Azure Interview Questions and Answers for 5 years experience

1. What are the different Azure deployment models?

   • Answer: Azure offers several deployment models, including the classic deployment model (now largely deprecated) and the Resource Manager deployment model. Resource Manager is the recommended approach, offering improved control, automation, and management through JSON or Bicep templates. It allows for defining infrastructure as code and managing resources as a group.

2. Explain Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates.

   • Answer: ARM templates are JSON files that define the infrastructure and configuration of your Azure resources. They allow for infrastructure-as-code (IaC), enabling automation, version control, and repeatable deployments. They specify resource types, properties, and dependencies, ensuring consistent deployments across environments.

3. Describe Azure Virtual Machines (VMs). What are the different VM sizes and how do you choose the appropriate one?

   • Answer: Azure VMs are virtual computers hosted in Azure's cloud. VM sizes (like A-series, D-series, E-series, etc.) vary in CPU, memory, storage, and networking capabilities. Choosing the right size depends on the application's requirements (CPU-intensive, memory-intensive, storage-intensive), expected load, and cost considerations. Azure offers tools and calculators to help with sizing.

4. What are Azure Availability Sets and Availability Zones? What's the difference?

   • Answer: Availability Sets group VMs across multiple underlying hardware to protect against hardware failures within a single datacenter. Availability Zones provide multiple physically separate datacenters within a region, offering higher availability and disaster recovery capabilities. Availability Zones provide greater fault tolerance than Availability Sets.

5. Explain Azure Storage Accounts and the different types of storage offered.

   • Answer: Azure Storage Accounts provide cloud storage for unstructured data like text or binary data. Types include Blob storage (for unstructured data like images and videos), File storage (for file shares), Queue storage (for asynchronous messaging), and Table storage (for NoSQL data). Each type has different characteristics and use cases.

6. How do you manage Azure subscriptions and access control?

   • Answer: Azure subscriptions are managed through the Azure portal, PowerShell, Azure CLI, and ARM templates. Access control is managed using Azure Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), allowing granular permission assignments to users, groups, and applications. This ensures security and restricts access to sensitive resources.

7. Describe Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). What are its key features?

   • Answer: Azure AD is a cloud-based identity and access management (IAM) service. Key features include single sign-on (SSO), multi-factor authentication (MFA), conditional access policies, and integration with on-premises Active Directory. It provides centralized identity management for applications and resources.

8. Explain Azure Virtual Networks (VNets). How do you create and manage them?

   • Answer: Azure VNets are virtual representations of a network. They are created and managed through the Azure portal, PowerShell, CLI, or ARM templates. They provide a private network space to host VMs and other Azure resources, allowing for secure communication between them and the internet.

9. What is Azure Load Balancing and its different types?

   • Answer: Azure Load Balancing distributes network traffic across multiple VMs, improving availability and scalability. Types include Basic Load Balancing (for simple load distribution), Standard Load Balancing (with advanced features like health probes), and Application Gateway (for more advanced layer 7 load balancing).

10. Explain Azure Traffic Manager. How does it differ from Azure Load Balancer?

    • Answer: Azure Traffic Manager directs network traffic to different endpoints (e.g., VMs, web apps) based on various traffic routing methods (e.g., performance-based, geographic-based). Unlike Load Balancers which distribute traffic across healthy instances *within* a region, Traffic Manager distributes traffic across different regions or even different Azure services.

11. What are Azure App Services? What are its key features?

    • Answer: Azure App Service is a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering for hosting web apps, APIs, and mobile backends. Key features include auto-scaling, high availability, deployment slots, and integration with other Azure services.

12. What is Azure Functions? Explain its benefits.

    • Answer: Azure Functions is a serverless compute service that allows you to run code in response to events without managing servers. Benefits include scalability, cost-effectiveness (pay-per-execution), and ease of development.

13. Explain Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

    • Answer: AKS is a managed Kubernetes service that simplifies the deployment, management, and scaling of containerized applications. It handles the complexities of Kubernetes, allowing developers to focus on their applications.

14. What is Azure DevOps? How does it help in the development lifecycle?

    • Answer: Azure DevOps is a platform for collaborating on software development projects. It provides services for source code management (Git), build automation, continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD), testing, and project management, streamlining the software development lifecycle.

15. Explain Azure Monitor and its capabilities.

    • Answer: Azure Monitor is a comprehensive monitoring service that collects and analyzes telemetry data from Azure resources and applications. It provides insights into performance, availability, and security, allowing for proactive issue detection and resolution.

16. What are Azure Log Analytics and Azure Application Insights? How are they related?

    • Answer: Azure Log Analytics is a log management and analysis service that collects and analyzes log data from various sources, including Azure resources and on-premises servers. Azure Application Insights is a specialized tool within Azure Monitor that focuses on monitoring and analyzing application performance. Application Insights data is often stored and analyzed using Log Analytics.

17. What are Azure Automation and Azure Policy?

    • Answer: Azure Automation enables automation of administrative tasks and workflows, reducing manual effort and improving efficiency. Azure Policy defines rules that govern resource configurations, ensuring compliance with organizational standards and security policies.

18. Explain Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery.

    • Answer: Azure Backup provides backup and recovery services for Azure resources and on-premises servers, protecting data from loss. Azure Site Recovery facilitates disaster recovery by replicating VMs and other workloads to a secondary region, ensuring business continuity in case of outages.

19. What are Azure Cognitive Services? Give examples.

    • Answer: Azure Cognitive Services provide pre-trained AI models for various tasks, like speech recognition, computer vision, language understanding, and decision making. Examples include Speech to Text, Face Detection, and Language Translation.

20. Explain Azure Bot Service.

    • Answer: Azure Bot Service is a platform for building and deploying conversational AI bots. It provides tools and services for creating bots that interact with users through various channels like text, voice, and social media.

21. What are Azure Event Hubs?

    • Answer: Azure Event Hubs is a highly scalable event ingestion service that receives and processes massive amounts of data streams from various sources. It's often used for real-time analytics and data processing.

22. Explain Azure Stream Analytics.

    • Answer: Azure Stream Analytics is a real-time stream processing engine that allows you to analyze data streams from various sources, perform complex calculations, and generate insights in real time.

23. What are Azure Cosmos DB and its different APIs?

    • Answer: Azure Cosmos DB is a globally distributed, multi-model database service. It offers various APIs including SQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, Gremlin (for graph databases), and Table.

24. Explain Azure SQL Database.

    • Answer: Azure SQL Database is a fully managed relational database service based on Microsoft SQL Server. It offers high availability, scalability, and security.

25. What are Azure Machine Learning Services?

    • Answer: Azure Machine Learning is a cloud-based platform for building, training, and deploying machine learning models. It provides tools and services for data preparation, model training, and model deployment.

26. Explain Azure Databricks.

    • Answer: Azure Databricks is a managed Apache Spark service that simplifies big data processing and analytics. It provides a collaborative workspace for data scientists and engineers to work with Spark clusters and datasets.

27. What is Azure HDInsight?

    • Answer: Azure HDInsight is a managed Hadoop service offering various open-source big data technologies like Hadoop, Spark, Hive, and HBase. It's used for processing and analyzing large datasets.

28. How do you secure Azure resources? Mention various security measures.

    • Answer: Azure security involves multiple layers, including RBAC for access control, network security groups (NSGs) for network traffic filtering, Azure Security Center for threat detection, Azure Key Vault for secret management, and regular security patching and updates.

29. What are Azure Resource Tags? Why are they important?

    • Answer: Azure Resource Tags are key-value pairs associated with Azure resources. They are crucial for organization, cost management, and automation. They allow for filtering, searching, and grouping resources based on specific criteria.

30. Explain Azure Policy Initiatives.

    • Answer: Azure Policy Initiatives allow you to group multiple Azure policies together and apply them as a single unit. This simplifies management and ensures consistent application of policies across subscriptions and resource groups.

31. What is Azure Blueprint?

    • Answer: Azure Blueprint provides a standardized way to define and deploy reusable sets of Azure resources. This helps ensure consistency across different environments and speeds up deployment processes.

32. How do you monitor the performance of your Azure applications?

    • Answer: Azure provides various monitoring tools like Azure Monitor, Application Insights, and Log Analytics to track application performance metrics, including CPU utilization, memory usage, response times, and error rates. Custom metrics can also be added.

33. How do you troubleshoot Azure network connectivity issues?

    • Answer: Troubleshooting network issues involves checking NSG rules, subnet configurations, route tables, virtual network peering, and using network monitoring tools like Azure Network Watcher. Tools like `nslookup` and `ping` can help determine connectivity issues.

34. Describe your experience with Azure DevOps CI/CD pipelines.

    • Answer: (This requires a personalized answer based on your experience. Describe your experience setting up and managing pipelines, including source code management, build processes, testing, and deployment strategies.)

35. How do you manage Azure costs?

    • Answer: Cost management involves using Azure Cost Management tools, setting up budgets and alerts, utilizing resource tags for cost allocation, right-sizing VMs, and regularly reviewing resource usage to identify areas for optimization.

36. Explain your experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) in Azure.

    • Answer: (This requires a personalized answer based on your experience. Describe your experience using ARM templates or Bicep to define and manage Azure infrastructure, highlighting benefits like automation, version control, and repeatable deployments.)

37. How do you handle Azure resource failures and outages?

    • Answer: Handling failures involves using monitoring tools to detect issues, leveraging Azure's high availability features (like Availability Sets and Availability Zones), implementing disaster recovery strategies (like Azure Site Recovery), and having a well-defined incident response plan.

38. What are your preferred Azure tools and technologies?

    • Answer: (This requires a personalized answer based on your preferences and experience.)

39. Explain your experience with Azure automation accounts.

    • Answer: (This requires a personalized answer based on your experience. Describe your experience creating, managing, and using runbooks to automate tasks within Azure.)

40. How familiar are you with Azure's compliance certifications?

    • Answer: (Discuss familiarity with relevant certifications like ISO 27001, SOC 2, HIPAA, etc., and how they relate to Azure services and security.)

41. Describe your experience with Azure Logic Apps.

    • Answer: (This requires a personalized answer based on your experience. Describe your experience designing, building, and deploying Logic Apps to automate workflows and integrate different services.)

42. Explain your experience with Azure Service Bus.

    • Answer: (This requires a personalized answer based on your experience. Describe your experience using Service Bus for reliable messaging between applications.)

43. How do you ensure high availability and scalability in your Azure deployments?

    • Answer: This involves using features like Availability Sets, Availability Zones, Traffic Manager, Load Balancers, auto-scaling, and designing applications with fault tolerance in mind.

44. What are some best practices for managing Azure subscriptions?

• Answer: Best practices include using a well-defined organizational structure, implementing RBAC, utilizing tagging for cost allocation and management, and regularly reviewing resource utilization.

45. What are some common challenges you've faced working with Azure, and how did you overcome them?

    • Answer: (This requires a personalized answer based on your experiences.)

46. Explain your understanding of Azure's hybrid cloud capabilities.

    • Answer: Azure offers hybrid cloud capabilities through Azure Arc, Azure Stack, and other services, allowing for integration and management of on-premises and cloud resources.

47. How do you stay up-to-date with the latest Azure technologies and updates?

    • Answer: (Describe your methods for staying current, such as Microsoft Learn, Azure documentation, blogs, conferences, and community forums.)

48. What are your salary expectations?

    • Answer: (Provide a salary range based on your research and experience.)

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