40 Top Azure Interview Questions and Answers in 2024

Microsoft Azure or Azure is a cloud computing platform managed by Microsoft. It is among the leading cloud computing services available currently in the market. The increasing trend of businesses moving to the cloud has increased the demand for cloud services dramatically. As a result, cloud computing service providers like Azure have become quite popular.

Today, many businesses that use Azure are in constant search of cloud computing experts who are well aware of the services offered by Azure. Also, a cloud computing expert is expected to figure out all the requirements of a business and suggest the cloud computing services required to run business operations efficiently.

If you are interested in building a career in the tech industry as a cloud expert, you can aim for working with a leading cloud service provider like Azure. However, you need to prepare yourself effectively to improve your chances of cracking an interview. One good way to prepare for the Azure interview is to go through the most frequently asked Azure interview questions.

Well, this article intends to make you familiar with the Azure interview questions that are the favorites of interviewers. Also, we will provide an appropriate answer to each question so that you make the most of your time reading this article.

List of 40 Top Azure Interview Questions and Answers

The Azure interview questions that we have listed below are divided into three categories - basic, intermediate, and advanced. Let’s start with the basic Azure interview questions.

Basic Azure Interview Questions

1. What is cloud computing?

Cloud computing refers to the delivery of IT resources or computing services over the internet. The resources that one can get with cloud computing include servers, networking, software, and storage. In general, cloud computing services follow the pay-as-you-go pricing model, which means that users only pay for the resources that they use. The reason behind the widespread popularity of cloud computing is that it helps businesses to cut the costs and efforts required to manage their own IT infrastructure.

2. What are the various cloud deployment models?

There are three main cloud deployment models, namely public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid cloud.

1) Public Cloud - In the public cloud deployment model, the cloud services are delivered over the public internet. Also, the cloud service provider has complete control over the cloud infrastructure and the resources are shared among different users. The public cloud is usually cost-effective but the security concerns associated with it are high as it allows multiple users to share applications, storage, and other computing resources.

2) Private Cloud - When it comes to the private cloud model, a single organization or business owns the cloud infrastructure and uses all its resources. Also, the organization has the choice to either manage the cloud infrastructure by themselves or by a third party. As all the resources are available exclusively for a single organization, the costs associated with a private cloud are higher compared to the public cloud. However, the public cloud is safe and secure as the access to resources is limited to only a single entity.

3) Hybrid Cloud - The hybrid cloud model is a combination of public cloud and private cloud. An organization can use both public and private cloud simultaneously while the computing services are offered by different providers. One typical instance of a hybrid cloud is when an organization makes use of a private cloud to store their confidential data but uses a public cloud to host one of their web applications accessible to the general public.

3. What are the different cloud service models? Give a brief description of each model.

Cloud providers usually offer their services in three different services models - IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service), PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service), and SaaS (Software-as-a-Service).

1. IaaS - IaaS or Infrastructure-as-a-Service refers to the cloud services offered at the infrastructural level, such as physical computing resources or hardware, virtual machines, etc. For instance, you can get a server that you can configure as per your requirements with access to its underlying operating system and other networking capabilities.
2. PaaS - PaaS or Platform-as-a-Service is the cloud service model that allows the delivery of services required by users to develop and deploy applications. One significant characteristic of PaaS is that it does not give users access to the underlying hardware, servers, storage, etc. of the platform. Users are simply provided with the development environment that they can configure to develop and deploy their applications effectively.
3. SaaS - SaaS or Software-as-a-Service is the cloud service model that allows users to access software or applications hosted on a cloud infrastructure. While users can access the features offered by a cloud-hosted application, they do not have access to the application data and the cloud infrastructure used to host the application.

4. What is Microsoft Azure and what services does it offer?

Azure is a cloud computing platform that offers a wide range of cloud services under IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS models. Microsoft developed the Azure platform and it was made available for public use in October 2008. The cloud computing services offered by Azure are quite vast with the main categories being as follows:

• AI & Machine Learning
• Compute
• Containers
• Database
• Developer Tools
• IoT
• Media
• Networking
• Security
• Storage
• Web

5. Is Azure different from Amazon AWS and GCP?

While Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, and GCP (Google Cloud Platform) are all cloud computing platforms, the services offered by them differ from one another. Apart from being highly popular among enterprises, these three are the leading cloud providers in terms of market share. Thus, Google Cloud vs AWS vs Azure is one of the most popular debates among cloud computing professionals.

6. Name some of the most popular Azure products and services.

Following are the most popular Azure products and services:

• Azure CDN
• Azure SQL
• CosmosDB
• Azure Active Directory
• Azure Data Factory
• DevOps
• Azure Backup
• Azure Logic Apps
• API Management
• Azure Site Recovery
• Azure Bots
• Virtual Machines

7. What is Azure CDN?

Azure CDN or Content Delivery Network is a popular service offered by Azure that allows websites, web apps to load quickly, be more responsive, and save bandwidth. It can easily integrate with other Azure services and comes with the ability to handle loads due to unprecedented traffic spikes.

Additionally, Azure CDN offers various features, including developer tools and APIs to build global applications, protection against threats like DDoS attacks , and advanced analytics to monitor the traffic and the performance of the content.

8. Explain the principal components of Microsoft Azure.

Microsoft Azure has three principal components, namely Compute, Storage, and Fabric.

• Azure Compute

Azure Compute is responsible for providing all the infrastructure that users need to run their applications on the cloud. Users can build applications from scratch or deploy their existing apps with the help of services available under Azure Compute, such as Virtual Machines, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Virtual Machine Scale Sets, and Azure Functions.

• Azure Storage

Azure Storage provides secure, scalable, and cost-effective cloud storage to users. There are various storage services available under Azure Storage, such as Blob Storage, Data Lake Storage, Data Box, and Azure Files.

• Azure Fabric

Azure Fabric acts as a platform that facilitates the development of microservices. It also helps to tackle the challenges associated with the development and management of cloud applications. Azure Fabric supports a wide array of programming languages and models.

9. What is the Azure storage account key?

To access an Azure storage account, a user needs to have an account name and a key as credentials. The account key behaves as a password to access the storage account. By using Azure CLI ( command-line interface ), users can manage their storage account keys with ease.

10. Can you explain the role of Azure Resource Manager?

Azure Resource Manager is a service that allows users to manage the resources that they opt for. Also, it provides users with access to a management layer that makes it really simple to add, remove, and update the resources in their accounts. Azure Resource Manager offers various management features, such as access control and tags to organize the deployed resources.

11. What is Azure Redis Cache?

The Azure Redis Cache is an in-memory data store offered by Azure. Based on the Redis software, Azure Redis Cache helps to improve the performance of web applications. It basically stores the data received from the backend during the very first request. Later, the data is provided directly from the Redis cache, which boosts the performance of a web application. The best part of Azure Redis Cache is that it supports a wide range of data structures, including strings, bitmaps, hashes, and geospatial indexes.

12. How autoscaling feature offered by Azure is helpful for users?

The autoscaling feature offered by Azure helps to automatically increase or decrease the number of resources required to ensure the smooth operation of an application or website. For instance, if there is a sudden spike in the number of users of an application, the autoscaling feature will automatically increase the number of available resources to meet the demand. Also, as soon as the active user count starts moving back to normal, the extra resources will be discarded.

13. Explain Table Storage in Microsoft Azure.

Table Storage is one of the key storage services offered by Microsoft Azure. It allows users to store structured NoSQL data and offers a key-value store. Table Storage has become an ideal choice for applications that require a flexible data schema.

14. Why do we need the Azure Diagnostics API?

For applications that run on Azure, it becomes essential for developers to monitor their performance effectively, and the Azure Diagnostics API is exactly what helps to do so. The API collects diagnostic data that helps to create charts for better performance monitoring.

Intermediate Azure Interview Questions

15. Explain Azure virtual machine scale sets?

Azure virtual machine scale sets are computation resources that allow users to deploy as well as manage the sets of similar virtual machines (VMs). These scale sets to support autoscaling of applications as they are configured similarly. Also, they eliminate the need for pre-provisioning the VMs. By leveraging Azure virtual machine sets, it becomes easier to develop complex applications that work with big data and containerized workloads.

16. What is CSPack in Azure?

CSPack is basically a command-line tool that helps users to prepare their applications for deployment in Azure. The tool generates the service package files having the .cscfg extension. The service package file allows users to configure the cloud service. The file contains information about the number of instances required to deploy for every existing role within the service, configuration settings, and certificate thumbprints.

17. What services allow us to manage Azure resources?

Azure Resource Manager allows us to manage all the resources that we have opted for. It allows us to use a simple JSON file to manage, deploy as well as delete resources.

18. Explain Azure Queue Storage along with its key advantages.

Azure Queue Storage is an Azure service that allows message queuing for huge workloads. It helps to develop applications that are flexible, modular, and durable. Following are the main advantages of using Azure Queue Storage:

• It makes an application easily scalable so that the sudden increase in traffic or users can be handled effectively to prevent server overload.
• It supports message buffering to prevent the failure of an application in case a part of the application architecture goes down. The buffered messages are automatically forwarded to other message processing nodes to ensure that the application operates normally.

19. Describe the use of Azure Traffic Manager.

Being a traffic load Balancer, Azure Traffic Manager is responsible for distributing an application’s traffic across various global Azure regions. The primary objective of Azure Traffic Manager is to ensure optimal performance of an application and minimize the overall downtime. It makes use of DNS to identify the service endpoint that is best suited for a particular client request. Also, the Traffic Manager constantly monitors the health of endpoints to make sure that the client requests are not directed to an endpoint that is having some issues.

20. What is the process for setting up an Azure Virtual Machine?

Setting up a virtual machine in Azure is a straightforward task. You need to have an active Azure account and by following the steps mentioned below, you can create a virtual machine:

• Log in to your account on the Azure portal.
• Click on the “Create a resource” option that is available under “Azure services.”
• Select either “Windows Server 2019 Datacenter” or “Ubuntu Server 20.04LTS.”
• Provide all the relevant information required to set up the virtual machine.
• Choose the size of your virtual machine.
• Review all the information and click the “Review + create” button.
• Once the validation process is complete, click the “Create” button.

21. What is Azure Service Level Agreement (SLA)?

The Azure Service Level Agreement (SLA) highlights Azure’s commitment related to the uptime and connectivity of its various services. It’s important for every user to know that the Azure SLA has individual commitments for each Azure service.

22. State the difference between a library and a list.

Library - A library is an interface that allows us to store and manage documents. Also, the documents can be created using Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft Powerpoint.

List - List is also an interface, but it facilitates the representation of items in a table having rows and columns. Also, you can attach lists with documents.

23. What is Azure Backup? Explain the different types of replication supported by Azure Backup.

The Azure Backup is a service that allows users to backup their data securely on the Azure cloud and retrieves it conveniently. Azure Backup uses three types of replication models to ensure instant availability of data:

• Locally Redundant Storage (LRS):

This model creates three copies of the data in the single storage unit of a data center. LRS is an ideal model that allows users to secure data from local hardware failures in a cost-effective way. Also, all the copies are available in the same region as that of the original data.

• Geo-redundant storage (GRS):

The geo-redundant model stores the replicated data in a different region than that of original data. It costs more than LRS but ensures the availability of data even when there is an outage in the region where the original data exists.

• Zone-redundant Storage (ZRS):

In this replication model, the replicated data is available across a number of availability zones that are present in the same region. Also, ZRS has zero downtime.

24. What is the role of Azure Scheduler?

Azure Scheduler is a highly useful service that allows users to create and schedule jobs. Also, all the actions associated with a job are executed automatically. With Azure Scheduler, users can define when to run jobs and access the history of job results. It also lets users run a job immediately or schedule it. In all, Azure Schedule makes it possible for users to create and run scheduled jobs.

25. How would you deploy a SQL database in Azure?

Following are the steps that allow us to deploy a SQL database in Azure:

• Log in to your account on the Azure portal.
• Navigate to the “SQL Databases” and then click “Servers.”
• You need to choose one of the listed servers with which you want to connect.
• Hit the “Configure” button.
• Now, you need to open the SQL Server Management Studio.
• Enter the server name and then switch to the SQL Server and Windows Authentication mode.
• Enter the username (that you have specified while creating that particular DB server) and the password.
• Click “Connect.”

26. How is the Azure Service Bus Queue different from the Azure Storage Queue?

Azure Service Bus Queue and Azure Storage Queue are the two types of queues offered by Azure. Here are the key differences between the Azure Service Bus Queue and Azure Storage Queue:

27. Describe enterprise data warehouse.

Enterprise data warehouse allows users to bring all their data in a common space where it can be analyzed and processed to get meaningful insights. Enterprise data warehouse with Azure makes it possible for users or businesses to get insights through modern and interactive analytics dashboards and detailed operational reports. Following are the key components required to create an enterprise data warehouse with Azure:

• Azure Synapse Analytics
• Azure Blob Storage
• Synapse Pipelines Documentation
• Azure Synapse Analytics Spark pools
• Azure Analysis Services
• Power BI

28. What is a role instance in Azure?

Role instance is simply a virtual machine that runs the application code using the running role configurations. It is worthwhile noting that a single role can have more than one instance and that can be defined within the service configuration file.

29. What should you do in case of a drive failure?

Whenever we encounter a drive failure, we need to take the following actions:

• Unmount the drive so that the Azure storage can function without fail.
• Replace the drive so that it becomes possible to remount and format the affected drive.

30. Explain Availability Set.

In Azure, an availability set is a group of virtual machines (VMs) that are configured differently. The virtual machines in the availability set are created using different images and configurations. Availability sets are an ideal choice for applications that have known workload requirements.

Advanced Azure Interview Questions

31. Highlight the key difference between Availability Sets and Scale Sets in Azure.

32. What are the steps for connecting to an Azure database from SQL Management Studio?

Here are the steps to connect to an Azure database from SQL Management Studio:

• Start the SQL Server Management Studio.
• If you are starting the SQL Server Management Studio for the first time, it will show you a dialog box that prompts you to “Connect to Server.” If the dialog box doesn’t appear, you can access the “Connect to Server” option by navigating to Object Explorer?Connect? Database Engine.
• Once you open the Connect to Server window, you need to provide the information about the Azure server that you want to connect to. The information fields include Server Type, Server Name, Authentication, Login ID, and Password.
• Once you enter all the required information, you simply need to click the “Connect button” and the SQL Management Studio will connect with the specified Azure database.

33. What is Azure App Service?

Azure App Service is a dedicated HTTP-based service that specifically intends to host web applications, back-end code of mobile apps, and REST APIs. It offers Windows and Linux-based environments for apps to run and scale with ease. App Service combines the best of Azure features that ensure optimal performance of applications, such as auto-scaling, load balancing, and automated management.

34. Explain the types of data services offered by Azure Storage.

Azure Storage offers various data services that are as follows:

• Blobs: The Azure Blob Storage service allows users to store text and binary data. It can integrate with Data Lake Storage Gen2 to enable big data analytics.
• Queues: It acts as a message queue system that facilitates messaging between the different components of an application. Also, it helps to develop applications having large workloads.
• Files: The Azure Files service enables file sharing by using the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol for both on-premises and cloud deployments.
• Tables: It is a NoSQL store for structured data that does not require a schema.
• Disks: Azure Disks is a storage service that provides block-level storage volumes exclusively for Azure virtual machines (VMs).

35. How to create a virtual machine with Azure CLI?

You simply need to open the Azure CLI and run the following command to create a virtual machine:

az vm create \
    --resource-group sampleResourceGroup \
    --name testVM \
    --image Win2019Datacenter \
    --admin-username testuser
    --admin-password samplePASSWORD@123

36. What are the differences between Azure Table Storage and Azure SQL Table?

37. List all the power states of a virtual machine in Azure.

There are six power states of a virtual machine in Azure:

1. Starting
2. Stopping
3. Running
4. Deallocating
5. Stopped
6. Deallocated

38. What are the steps to create a resource group in Azure?

The following are the steps required for creating a resource group:

• Login to Azure account.
• Access the “Resource groups” from the main menu located on the upper left side of the screen.
• Click on the ‘Add’ option.
• Provide the details required for creating the new resource group.
• Click on “Review + create”.
• After the validation completes, click “Create.”

39. Describe the role of Text Analytics API in Azure.

The Text Analytics API offered by Azure is a range of web services that are suitable for analyzing unstructured data purposes including key-phrase and entity extraction and sentiment analysis. The best thing about these web services is that they are created using high-performance machine learning algorithms. Also, the Text Analytics API makes use of the natural language processing (NLP) technology to make meaningful predictions.

40. What are application partitions?

In general, application patterns are simply directory partitions that are replicated to domain controllers. Also, application patterns are a part of the Azure Active Directory system. Application patterns intend to limit the replication traffic by allowing you to replicate their attributes as well as the value to any domain controller. Unlike domain partitions, application partitions can focus only on a single domain area, which results in them being redundant and highly available.

To Sum it Up

The demand for professionals who can work with Microsoft Azure is increasing gradually. If you want to crack your upcoming Azure interview, you definitely need to prepare yourself in the best possible way. The Azure interview questions and answers mentioned above can help you to polish your knowledge and give you a good idea about what to expect during the interview.

Also, we have divided the Azure interview questions based on the complexity of the topics that they cover. Thus, it’s important for you to go through all the questions to improve your knowledge of Azure.

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