This article was published as a part of the Data Science Blogathon.
Introduction
This article is targeted towards providing one-stop guidance for your interview preparation. Whether you are a beginner or an experienced professional, you can glance through these just before your interview to enhance and refresh your learning on the go!
What is Azure?
Azure is a cloud platform developed by Microsoft that can be used for building, deploying, and managing services and applications to or for a global audience. It helps add cloud capabilities to your existing network or entrust Microsoft with all your computing and network needs, providing secure and reliable access to your cloud-hosted data built on Microsoft’s proven architecture. Azure provides Virtual Machines, SQL Databases, Azure Active Directory Domain Service, Application Services, Visual Studio Teams Services, and Storage facilities – everything required to build a virtual network and deliver services or applications to a global audience.
Below are a few questions that will help broaden the knowledge and understanding of Microsoft Azure. The questions are categorized into levels of expertise, so feel free to skip to any part per your expertise on the subject. A complete read-through would help polish your memory for good!
Interview Questions for Microsoft Azure
A. Fresher Level Interview Questions
1. What are the various models that are available for cloud deployment?
There exist three different models for cloud deployment. They are as follows-
- Public Cloud: In this model the cloud infrasturcture is owned publicly by the cloud provider and the server resources could be share among multiple users.
- Private Cloud: Here the infrasturcture is exclusively owned by the user. The cloud provider provides services like hosting user’s application on their on-premise server or hosting the application on a dedicated server provided by the cloud provider.
- Hybrid Cloud: This mode is a combination of public and private cloud infrastructure. The user in this case can use on-premise server for hosting confidential data and at the same time can use public cloud features for hosting the mass appliactions.
2. What is meant by role instance in Azure?
A role instance is a Virtual Machine where the application code runs with the help of running role configurations. There can exist multiple instances of a role as per the definition in cloud service configuration files.
3. What is NSG?
NSG stands for National Security Group and contains a list of ACL (Access Control List) rules that allow or deny network traffic to subnets, NICs (Network Interference Cards) connected to subnets, or both. If NSG is associated with a subnet, ACL rules will apply to all virtual machines on that subnet. Traffic limits for individual IDs can be created by associating an NSG directly with a NIC.
4. Why do we need Azure Diagnostics API?
The Azure Diagnostics API helps you collect diagnostic data such as performance monitoring and system event logs from applications running in Azure. It also allows for verbose tracking of the data in detail. The diagnostic data can also create visual chart representations, and performance metric alerts to improve monitoring.
5. You can use Azure Resource Manager to create VMs in virtual networks created in traditional deployments. True or False?
False.
B. Intermediate Level Interview Questions
1. What do you understand by Azure Redis Cache?
It is an open-source in-memory Redis caching system provided and managed by Azure. It helps improve the performance of your web application by fetching data from a back-end database, storing it in the Redis cache on the first request, and fetching data from the Redis cache on all subsequent requests.
Azure Redis Cache provides a robust and secure caching mechanism using the Azure cloud.
2. What are the different “Deployment Environments” available in Azure?
The two Deployment Environments are as follows:
- Staging Environment: This environment validates application changes before running the immediate environment. Here, the application is identified by an Azure GUID (Globally Unique Identifier).
- Production Environment: This serves as the primary environment where the application is running, is accessible to the audience, and can be accessed via a DNS-enabled URL.
3. What steps need to be performed when drive failure occurs?
Once drive failure occurs, the priority would be to ensure that Azure storage works without fail, and for that, we need to ensure that the drive is not mounted. Then, we need to replace the drive, so it gets remounted and formatted.
4. Define Azure Storage Key.
Azure storage keys are used to authenticate access to Azure storage services to control access to data based on project needs. Two types of storage keys are provided for authentication: primary and secondary access keys.
5. What would happen when maximum failed attempts are reached during the process of Azure ID Authentication?
With the maximum number of failed attempts gets exceeded, the Azure account is locked, and the method of locking depends on the password entered and the protocol that parses the IP address of the login request.
C. Experienced Level Interview Questions
1. Mention the difference between Azure Table Storage and Azure SQL Services.
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| It follows the No SQL type of storage | It follows a relational storage structure |
| Data is stored in key-value format | Data is stored in rows and columns in the SQL table |
| No relationship exists between tables | Relationships between tables are defined by utilizing foreign keys |
| Unique partition and row-key combination exists for each key-value format | Users can express uniqueness by using a primary key or unique key |
| It is mainly used to store log information or diagnostics data | It is used for storing transaction-based applications |
2. Mention the differences between the Azure Storage Queue and the Azure Service Bus Queue?
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| Here, First-In-First-Out (FIFO) ordering is uncertain | First-In-First-Out (FIFO) is guaranteed because of the existence of sessions |
| Sessions are not supported here | Messaging level sessions are supported here |
| Only the “At least Once” delivery model is supported | “At least Once,” “Almost Once,” and “Exactly Once” all three delivery models are supported here |
| No automatic detection duplicates are possible here | Copies can be detected automatically here |
| It does not support dead lettering | Supports dead lettering |
| The message size is 64kB | The message size is 256 kB |
| Only One-to-One message delivery is supported | One-to-One, One-to-Many message delivery systems are supported |
| Only batch receive is supported | Bothe batch send and batch receive are supported here |
| The behavior of receiving the message is non-blocking | The behavior of receiving messages can be blocking or non-blocking. |
3. What do you understand by following terms: IaaS, PaaS, SaaS?
- IaaS: IaaS stands for “Infrastructure as a Service” and provides a set of functions that exist in the infrastructure layer, such as operating system and network connectivity, and are provided as a pay-as-you-go policy. Infrastructure is used to host the application. Examples include- Azure VMs, VNets, and so on.
- PaaS: PaaS stands for “Platform as a Service” and is primarily intended to abstract the underlying infrastructure of developers so that they can develop applications faster without having to worry about hosting management increases. Examples include- Azure web apps, storage services, and cloud services.
- SaaS: SaaS stands for “Software as a Service” and is an application provided using a service delivery model in which the application is consumed and used by the organization. These applications typically pay organizations to use them or are mobilized through advertising. Examples include- applications such as Office 365, Gmail, and SharePoint Online.
4. What do we use Azure Scheduler for?
You can use the Azure Scheduler to call specific background-triggered events or activities, such as calling HTTPS endpoints or displaying messages in queues on any schedule.
Using Azure schedule, jobs in the cloud can call existing jobs inside and outside Azure to run jobs regularly on-demand or at future dates. It also helps in scheduling those jobs on a set date.
5. What feature of Azure can be used to prevent issues of application high load in case of no-man support on the flow?
This issue can be stopped using the VM scale set by defining the appropriate configurations and conditions for provisioning new VMs when the load on the application increases.
- Azure virtual machine scale sets allow developers to create and manage a group of load-balanced VMs. Scale sets can be configured to automatically increase or decrease the number of VMs based on application demand or a predefined schedule.
- Scale sets ensure the high availability of applications and allow developers to manage, update, and configure large VMs centrally. It can also support the development of big data, large workloads, and significant applications that support workloads.
- The Azure scale set can support up to 1,000 VMs. If you create and upload a custom VM image, the limit is 600 VM.
Conclusion
We hope this helped you quickly brush up and reiterate your learnings for your upcoming interview. In this article, you have seen questions across all levels frequently asked in Data Science interviews requiring the knowledge of Azure.
You started the read with some basic level questions revolving around cloud computation and the basic needs and roles of Azure. It was followed by some intermediate-level questions that dealt with some critical aspects of Azure like the caching system, deployment environment and storage, and its issues. Lastly, some experienced-level questions were dealt with, like the different service models available in Azure and the differences between different services and storage systems. To summarize following were the key takeaways:
1. Learnt about Microsoft Azure and Cloud Computation
2. Understood some basics of Azure, like role and virtual machine
3. Learnt about the caching mechanism, storage, and deployment environments in Azure
4. Learnt about the different service models provided by Azure
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Neil is a research professional currently working on the development of AI agents. He has successfully contributed to various AI projects across different domains, with his works published in several high-impact, peer-reviewed journals. His research focuses on advancing the boundaries of artificial intelligence, and he is deeply committed to sharing knowledge through writing. Through his blogs, Neil strives to make complex AI concepts more accessible to professionals and enthusiasts alike.
