Basic Azure Interview Questions
1. Why Did You Choose a Career in Cloud Computing?
These types of Azure interview questions require a thoughtful, honest response. By thinking through your answer ahead of time, you’ll be ready to say something your interviewer will approve of. Show that you care about the field and that you have a passion for cloud computing and the problems it can solve.
2. Why Did You Choose Microsoft Azure and Not Aws?
Your response to this question is based on your own background and experience. Maybe you come from a developer background, so Azure appealed to you. Maybe your first cloud computing role just happened to be with Azure. As with the question above, the key here is to be ready to give an intelligent answer to the question.
3. How Does Microsoft Azure Compare to Aws?
This might be a matter of opinion for you, so answer as you see fit. In general, people say Azure is a better choice because it’s a Microsoft product, making it easier for organizations already using Windows Server, SQL Server, and Exchange to move to the cloud. In addition, because of Microsoft’s deep knowledge of developer tools, Azure offers multiple app deployment options for developers, which makes it stand out against AWS.
4. How Did You Learn Azure?
Did you learn Azure through a certification? Through on-the-job experience? A little of each? However you learned it, make sure to demonstrate to the interviewer that you have practical experience (if you’re new to the field) and that you are continuing to learn.
5. Tell Me About a Problem You Solved at Your Prior Job.
This is something to spend some time on when you’re preparing responses to possible Azure interview questions. As a cloud architect, you need to show that you are a good listener and problem solver, as well as a good communicator. Yes, you need to know the technology, but cloud computing does not usually involve sitting isolated in a cubicle. You’ll have stakeholders to listen to, problems to solve, and options to present. When you answer questions like these, try to convey that you are a team player and a good communicator, in addition to being a really good Azure architect.
6. What is the difference between SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS?
This is one of the most common Azure interview questions. Cloud Computing has three types of service models, that are Iaas, Paas and Saas.
| Infrastructure as a Service(IaaS) | Platform as a Service(PaaS) | Software as a Service(SaaS) |
| It provides users with components such as OS, networking capabilities, etc. This is a paid service, based on usage and can be used to host applications. | It enables developers to build and work with applications without having to worry about the infrastructure or management of the hosting environment. | It involves applications being consumed and used by organizations. Usually, organizations pay for their use of the application |
| Example – Azure Virtual Machine, Azure VNET | Example – Azure SQL, Azure Storage | Example – Office 365, Salesforce |
Azure Interview Questions and Answers for Experienced
7. What are the instance types offered by Azure?Azure offers a number of different instance types based on what needs they fulfill.
- General Purpose – CPU to memory ratio is balanced. Provides low to medium traffic web servers, small to medium databases and is ideal 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. Best suited for medium traffic web servers, application servers, batch processes, 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. Best suited for relational database servers, in-memory analytics, and medium to large caches
Largest instance size: Standard_M128m
3892 GB Memory and 14,336 GB SSD Temp Storage
- Storage Optimized – Provides high disk IO and throughput. Best suited for Big Data, NoSQL and SQL Databases
Largest instance size: Standard_L32s
256 GB Memory and 5630 GB SSD Temp Storage
- GPU – Virtual Machines that specialize in heavy graphic rendering and video editing. It also helps with model training and inferencing 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 – Provides Azure’s fastest and powerful CPU virtual machines with optional high throughput interfaces
Largest instance size: Standard_L32s
224 GB Memory and 2000 GB SSD Temp Storage
8. What are the deployment environments offered by Azure?This is one of the most frequently asked Azure interview questions, and you must know the answer. Azure offers two deployment environments:
Staging Environment:- It provides a platform to validate changes to your application before it can be made live in the production environment
- In this stage, the app can be identified using the Azure’s Globally Unique Identifier (GUID) in URL form (GUID.cloudapp.net)
- This environment is used to store the live application
- It can be differentiated from the staging environment with an URL that’s more DNS friendly (servicename.cloudapp.net)
| Repetitive / Verbose Monitoring | Minimal Monitoring |
| It collects metrics based on performance | It is a default configuration method |
| It allows a close analysis of data fed during the process of application | It allows a close analysis of data fed during the process of application |
When we compare both in terms of services, Azure ML Studio wins the verdict since it has Classification, Regression, Anomaly Detection, Clustering, Recommendation, and Ranking features.
On the other hand, GCP Cloud AutoML has Clustering, Regression, and Recommendation features. Moreover, Azure has a drag and drop options that make the process easier to carry out.
11. What are the advantages of Scaling in Azure?Azure performs scaling with the help of a feature known as Autoscaling. Autoscaling helps to deal with changing demands in Cloud Services, Mobile Services, Virtual Machines, and Websites. Below are a few of its advantages:
- Maximizes application performance
- Scale up or down based on demand
- Schedule scaling to particular time periods
- Highly cost-effective
This one’s another regular question from the list of Azure interview questions.
| Windows Active Directory | Azure Active Directory |
| It is a directory service that facilitates working with interconnected, complex and different network resources in a unified manner | Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is Microsoft’s multi-tenant, cloud-based directory and identity management service |
| Uses 5 layers to store data, store user details, issue and manage certifications, etc. | Uses 5 layers to store data, store user details, issue and manage certifications, etc. |
| Works with an emphasis on on-premises units like applications, file services, printers, etc. | Emphasizes on web-based services that use RESTful interfaces |
Azure offers two types of queues:
Storage Queues:- It is a part of Azure’s Storage infrastructure
- It provides messaging within and between services
- It is best suited when users need to store more than 80 GB of messages in queues
- It can provide side logs of all transactions executed against the user’s queues
- It is a part of Azure’s messaging infrastructure
- It integrates application or application components that span multiple communication protocols, network environments, etc.
- It provides a FIFO style of delivery
- The user’s queue size has to remain under 80 GB
Azure Resource Manager enables users to manage their usage of application resources. Few of the advantages of Azure Resource Manager are:
- ARM helps deploy, manage and monitor all the resources for an application, a solution or a group
- Users can be granted access to resources they require
- It obtains comprehensive billing information for all the resources in the group
- Provisioning resources is made much easier with the help of templates
a. ASP.NET
b. PHP
c. WCF
d. All of the mentioned
Answer: a) ASP.NET
16. How has integrating hybrid cloud been useful for Azure?The Hybrid Cloud boosts productivity by using Azure and the Azure stack for building and deploying applications for the cloud and on-premises applications. Integrating hybrid cloud been useful for Azure in the following ways:
- It obtains greater efficiency with a combination of Azure services and DevOps processes and tools
- Users can take advantage of constantly updated Azure services and other Azure Marketplace applications
- It enables it to be deployed regardless of its location, the cloud, or on-premises.
- This enables applications to be created at a higher speed
SQL Azure Federation provides tools that can enable developers to access or share databases among themselves in SQL Azure.
- It enables users to take advantage of resources within the cloud
- It allows users to have their own database or share databases amongst each other
- It reduces the possibility of a single point of failure
- It provides cost-effectiveness, by using cloud resources only when needed
Storage questions are very commonly asked during an Azure Interview. Azure has four different types of storage. They are:
Azure Blob StorageBlob Storage enables users to store unstructured data that can include pictures, music, video files, etc. along with their metadata.
- When an object is changed, it is verified to ensure it is of the latest version.
- It provides maximum flexibility to optimize the user’s storage needs.
- Unstructured data is available to customers through REST-based object storage
Table Storage enables users to perform deployment with semi-structured datasets and a NoSQL key-value store.
- It is used to create applications requiring flexible data schema
- It follows a strong consistency model, focusing on enterprises
File Storage provides file-sharing capabilities accessible by the SMB (Server Message Block) protocol
- The data is protected by SMB 3.0 and HTTPS
- Azure takes care of managing hardware and operating system deployments
- It improves on-premises performance and capabilities
Queue Storage provides message queueing for large workloads
- It enables users to build flexible applications and separate functions
- It ensures the application is scalable and less prone to individual components failing
- It enables queue monitoring which helps ensure customer demands are met
Text Analysis API is a set of web services that can be used for text analysis. It is used to analyze unstructured text for sentiment analysis and keyphrase extraction. It provides results that range between 0 and 1, to elicit a positive or negative sentiment.
When a new model is created, it doesn’t need to be designed and trained, users need to add the data and call the service to obtain the sentiment analysis.
20. What are the advantages of Azure Queue Storage?Queue storage enables message queueing for large workloads in a simple, cost-effective, and durable manner. Few of its advantages are:
- It provides rich client libraries for Java, Android,C++, PHP, Ruby, etc.
- It enables users to build flexible apps and separate functions for greater durability
- It ensures users’ applications are scalable and less prone to individual component failure
- It enables queue monitoring to ensure servers aren’t overwhelmed by sudden traffic bursts
A cloud service role is a set of managed and load-balanced virtual machines that work together to perform tasks. The two kinds of Azure Web Service roles are:
Web Roles- It is a cloud service role that is used to run web applications developed in programming languages supported by IIS (Internet Information Services) like ASP.NET, PHP, etc.
- It automatically deploys and hosts applications through the users IIS
- It runs applications and other tasks that don’t require IIS. It performs supporting background tasks along with web roles
- It doesn’t use IIS and runs user applications standalone
Service Fabric provides a platform that makes the process of developing microservices and managing the application lifecycle easier.
- It produces applications with a faster time to market
- It supports Windows/ Linux, on-premises or other clouds
- It provides the ability to scale up to a thousand machine
A client wants the front end of his/ her application to be hosted on Azure, but wants the database to be hosted on-premises.
Solution – The ideal solution in this scenario is to use Azure VNET based “Point to Site”. It’s best suited for scenarios where there are only a limited number of resources that need to be connected
24. What is the Azure Traffic Manager?Azure Traffic Manager is a traffic load balancer that enables users to provide high availability and responsiveness by distributing traffic in an optimal manner across global Azure regions.
- It provides multiple automatic failover options
- It helps reduce application downtime
- It enables the distribution of user traffic across multiple locations
- It enables users to know where customers are connecting from
25. How can Azure handle this situation?
You need to isolate network traffic among VMs in a subnet, which is part of a Virtual Network with little downtime and impact on users?
Solution – This would ensure that the virtual machines are kept isolated without the need for additional security, like a Network Security Group.
26. With respect to Azure, what is public, private, and hybrid cloud?
Public Cloud – Every component that the user is using in his/ her application are running only on Azure
Private Cloud – Azure services are being run within an on-premises data center or on-premises data centers are used by the user to host systems or applications
Hybrid Cloud – Combines features of both Public and Private cloud. Some of the user’s components are being run on Azure and others within an on-premises datacenter
27. What kind of storage is best suited to handle unstructured data?
Questions on Blob Storage can be seen in the list of Azure Interview Questions.
Blob Storage provides storage capacity for data. It places data into different tiers based on how often they’re accessed.
- Any type of unstructured data can be stored
- Data integrity is maintained every time an object is changed
- It helps to increase app performance and reduces bandwidth consumption
28. How do you set up an Azure Virtual Machine?
Setting up a VM is one of the most important Azure Interview Questions.
The below image would explain clearly how to set up an Azure Virtual Machine:
29. How do you handle this scenario?
You need to make sure your Virtual Machines are able to communicate securely with each other to ensure security.
Solution – Azure Virtual Network enables Azure resources to communicate with each other, the internet, or on-premises networks securely.
- Users can create their own private networks
- It provides users with an isolated and highly secure environment for applications
- All traffic stays within the Azure network
- It allows users to design their own networks
30. How do you handle this scenario?
You need to ensure that every time a user logs in, they are not asked to re-enter their passwords as part of the authentication.
a. To enable Microsoft Account authentication
b. Deploy ExpressRoute
c. Set up a VPN between premises and datacenter. Set up an AD domain controller in VM and implement integrated Windows Authentication
d. Configure Azure AD Sync to use single sign-on
Solution – d) Configure Azure AD Sync to use single sign-on
- Single sign-on (SSO) is a property of access control of multiple related, but independent software systems. With this property, a user logs in once and gains access to all systems without being prompted to log in again at each of them.
31. Azure Storage plays the same role in Azure that ______ plays in Amazon Web Services.
a. S3.
b. EC2
c. EC3
d. All of the mentioned
Answer: a) S3
32. Which service in Azure is used to manage resources in Azure?
a. Azure Resource Manager
b. Application Insights
c. Log Analytics
d. Azure Portal
Answer: a) Azure Resource Manager
33. How do you handle this scenario?
You need to ensure that virtual machines remain available while migrating to Azure. What would be the appropriate service to use?
a. Traffic Manager
b. Update Domains
c. Express Route
d. Cloud Services
Solution – c) Express Route
34. How do you handle this scenario?
a. You administer a website called web game. You’re required to validate and deploy changes made to your website by your development team with minimum downtime
b. Create a new linked resource
c. Create a staging environment for the site
d. Enable remote debugging on the website
Solution – b) Create a staging environment for the site
