1. Explain Microsoft Azure in your own words. What are its key benefits?
Azure is Microsoft’s comprehensive set of cloud services that allows you to build, deploy, and manage applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed data centers. Key benefits include scalability, cost-effectiveness, reliability, security, hybrid capabilities, and a wide range of services.
2. Describe the Azure Resource Manager (ARM) model. Why is it important?
ARM is Azure’s deployment and management service. It allows you to create, update, and delete resources within an Azure subscription. Importance: Infrastructure as Code (IaC), consistent management, role-based access control (RBAC), tagging, and cost management.
3. What are Azure Regions and Availability Zones? How do they contribute to high availability?
Azure Regions are geographical areas containing one or more data centers. Availability Zones are physically separate data centers within an Azure region. They provide fault tolerance and high availability by isolating your applications and data from single data center failures.
4. Explain the concept of Azure Resource Groups. How are they used for management and organization?
Azure Resource Groups are logical containers for Azure resources. They are used to organize resources that share a lifecycle, making it easier to deploy, manage, monitor, and delete them as a single unit. RBAC can also be applied at the Resource Group level.
5. What are Azure Virtual Machines (VMs)? What are some different VM sizes and use cases?
Azure VMs are on-demand, scalable compute resources that emulate physical servers. VM sizes are categorized by their characteristics (e.g., general-purpose, compute-optimized, memory-optimized, GPU) and are chosen based on the workload requirements. For example, Dv series for general-purpose, Fv series for compute-intensive tasks, Ev series for memory-intensive applications, and NV series for AI and graphics.
II. Compute Services
6. What are Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS)? How do they contribute to scalability and high availability?
VMSS let you create and manage a group of identical, auto-scaling virtual machines. They provide high availability by distributing instances across multiple fault domains and update domains within a region. Autoscaling rules can be defined based on performance metrics to automatically adjust the number of instances.
7. What is Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)? What are its benefits?
AKS is a fully managed Kubernetes service that makes it easy to deploy, manage, and scale containerized applications in Azure. Benefits include simplified Kubernetes management, autoscaling, cost efficiency through optimized resource utilization, advanced networking capabilities, and integration with other Azure services.
8. Explain Azure Functions. What are its use cases and benefits?
Azure Functions is a serverless compute service that enables you to run code on-demand without having to explicitly provision or manage infrastructure. Use cases include event-driven processing, API endpoints, and scheduled tasks. Benefits include cost savings (pay-per-execution), automatic scaling, and simplified development.
9. What is Azure App Service? What are its different plans and capabilities?
Azure App Service is a fully managed platform for building, deploying, and scaling web apps, APIs, and mobile backends. It offers various plans (Free, Shared, Basic, Standard, Premium, Isolated) with different features and compute resources. Capabilities include automatic scaling, CI/CD integration, security, and monitoring.
10. Describe Azure Container Instances (ACI). How does it differ from AKS?
ACI offers the fastest and simplest way to run containers in Azure without managing any underlying infrastructure. It’s ideal for isolated containers, simple tasks, and dev/test scenarios. AKS, on the other hand, is a full-fledged Kubernetes orchestration service for managing complex, multi-container applications at scale, offering more control and features.
11. What are the different types of Azure Storage accounts? When would you use each?
Azure Storage offers several account types: General-purpose v2 (standard for most scenarios), General-purpose v1 (legacy), BlobStorage (for object storage), FileStorage (for Azure Files), and BlockBlobStorage (premium performance for block blobs). The choice depends on the data being stored, access patterns, and performance/cost requirements.
12. Explain Azure Blob Storage and its different access tiers.
Azure Blob Storage is Microsoft’s object storage solution for the cloud, optimized for storing massive amounts of unstructured data. Access tiers (Hot, Cool, Archive) allow you to balance cost with data access needs. Hot for frequently accessed data (higher cost), Cool for infrequently accessed data (lower cost, higher access costs), and Archive for rarely accessed data (lowest cost, highest access costs, and latency).
13. What is Azure SQL Database? What are its deployment options?
Azure SQL Database is a fully managed Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) database offering in Azure. Deployment options include: Single database (for single applications), Elastic pool (for multiple databases sharing resources), and Managed Instance (near 100% compatibility with SQL Server).
14. What is Azure Virtual Network (VNet)? How do you create a secure network for your Azure resources?
Azure VNet is a logical representation of your own network in the cloud. You can define private IP address spaces, subnets, network policies, and control traffic flow. Security is achieved through Network Security Groups (NSGs) to filter traffic at the subnet and NIC level, Azure Firewall for centralized network security, and Azure Private Link for secure private connectivity to Azure PaaS services.
15. Explain Azure Network Security Groups (NSGs). How do they work?
NSGs are stateful firewalls that control network traffic to and from Azure resources. They contain security rules that allow or deny inbound and outbound traffic based on source and destination IP addresses, ports, and protocols. NSGs can be associated with subnets or individual network interfaces (NICs).
16. What is Azure Active Directory (Azure AD)? How is it used for identity and access management?
Azure AD is Microsoft’s cloud-based identity and access management service. It provides single sign-on (SSO) for users accessing cloud and on-premises applications. It’s used to manage user identities, authenticate users, authorize access to resources, and enforce security policies through features like multi-factor authentication (MFA) and Conditional Access.
17. Explain Azure Policy. How is it used for governance and compliance?
Azure Policy is a service that helps you enforce organizational standards and assess compliance at scale. You can create, assign, and manage policy definitions that specify the rules and effects for your Azure resources. This ensures consistency, security, and adherence to regulatory requirements.
18. What is Azure Cost Management? How can you monitor and optimize your Azure spending?
Azure Cost Management is a suite of tools that allows you to monitor, allocate, and optimize your Azure costs. Features include cost analysis, budget creation, recommendations for cost optimization (e.g., rightsizing VMs, purchasing reserved instances), and exporting cost data for further analysis.
19. What are Azure Hybrid Benefit and Azure Arc? How do they facilitate hybrid cloud scenarios?
Azure Hybrid Benefit allows you to use your on-premises Windows Server and SQL Server licenses with Software Assurance on Azure, reducing the cost of running virtual machines and databases in the cloud. Azure Arc extends Azure management and governance capabilities to on-premises, multi-cloud, and edge environments. Together, they enable a consistent management experience, allowing organizations to leverage their existing investments while adopting Azure services across different infrastructures.
20. What are some common strategies for migrating applications to Azure?
Common migration strategies include: Rehost (Lift and Shift) – migrating VMs without changes; Refactor – making minor code changes to leverage Azure services; Rearchitect – significantly modifying the application architecture for cloud-native capabilities; Rebuild – rewriting the application from scratch using cloud-native technologies; and Replace – substituting the existing application with a SaaS solution in Azure. The best strategy depends on the application’s complexity, business requirements, and migration timelines.
Summary of Top 20 Azure Cloud Interview Questions
These questions cover fundamental Azure concepts, core compute services (VMs, VMSS, AKS, Functions, App Service, ACI), data and storage solutions (Storage Accounts, Blob Storage, Azure SQL Database), networking and security principles (VNet, NSGs), management and governance tools (Azure AD, Policy, Cost Management), and hybrid cloud and migration strategies (Hybrid Benefit, Arc, common migration approaches). A strong understanding of these areas, coupled with the ability to articulate the benefits and use cases of various Azure services, is crucial for success in an Azure cloud interview.
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