of VMs based on the application demand or on the basis of a pre-defined schedule.
- Scale sets ensure high availability of applications. It lets developers to manage, update and configure large VMs centrally.
- They also support the development of large-scale applications that support Big Data, compute and big workloads.
- Azure scale sets can support up to 1,000 VMs. In case of custom VM images, the limit i 600 VMs.
FAQs:
Cloud computing refers to the delivery of computing services – including servers, storage, networking, software, databases, analytics and intelligence over the Internet. It is done with a motive to provide faster innovation, resources and economies at scale.
Microsoft Azure is Microsoft’s public cloud computing platform that provides a range of cloud services such as analytics, storage, compute and networking.
Azure mainly has fully managed relational, NoSQL and in-memory databases.
Azure AD is a cloud-based Identity and Access Management service. Through this service, employees of an organization can access external resources like Microsoft 365, the Azure portal, and thousands of other SaaS applications.
- Azure cloud services are a great example of Platform as a Service (PaaS).
- It is the best to support applications that need high scalability, reliability and availability with cost-effective solutions.
- These applications are hosted on virtual VMs and Azure.
Azure SQL database is a fully managed Platform as a Service (PaaS) database engine.
- SQL Azure is a cloud-based relational database.
- It is presented by Microsoft itself.
- The service is based on SQL server technology.
- Cspack is a command-line tool.
- It is used for building service package foles.
