0% found this document useful (0 votes)

17 views

Azuregit

The document discusses cloud computing concepts and Microsoft Azure. It defines cloud computing as delivering computing resources as a service over the internet. The benefits of cloud computing include scalability, agility, high availability, pay as you go model, fault tolerance, and moving from capital expenses to operational expenses. The document also differentiates between public, private, hybrid and community cloud models.

Uploaded by

vijayhcl

Available Formats

Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

0% found this document useful (0 votes)

17 views

Azuregit

Uploaded by

vijayhcl

Available Formats

Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

You are on page 1/ 73

What is Web Role ?

A web role provides a dedicated Internet Information Services (IIS) web-server used
for hosting front-end web applications.
What is Worker Role ?
Applications hosted within worker roles can run asynchronous, long-running or
perpetual tasks independent of user interaction or input.
What is Azure Diagnostics ?
Azure Diagnostics is the API that enables you to collect diagnostic data from
applications running in Azure. Azure Diagnostics must be enabled for cloud service
roles in order for verbose monitoring to be turned on. For more information.

What is Autoscaling?
Scaling by adding additional instances is often referred to as scaling out. Windows
Azure also supports scaling up by using larger role instances instead of more role
instances. By adding and removing role instances to your Windows Azure application
while it is running, you can balance the performance of the application against its
running costs. An autoscaling solution reduces the amount of manual work involved
in dynamically scaling an application.

What is Azure Fabric Controller?

The Windows Azure Fabric Controller is a resource provisioning and management layer
that manages the hardware, and provides resource allocation, deployment/upgrade,
and management for cloud services on the Windows Azure platform.

Difference between Web and Worker Roles in Windows Azure?

The main difference between the two is that an instance of a web role runs IIS,
while an instance of a worker role does not. Both are managed in the same way,
however, and it’s common for an application to use both.For example, a web role
instance might accept requests from users, then pass them to a worker role instance
for processing.

What is Blob?
BLOB stands for Binary Large Object. Blob is file of any type and size. The Azure
Blob Storage offers two types of blobs:

Block Blob
Page Blob URL format: Blobs are addressable using the following URL format:
http://.blob.aaa.windows.net//

What is the difference between Public Cloud and Private Cloud?

Public cloud is used as a service via Internet by the users, whereas a private
cloud, as the name conveys is deployed within certain boundaries like firewall
settings and is completely managed and monitored by the users working on it in an
organization

What are the three Types of Roles in Compute Component in Windows Azure?
WEB
Worker
VM

There are 4 types of deployment models used in cloud:

Public cloud
Private cloud
Community cloud
Hybrid cloud

What are the three Main Components of Windows Azure Platform?

Compute
Storage
AppFabric

What is Azure Service Level Agreement?

The Azure Compute SLA guarantees that, when you deploy two or more role instances
for every role, access to your cloud service will be maintained at least 99.95
percent of the time. Also, detection and corrective action will be initiated 99.9
percent of the time when a role instance’s process is not running.

What are the benefits, advantages of cloud computing?

Scalability

Agility

High Availability

Pay as you go

Moving from Capex to Opex

Fault Tolerance

High Response Time

High Bandwidth

Low Latency

![](media/image1.jpeg){width="1.8732392825896762in" height="4.2in"}

Abstract
========

Microsoft launched Azure in year 2009 as "Windows Azure". In the recent

years, Microsoft brought lot of openness into their entire range of
products and platform. With this, it is now no longer "Windows Azure"
but it is now "Microsoft Azure".

About Us and idea of this book

Both of us are Microsoft MVPs from past many years. We work closely in
Microsoft communities across India and also work closely with lot of
customers and enterprises as part of our day jobs. We both are
passionate about Azure and we both think that it is the future and today
is the right time to Learn, Build, Deploy and Enjoy Azure and Azure
Services and take our work, businesses to next level. While we say this,
we observed that there is a huge population of Developers and IT
Professionals who wish to go on Azure or pursue a career in Cloud (Azure
to be very specific). We also observed that while giving interviews many
people just give high level details when they interviewed on Azure since
either there is lack of awareness in them or they somehow not able to
get deeper dive. That creates a big impact not only on their planned
career in Azure but also they miss opportunities despite having good
development background.

Hence we thought we should address this concern and to start with

release v 1.0 of this book to enable both experience and inexperience
developers to clear their Technical interviews on Azure effectively and
efficiently. This is not a guide for Microsoft Certification on Azure
but it is more of a resource guide to clear your Technical Interviews on
Azure.

What this book will do?

Take the fear out of your interview and never be stuck for the right
answer to even the toughest questions with The Microsoft Azure Interview
Questions Book. The job market is fierce, competition has never been
greater and it\'s vital that you can grab every opportunity for
competitive advantage and stay one step ahead with the knowledge of
leading cloud computing technology platform "**Microsoft Azure**".
Interviewers are looking for people who really stand out, and here\'s
your chance to be different from the rest. Written by two Microsoft
Azure experts, this definitive guide to questions and answers encourages
every job-hunter to think on your feet and express your individuality
whilst supplying ideal responses to interview questions so that you\'re
seen as the ideal candidate for the job.

Let's get started!!

Contents {#contents .TOC-Heading}

========

[Abstract 1](#abstract)

[Structure of the book 3](#structure-of-the-book)

[General 4](#general)

[Azure Services - Compute 10](#azure-services---compute)

[Azure Services - Data and Storage

16](#azure-services---data-and-storage)

[Azure Networking -- VNET 18](#azure-networking-vnet)

[Azure Migration 18](#azure-migration)

[Azure Messaging -- Service Bus 21](#azure-messaging-service-bus)

[Identity in Azure -- Azure Active Directory

23](#identity-in-azure-azure-active-directory)

[References 24](#references)

[An Appeal to readers 24](#an-appeal-to-readers)

Structure of the book

=====================

The book has been structured into various topics. For each topic a set
of important and frequently asked questions are drafted along with short
answers which specifically an interviewer will look for. This short
answer is the key for you in interview. To make you understand the
question and answer background along with all the details, after answers
to the question, you have "**Deep dive"** section that explains the
concept and background behind the short answer with detailed
information. This will help you to understand the concept, provide you
more information, so depending on the situation in interview you can
explain the diagrams, concepts with more confidence.

General
=======

This section highlights introductory questions and answers for general

cloud concepts with MS Azure as a focus.

What is cloud computing

-----------------------

> Cloud computing is basically a great level of abstraction over the

> infrastructure that can help you to focus more on your business logic
> without having to worry about hosting or infrastructure needs. This is
> the general term used for delivering the hosted services over the
> internet. In cloud computing the computing resources are providing "as
> a service". Just like Electricity, you pay to electricity provider and
> get the electricity at your home and for this you don't need to create
> any infrastructure. Cloud computing provides you computing resources
> as a service where you don't have to focus on infrastructure
> requirements.

**Deep dive:**

To understand why and what is cloud computing refer to below description

Let's say I wish to develop a banking application using asp.net MVC.

When we think about developing a new enterprise level web application,
the first thought comes to mind is how am I going to host it? So this
leads to list of below requirements --

1. Servers hardware with server OS for various environments like Dev,

QA, UAT, Production, Failover

2. Database servers and licenses

3. Source control and version management server and licenses

4. Dedicated office space

5. Power and cooling mechanism

6. Network and bandwidth configurations and setup

7. Developer workstations with client OS like Windows 7/8/8.1/10 and

their licenses

8. Developer tools like Visual Studio and SSMS and so on.

9. Team of experts to manage this entire setup

This is the bare minimum list for one application and this is the
problem. Our main aim was to develop banking application but we did not
think about

- Who will be users of my application

- What functionality my application will support

- Whether to allow 3^rd^ party payment or no and so on.

So we did not think about application business logic but got dragged in
infrastructure requirements and this is the problem. Being an
application development company we should be focusing on application
specific things.

So companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon etc. came with the concept
that, if you are an application development (or service provider)
company you just need to focus on your application and data but all your
infrastructure needs we will take care. So application Development
Company don't have to worry about hardware, licenses, OS management,
backup etc. and just to need to pay what they use. This is nothing but
the cloud computing and why cloud came into existence.

What are the benefits, advantages of cloud computing?

-----------------------------------------------------

- Scalability

- Agility

- High Availability

- Pay as you go

- Moving from Capex to Opex

- Fault Tolerance

- High Response Time

- High Bandwidth

- Low Latency

**Deep dive:**

#### Scalability

It can be termed as an ability of the application to handle growing

amount of work without degrading the performance. Basically system can
grow without limits based on demand. Scalability is of 2 types --

1. Vertical or Scale Up -- In this type of scaling configuration we

increase the capacity of the existing hardware or machine. For
example, if you are having a desktop of 4GB RAM and tomorrow you
increase the RAM of your machine to 16GB then this is nothing but
the vertical scaling.

2. Horizontal or Scale Out -- In this type of scaling configuration we

increase the count of machines without increasing the capacity. For
example, if you have a server of 8GB RAM and tomorrow you put
another server of same RAM and so on. When you do horizontal scaling
essentially you increase the computing power in parallel so you get
better performance. This is horizontal scaling.
#### Agility

The system is easy to evolve as business changes. This defines a degree

to which your application can be evolved/ changed/ modified depending on
the business or requirement changes.

#### High Availability

Basically this defines how much your application is available for its
end users. Customers or users will always expect zero downtime of the
application. High availability means your application can withstand
below common types of downtime scenarios --

- Hardware failures

- Application updates

- Configuration changes

- OS update restarts

- Heavy load restarts

#### Pay as you go

This is the most lucrative benefit of cloud. With cloud you pay only for
what you use. If you are not in the need of resources, you can free
them/ de-allocate them and you are not charged for it. The billing is
absolutely "per minute" billing giving you more saving on cost.

#### Moving from Capex to Opex

This stands for moving from "Capital Expenditure to Operational

Expenditure". Companies today don't wish to invest on hardware as
hardware is changing at rapid pace. Therefore, instead of investing on
hardware cost which may become obsolete after certain time span they are
more interested and willing to pay operational cost on monthly, yearly
basis. This is nothing but the Capex to Opex. As Microsoft Azure being
"Pay as you go" model it becomes easy to move from Capex to Opex.

#### Fault Tolerance

It is the ability of the system to continue operating in full capacity

Microsoft Azure applies various replication and redundancy strategies to

make azure hosted services and applications as fault tolerant.

What is Microsoft Azure

-----------------------

Cloud computing is the concept and this concept has been implemented by
many companies. For example, Amazon implemented it and named their
product as Amazon EC2 or Amazon web services, Google call it as Google
App Engine and so on.
On similar lines Microsoft also created a product based on cloud
computing concept and it is called as "Microsoft Azure". So MS Azure
provides a platform with cloud computing capabilities so that you can
get all the benefits of cloud computing.

**Deep Dive:**

Here while answering this you can also start with answer to question
"what is cloud computing" and then explain above paragraph.

What is IaaS, PaaS and SaaS?

----------------------------

![D:\\Kunal_Apps\\Azure\\Boot Camps\\MyBooks\\Book
Images\\IaaS-PaaS-SaaS-2.png](media/image2.png){width="6.5in"
height="2.4721150481189853in"}

The summary of these terminologies is as follows --

1. IaaS -- Infrastructure as a Service -- a set of infrastructure

level capabilities such as an operating system, network
connectivity, etc. that are delivered as pay for use services and
can be used to **Host** applications.

Example, Azure VM, VNET.

2. PaaS -- Platform as a Service -- is about abstracting developers

from the underlying infrastructure to enable applications to quickly
be composed. This is specifically for developers who are willing to
**Build** applications without worrying about management of hosting
environment at all. Example, Azure Cloud services, Azure Web Apps,
Storage, SQL Azure Database and so on.

3. SaaS -- Software as a Service -- applications that are delivered

using a service delivery model where organizations can simply
**Consume** and use the application. Typically, an organization
would pay for the use of the application or the application could be
monetized through ad revenue.

Example, Office 365, Gmail, Saleforce.com, SharePoint online, CRM online

and so on.

**Deep Dive:**

Following diagram explains important difference between IaaS, PaaS and

SaaS.

![](media/image3.png){width="6.489583333333333in"
height="4.083333333333333in"}

As you can see from the above diagram, more you go towards right hand
side of the graph things that you manage become lesser and lesser. In
SaaS typically you don't manage anything and just consume. At the max
you can make look and feel or configuration changes but everything rest
is managed by Microsoft Azure for you.

What is Public, Private and Hybrid cloud implementation with respect to Azure?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The short answer for this questions is as below --

Public Cloud -- All components of your application/ system are running

in Azure only.

Private Cloud -- You are running Azure services and features within
on-premises data center OR you are using on premises data center for
hosting your system or applications.

Hybrid Cloud -- Combination of Public and Private. Some part or

components of your application running on Azure where as some part of
your application is running within on premises datacenter.

**Deep Dive:**

Following diagram represents the essence of Public, Private and Hybrid

cloud.

![](media/image4.png){width="6.5in" height="3.53125in"}

Public Cloud example --

You are running an application of Hospital Management system on Azure

Web Apps or Cloud service web roles and supporting backend database you
are using is SQL Azure Database. In this example as all components of
entire system \[web app and database\] are running on Azure itself this
become your public cloud implementation.

Private Cloud example -

You are running an application of Hospital Management system on VM in

your data center within your organization premises and supporting
backend database you are using is SQL server installed on VM in on
premises data center. In this example as all components of entire system
\[web app and database\] are running on premises itself this become your
private cloud implementation.

Similarly, if you use Azure Stack feature, you get all of the azure
service running in your private within premises data center itself. So
on this data center if you run your hospital management system if will
also be termed as Private cloud.

Hybrid Cloud example -

You are running an application of Hospital Management system on Azure

Web Apps or Cloud service web roles and supporting backend database you
are using is SQL server installed on VM present within on premises data
center. In this example as some of the components are running on Azure
and few are running on premises this becomes Hybrid cloud
implementation.

Azure Services - Compute

========================

This section highlights common questions around important azure services

1. Cloud services
2. Azure Web Apps

3. Azure Virtual Machines

4. Difference between Cloud Services and Web Apps

What is Azure cloud service?

----------------------------

Azure cloud service is an offering from Azure and specifically designed

for hosting web applications, background processing applications
\[similar to traditional windows service applications\] and Azure IaaS
workloads means Virtual Machines. Cloud Service in Azure is a container
under which applications run. The web application in cloud service is
termed as "Web Role" whereas background processing applications are
termed as "Worker Role".

Every cloud service created from Azure provides you a DNS name such as
"YourCloudServiceName.cloudapp.net". This DNS name is used for accessing
web applications over internet. An Azure subscription can contain any
number cloud services and one cloud service can contain any number of
roles. Each role can run any number of "Instances (virtual machines)" on
which actual application executes.

To develop an application cloud service, roles aware we need Azure SDK.

Using Azure SDK one can create cloud service type of project from tools
such as Visual Studio (for .net) or Eclipse (for java).

**Deep Dive:**

Following diagram shows the overall hierarchy of cloud services.

![](media/image5.png){width="6.5in" height="3.3333333333333335in"}

Important - Cloud services can have roles or standalone VMs running

within them. When we deploy web/ worker roles in cloud service is
becomes PaaS offering and when we create virtual machines (by using
management portal, PowerShell, CLI, Rest API or Azure SDK) under a cloud
service becomes IaaS offerings.

What is purpose of cloud service configuration file (.cscfg)?

-------------------------------------------------------------

Every cloud service type of project contains .cscfg file and primarily
is used for storing --

- Number of role instances to deploy for each role in cloud service

project

- Thumbprint of certificates used if any

- And most important, User defined configuration settings

The primary aim or purpose of this file is to allow configuration

changes in production environment without downtime of your application.

**Deep Dive:**
When you make changes to web configuration file while web application is
running and active in IIS, the App Pool gets restarted, current user
sessions are lost. For instance, imagine web application hosted in IIS
as "desktop application". So if you save web.config file it's exactly
similar to closing the opening the desktop application again. Therefore,
let's say if we store azure storage connection string in web config file
and after certain days or weeks you regenerated the primary key of
storage account for security reasons, then you need to change it in web
config file. However, if you do that, app pool will be restarted and
application downtime may be experienced. Therefore, you may want to
store these changing configuration settings (like azure storage
connection string) in a file which is external to application binaries
and deployment package so that change in it will not affect the running
application at all. This can have treated as [External Configuration
Store](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn589803.aspx) Design
Pattern and cloud service configuration file is the implementation of
this pattern.

The .cscfg file settings can be modified from the azure portal itself.
This means you don't have to redeploy the entire application which could
have been the case if you have had used web.config file and needed a
change in it. This is the benefit of cloud configuration file over
web.config file.

As cloud configuration file is not bound with application no app pool

restart scenario happens upon changes.

How to achieve zero downtime in cloud service deployments during upgrades and all
hardware failures?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------

Run at least 2 instances of each role within a cloud service. When we

have 2 or more instances running for a role in cloud service then
automatically the deployment gets distributed across different fault and
upgrade domains and achieves almost or near to zero downtime.

**Deep Dive:**

Fault domain is a physical unit of failure. In simple form when your

computer is connected to power supply and if power supply is down then
your computer can not be operational. So computer itself connected to
power supply is a Fault domain.

Definition - So a fault domain is set of hardware components like

computers, switches that share single point of failure.

What is single point of failure -- is a part of the system, if it

fails, will stop the entire system from working.

The infrastructure of each Azure data center is divided into multiple

sections which are treated as fault domains. These sections of the
infrastructure (which are not necessarily individual servers or server
racks) are designed in such a way that a failure of one fault domain is
extremely unlikely to affect any other fault domain. When you deploy a
service, the Azure Fabric Controller automatically locates the roles in
at least two different fault domains so that a failure in one domain
will not affect all instances of your service.
This is the reason why Azure recommends you to have 2 instances so that
Azure fabric will place your application role instances in more than one
fault domain to avoid failure.

Upgrade Domain -

It is a logical unit of grouping the role instances and it does not

exist physically. When we have 2 instances of role running then
automatically each of the deployment or instances are treated as
different upgrade domain. So when an upgrade of guest OS, host OS or
application update need to be performed then only one upgrade domain
based instances is updated while upgrade domain 2 based instance keep
serving the user's requests. Once upgrade of first instance is completed
then second upgrade domain based instance gets updated and so on. So at
any point of time during upgrade at least one instance is alive and
serving the users request hence you don't face the downtime of your
application.

Why Azure recommends to run at least 2 instances of cloud service roles?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Answered as part of Deep Dive section of question no 8.

What is difference between Cloud Service "Role Instance VM" and "Cloud Service
VM\"?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-

Following table highlights important points about the difference between

"Role Instance VM" and "Cloud Service VM"

Sr. No. Role Instance VM

Cloud Service VM
---------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------
1 This is PaaS offering
This is IaaS offering
2 Changes made to VM settings, data storage on drives etc. are not
persistent.
Changes made to VM settings, data storage on drives etc. are **persistent**.
3 VMs provisioned for Role instances have IIS, .Net framework etc.
standard pre-requisites pre-configured.
VMs provisioned have only OS with no addition standard application configured and
it is user's responsibility.
4 Vertical scalability is not supported for role instance VMs. RE-
deployment of entire application is required for achieving vertical scalability.
VMs can be scaled vertically without any re-deployment or re-creating the VMs.
5 Horizontal scalability configuration is easy and no need to create pre-
configured VM in advance.
Horizontal scalability configuration is driven by no. of pre-configured VMs.
6 Being PaaS based offering, very limited control over underlying VMs.
Being IaaS based offering, user has full control over VMs.
7 Underlying VMs OS disks are not accessible.
Underlying VMs OS, data disks are stored in Azure Blob storage and are accessible
for user.
8 Being PaaS and less dependency on VM, there is no need to perform
backup of these VMs.
Being IaaS, management is entirely user's responsibility. So user has to take
regular backups of underlying OS and data disks.
9 Pre-configured software templates can't be used and OS option is only
limited Windows OS based versions. Pre-
configured software template images based VMs can be provisioned supporting various
flavors of Linux and Windows OS versions.
10 The use of VMs is limited to only one purpose -- running and hosting
web applications and background jobs through worker roles. Not
limited to only running web applications.

**Deep Dive:**

1. PaaS means you focus only on Application and Data. Rest is taken
care by cloud computing platform. In case role instance VMs user
only deploys its application and rest is managed by underlying cloud
platform.

IaaS means you get support only virtualization and after everything is
your responsibility.

2. Changes made to VM are not persistent. For example, if we create a

text file on C drive, then if cloud service role is recycled due to
hardware failure then new VM gets allocated to Role instance and
earlier save Text file will not be present.

For example, if we create a text file on C drive, then if hardware

failure occurs then new VM gets allocated to automatically and earlier
saved Text file will be present.

3. VM provisioned in role instances already have all pre-requisites

installed and configured for running an application.

However, in case of IaaS VM we only get VM with OS. Everything after

that is user's responsibility. So for running web application in IaaS
.NET framework installation, IIS installation etc. will be required to
be done by user.

4. Vertical scalability means increasing the capacity of existing VM.

For example, if you are running your web application on A2 sized VM
then to make application run on A4 size, you will need to redeploy
the application; which will create entirely new VM. The size of role
instance VM can't be changed from portal.

In case of IaaS VM it can be directly changed from Portal and that's it.

5. As role instances being PaaS offering and VM management is done by

cloud platform, horizontal scalability in unlimited and user don't
have to create VMs in advance to support scalability. For example,
if user is running application on 2 instance and due to heavy demand
if he/ she wishes to run the same application on 4 instances then it
is just matter if changing the instance count on Azure portal.
Automatically new VMs with IIs and .NET framework will get created
as well as the application will also be deployed on it and made
available for serving the user request and everything happen
automatically.

On the other hand, the no. of VM to be scaled horizontally is limited by

pre-configured VMs. So if user wants to scale the IaaS VM horizontally
then he/ she will have to create the VM with same configuration in
advance and then at runtime it can scale only to no. of VMs created by
user in advance. This is because VM management is entirely user's
responsibility in IaaS offering.

6. AS Role instance VMs are not persistent as stated in points 2, you

can't really use it for any other work whereas IaaS VM can be used
to perform any task, run any standard software along with your web
site like SQL server and so on.

7. In case of IaaS VMs the underlying OS disk \[which may be making up

C drive in VM\], attached data disk \[which may be making other
drive than C and D\] are .vhd files and those are saved in Page blob
under Azure storage account. So this fact opens up the opportunities
of "Image mobility". Means you can take these .vhd files on premise
and provision VMs out of it or vice versa.

In case role instance VMs underlying OS disks are managed by azure

platform and we don't access to it at all.

8. As role instance VM management is not user's responsibility there is

no need to configure backup, anti-virus, OS upgrades etc.
traditional managed services task as they are taken care by Azure
platform only.

In case Azure IaaS VMs all types of managed services tasks are user's
responsibility as you are the owner of that VM.

9. As of today role instance VMs can only have Windows OS flavors to

run the web applications. The fact that Azure web roles and worker
roles can run java based applications, there might be requirement of
having Linux OS for Java application. As of today such type of
scenarios are not supported.

Today you can have any type of OS version and standard software VM
provisioned from Azure Marketplace for IaaS VMs. Azure provides
pre-configure template images through which all standard Microsoft stack
software such as SharePoint, SQL server, Dynamics AX, CRM VMs images are
readily available for consumption.

10. This point is self-explanatory.

What is the best practice for achieving the High availability of applications
running on Azure VM having web tier and DB tier?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------

For achieving high availability in case of Azure IaaS VMs --

Availability sets should be used along with at least 2 instances of VMs
and implement this redundancy at every web tier and DB tier.

**Deep Dive:**

For example, let's say we want to run asp.net MVC web application along
with SQL server DB on Azure IaaS VM provisioned in cloud service. Then
to provide HA for VMs, it is recommended to run web application database
in different server. Then have same web application hosted in 2
different VMs. Both VMs should be provisioned in the same cloud service
and add them to same availability sets. Whenever Azure platform see 2
VMs part of same availability sets then automatically they are placed in
different "Fault and Update domain". This way availability sets provides
HA configuration for Azure VMs running web applications. On top of this
it is also recommended to configure Load balancer \[for the endpoint
port which is used for running web application. usually this is 80 for
http or 443 for https\].

For database VMs again it is recommended to run them in separate

Availability sets than web tier VMs. Then to keep the data in sync
between 2 DB VMs either use Log shipping or mirroring mechanism. Then on
top of this Internal load balancer can be used to provide communication
between web tier VMs and DB tier VMs.

If cost is not the factor, then SQL Server Always On configuration is

best and recommended approach for achieving HA at DB tier VMs.

Following diagram illustrates the above best practice -

![](media/image6.png)

Azure Services - Data and Storage

=================================

This section highlights Azure storage, SQL azure specific questions.

What are different types of Azure blobs and difference between them?
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Azure storage has two type of blob -- Block and Page.

\# Block Blob
Page Blob
----
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------
1 Block blob is ideal for sequential read, write operations.
Page blob is ideal for random read, write operations.
2 Block blobs should be natural choice for storing the various types of files
such as office file, pdf, mp3, video, byte array and so on. Page
blob being "sparse" type of storage, is natural choice for storing .VHD files
backing the Azure Virtual Machines
3 The data constitutes from various blocks and each block can have max size of
4MB. The data
constitutes of various page ranges and each page should be in multiple of 512
bytes.
4 Write made to block blob using PutBlock is uncommitted and maintained only
for 7 days. User have to call PutBlockList to commit the data permanently. Write
made to page blob using PutPage is a direct commit.

What is the difference between Table Storage and SQL Azure Table?
-----------------------------------------------------------------

\# Table Storage
SQL Azure Table
----
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
------
1 This is NoSQL store on Azure
This is relational store on Azure
2 As NoSQL, the data is stored in Key-Value pair combination and data is
referred as an Entity. The data is stored in Rows and Columns combination.
3 Schema is not enforced while storing the data.
Schema is enforces while storing the data. If schema is violated, then error is
thrown.
4 Combination of partition and row key is treated as unique for an entity.
User can define various constraints such primary key, unique key.
5 Can't have relationship between tables.
We can define relationships between tables such as foreign key.
6 Being key-value store, we can't define objects such as Stored procedures,
Views, functions. We can created Stored procedures, views, functions.
7 General usage is observed for storing diagnostics information, error log
information. Used widely in transaction based systems.

**Deep Dive:**

**Point no 3 -**

We have seen people face difficulties in understanding the statement

"Schema is not enforced on table storage". Below diagram explains this
scenario well --

![](media/image7.png){width="6.489583333333333in"
height="3.3645833333333335in"}

As you can see above the 3^rd^ record is storing the date time in
different format than first 2 records and this is absolutely accepted in
Table storage. This is what we meant by "No Schema enforced on the
data".

What is the difference between SQL Server on Azure VM and Azure SQL Database?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Azure Networking -- VNET

========================

This section will cater to some example questions where Hybrid

implementation is the key focus of Azure deployment.

An application front end is hosted on Azure but due to security reasons customer
want database to be hosted on-premises within his office building. What are the
different ways to handle this connectivity scenario in Azure?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------

Looking at the requirement of connecting single on premises DB machine

to Azure hosted application, Azure VNET based "Point to Site" can be
considered as correct choice in this scenario for Azure to on premises
connectivity. Point to Site is ideal choice for establishing VPN
connectivity between on premises resources and Azure resources where
number of resources to be connected is limited.

What are the other VNET options for achieving connectivity with on premise and
azure resources?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------

Site to Site and express route are other options for achieving cross
premises connectivity. Site to site to specifically use when you have
large number of resources to be connected.

In some cases, Site to Site or Point to Site connectivity may introduce

network latency as VPN created by these features work on public
infrastructure (Internet) only. To overcome on this situation "Express
Route" option can be taken which offers dedicated Leased Line based
offering to overcome on latency issue.

What is the option to connect on premises Database in case user is not willing to
open up VNET based connectivity?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------
In such case, a WCF service can be developed and hosted on premises.
This WCF service will have CRUD operations specifically against the on
premises database. Then Service bus relay option can be used for
invoking on premises WCF service from Azure hosted web application to
access the database. Use of WCF and service bus relay will avoid the
option of VPN connectivity using Azure VNETs offerings.

Azure Migration
===============

This section highlights real world migration interview questions for

IaaS or PaaS migration from on premises to Azure.

On premises application running few windows services, console applications to

handle certain tasks. What should be the approach for migration of such
applications to Azure?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
------

There are 3 ways by which we can achieve background process migration to

Azure --

1. Azure Virtual Machine

2. Worker role

3. Azure Web Jobs

**Deep dive:**

The obvious way can be --

Azure VM: This is actual VM running in Azure. Current on premises

console applications, windows services can be configured on this VM.
Then it can function the way it was functioning on premises. However,
managing the VM will be our onus.

Better way can be --

a. Worker Role: If current windows service is written in C\# \[or any

other Azure cloud service supported programming language\] then it
can be easily converted into Worker role to do the processing. Being
PaaS offering we will not have to manage the role instance VM.
However, in case of Worker role the scheduling part may be tricky
(manual implementation) if that is the need of background
application we are migrating.

b. Web Jobs: This can run in background plus has scheduling capability
as well. Webjobs runs in the context of API App service, means runs
on the same instance on which web application, API app is running.
Hence it saves cost as compared to Worker Role and it can scale as
per the App Service plan in which web app, API app is running.

If we are looking for Micro-service based architecture (loosely couple

application in all respect) --

Then, Azure functions is another way of doing it. Although it is not

cost effective as webjobs but it follows "Single Responsibility
Principal" providing you true nature of loosely couple applications.

What is the way to implement Caching/Session Management mechanism in Azure?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Azure Redis Cache is the most commonly used Caching mechanism available
as Platform as a Service (PaaS) in Azure. In the recent announcement,
Microsoft mentioned that Azure Managed Cache and In-Role cache will be
retiring on 30^th^ November 2016.

**Deep dive:**

Earlier Microsoft Azure AppFabric Distributed Cache service was the

primary option for Caching implementations in Azure, however it is now
deprecated and no longer recommended.

**Redis Cache:**

Redis Cache is open source Third Party service provider in Azure and it
is available as Platform as a Service (PaaS). So you don't have to
create VMs or configure any infrastructure components to build and
utilize Redis Cache. Redis Cache is also costly Caching service compare
to SQL Server option. Redis Cache have its own security layer and it is
ensured to not get exposed to public networks, hence using Redis Cache
for your Caching related requirements in any apps is safe. Also Redis
Cache is scalable and hence very much viable solution in large
enterprise applications. You can implement Redis Cache with design
patterns like Circuit Breaker or Cache-Aside pattern as well.

There are three main offerings/tiers of Redis as:

1. Basic -- Single instance with no SLA

2. Standard -- Two instance with HA (High Availability) SLA

3. Premium -- It is designed for bigger workloads and DR (disaster

recovery) with all features of Standard tier and high availability
SLA

You can also monitor Azure Redis Cache activities. You can also setup
Redis Cache instance from PowerShell like:

New-AzureRmRedisCache -ResourceGroupName myGroup -Name mycache -Location

\"West US\"

What is Azure Resource Manager (ARM) and what are benefits of ARM over Classic
services (Cloud Services)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------

Azure Resource Manager (ARM) is the deployment methodology/strategy to

deploy your Azure components in Azure (IaaS and PaaS components). It
acts like container of multiple resources however it can span across
regions and services. It is template driven, declarative and idempotent
in nature.
Following are the benefits of using Azure Resource Manager (ARM) over
Classic Services (Cloud Services):

You can deploy, manage, and monitor all of the resources for your
solution as a group, rather than handling these resources individually.
You can repeatedly deploy your solution throughout the development
lifecycle and have confidence your resources are deployed in a
consistent state. You can use declarative templates to define your
deployment. You can define the dependencies between resources so they
are deployed in the correct order.

You can apply access control to all services in your resource group
because Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) is natively integrated into the
management platform. You can apply tags to resources to logically
organize all of the resources in your subscription. You can clarify
billing for your organization by viewing the rolled-up costs for the
entire group or for a group of resources sharing the same tag.

What is Log Analytics (Operational Management Suite)?

-----------------------------------------------------

Log Analytics (OMS) (formerly known by "Operational Insights") in Azure

cater all requirements in one single service and takes care of Log
Analytics, Automation, Availability and Security at one single place. It
provides single dashboard which gives all details of Logs, IIS Logs,
Storage and other Infrastructure Log and Capacity planning details. Log
Analytics also extend itself to On Premise infrastructure, Amazon (AWS)
workload and Open Stack beside traditional Windows and Linux virtual
infrastructure in Azure. Log Analytics also enables you to generate
Power BI data source from which you can build Power BI visuals for your
data. Log Analytics leverages OMS which also gives you Security and
Threat Management related data with all necessary details like Login
Information, IP Addresses etc. It is paid services and comes with 3
different pricing tier as Free, Standard and Premium. It helps you to
search Logs across your infrastructure from a single dashboard and also
allows you to export the results as well. Hence this becomes one single
point/dashboard for all your logs of all your infrastructure
irrespective whether it is Windows or Linux or On premise or Azure
hosted.

What are the various ways by which an on premises VM can be migrated to Azure?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The best and quick way can be to migrate the associated OS disk and data
disks from on premises to Azure storage, and then provision VM out of
it.

For migration of on premises VM, we need to understand what is the

virtualization platform used for hosting the VM. Various virtualization
techniques are HyperV, VMWare etc. For creating VM on Azure requires VHD
file only and that can be obtained from HyperV directly. In case VM is
hosted on virtualization platform other than HyperV then we need to
first convert the existing VM disks into vhd format and then can be
uploaded to Azure storage. Once the disk files are present on Azure, VM
can be provisioned.

Azure Messaging -- Service Bus

==============================
This section focusses on important and common questions related to Azure
Service bus offering.

What is the difference between Storage queue and Service Bus queue?
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Below are the important difference between storage queue and service bus
queue -

Sr. No. Storage Queue Service

Bus Queue
--------- --------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 FIFO ordering is not guaranteed FIFO
ordering of messages is guaranteed with the help of sessions
2 No session support
Messaging level sessions are supported
3 At Least Once delivery model Supports
At least once, At most once, Exactly once delivery models of messages
4 No automatic duplicate detection Supports
automatic duplicate detection
5 No support for dead-lettering Dead
letter queue is supported
6 Message size 64 KB Message
size is 256KB
7 Time to leave up to 7 days max Time is
live is unlimited
8 One to one message delivery Supports
one to one and one to many message delivery
9 No transaction support
Transaction is supported
10 Batched receive is supported but batch send is not supported Supports
batched receive and batched send both.
11 Message receiving behavior is non-blocking Message
receiving behavior can be blocking or non-blocking both.

**Deep Dive:**

Point 1 & 2 -

The storage queue does not provide guarantee about FIFO nature. The
order in which messages are added to queue may not get received in the
same order. On the other hand, Service Bus Queue provides FIFO ordering
guarantee if "Message Sessions" are used. If messages are added with
SessionID and receiver receives the messages with same SessionID then an
affinity is created and the order in which messages were added, message
will be received as well.

Point 3 -- Message Delivery model --

Storage Queue - At Least Once --

Storage Queue has two methods of receiving message from queue.

"PeekMessage" and "GetMessage". Peek only read the message but it
remains in the queue so other receivers can receive it again. So if you
want your message to be processed multiple times then PeekMessage method
should be the choice.
When GetMessage is used then received message remain invisible for some
default duration for other receivers. If it is not deleted within that
period, then automatically message reappears for other receivers to
consume again. So typically if you want your message to be processed
only once then call GetMessage method and after processing call
DeleteMessage method. In this case if any error is encountered during
processing of the message before calling delete message then the message
will re-appear in the queue after default time period of invisibility.

As here we can see using GetMessage and DeleteMessage method combination

every message in storage queue "always gets delivered or received" hence
it is termed as "At Least Once" delivery.

Service Bus Queue -- At Most Once -

Service bus queue message can be received using ReceiveAndDelete method.

This is one way operation where message is received from service bus
queue and immediately marked as complete. If message is marked for
complete then automatically it gets deleted. This is one way operation
hence faster and cheaper as only one transaction charges are applicable.
However, if any error is encountered during processing of message after
receiving then, same message is lost as and can't be received again as
it has been already deleted while receive operation. So if your
application can tolerate the no-processing or missing messages in some
cases then ReceiveAndDelete can be used.

As the message receiving attempt is made only once and after that it
gets deleted this is referred as "At Most Once".

Service Bus Queue -- At Least Once -

PeekLock method of receiving message from Service Bus Queue is two stage
operation. When PeekLock is called, the message gets locked and no other
receivers can receive it. Once the processing is finished Complete
method can be called on the same message which marks the message for
delete operation. In case an error occurs while processing the message
can re-appear again for receive operation after expiry of lock period.
Similarly, if processing of message is required to be done immediately
after error, Abandon method can be called which makes locked message
available for consumption immediately. This way combination of PeekLock
and Complete method makes sure that every message is received and
processed always therefore this model is called as "At Least Once".

Service Bus Queue -- Exactly Once -

Service bus queue supports automatic duplicate detection of message

based on MessageId. If queue is created with duplication detection as
true then if 2 messages with same MessageId are added to the queue, one
of them automatically will get ignored. So this way we can say Service
Bus Queue support "Exactly once" delivery model if duplicate detection
is enabled.

What are different receive methods can be used for Azure Service Bus Queue?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Answered as a part of deep dive section of question no. 12.

Identity in Azure -- Azure Active Directory

===========================================
This section highlights important and common questions around security
in Azure that are asked during interviews.

What is the difference between Azure AD and Windows Server AD?

--------------------------------------------------------------

\# Windows Server AD
Azure Active Directory
----
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------
1 Windows AD offers 5 core services -- ADCS, ADRMS, ADFS, ADDS, ADLDS.
Azure AD provides only one solution -- "Identity management throughout the
internet".
2 Designed to operate in corporate network where companies have full control
over topology. This exposes services exposed through various protocols like LDAP,
Kerberos, DNS, AD replication etc. Type of communication is Http or Https and
authentication protocols supported are OAuth, WS-Federation, SAMP-P.
3 Operations/ information can be retrieved from AD are performed through LDAP
queries.
Azure AD provides Graph API which is REST API.
4 The management of devices are limited to corporate assets.
Http and https enables support for any device that can talk over http/ (s) hence
enabling true Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) scenario.
5 Can't be integrated with enterprise ready SaaS applications.
The nature of Azure AD enables to integrate with enterprise grade SaaS applications
such as Salesforce, Facebook at work, dropbox and so on.
6 You have access to underlying Domain controller as this is Infra offering.
No access to underlying servers as this is PaaS offering and communication happens
using internet facing endpoints.

References
==========

<https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/get-started/>

An Appeal to readers
====================

Thanks for reading through! We hope you found this interview guide trial
version useful. We will love to hear about topics you want to get
covered as a part of full version of this book. Requesting you to take 2
minutes of your time and send your thoughts to

E-mail: cloudqna2016\@outlook.com

Tweet: \@AzureInterviews (AzureQNA)

## Azure

[What are the benefits of severless applications?](#what-are-the-benefits-of-

severless-applications)

[What is Azure Cloud Service?](#what-is-azure-cloud-service)

[What is a web role?](#what-is-a-web-role)

[What is Azure Functions?](#what-is-azure-functions)

[What is serverless computing?](#what-is-serverless-computing)

[What is Azure Resource Group?](#what-is-azure-resource-group)

[What is Kudu?](#what-is-kudu)

[What is a role instance?](#what-is-a-role-instance)

[What is a guest operating system?](#what-is-a-guest-operating-system)

[What is Azure Blob Storage?](#what-is-azure-blob-storage)

[How to include external dll into Azure Function?](#how-to-include-external-dll-

into-azure-function)

[Is Azure Table Storage Nosql?](#is-azure-table-storage-nosql)

[What is an Azure subscription?](#what-is-an-azure-subscription)

[What is Azure ARM?](#what-is-azure-arm)

[Explain the Azure ARM Templates](#explain-the-azure-arm-templates)

[What is a cloud service role?](#what-is-a-cloud-service-role)

[What is Azure Redis Cache?](#what-is-azure-redis-cache)

[What is Azure Service Fabric?](#what-is-azure-service-fabric)

[How can I use applications with Azure AD that I’m using on-premises?](#how-can-i-
use-applications-with-azure-ad-that-im-using-on-premises)

[What Is Azure Key Vault?](#what-is-azure-key-vault)

[What is a Blob Container?](#what-is-a-blob-container)

[How can you stop a VM using Power Shell?](#how-can-you-stop-a-vm-using-power-

shell)

[How can you retrieve the state of a particular VM?](#how-can-you-retrieve-the-

state-of-a-particular-vm)

[How can one create a VM in Azure CLI?](#how-can-one-create-a-vm-in-azure-cli)

[What do you know about Azure WebJobs?](#what-do-you-know-about-azure-webjobs)

[What is a worker role?](#what-is-a-worker-role)

[How can one create a Virtual Machine in Powershell?](#how-can-one-create-a-

virtual-machine-in-powershell)
[How much storage can I use with a virtual machine?](#how-much-storage-can-i-use-
with-a-virtual-machine)

[Is it possible to add an existing VM to an availability set?](#is-it-possible-to-

add-an-existing-vm-to-an-availability-set)

[What is deployment environments?](#what-is-deployment-environments)

[What is Azure VPN?](#what-is-azure-vpn)

[What is the difference between Service Bus Queues and Storage Queues?](#what-is-
the-difference-between-service-bus-queues-and-storage-queues)

[What are the differences between Subscription Administrator and Directory

Administrator?](#what-are-the-differences-between-subscription-administrator-and-
directory-administrator)

[What is a VNet?](#what-is-a-vnet)

[What are stateful and stateless microservices for Service Fabric?](#what-are-

stateful-and-stateless-microservices-for-service-fabric)

[What is key vault in Azure?](#what-is-key-vault-in-azure)

[Do scale sets work with Azure availability sets?](#do-scale-sets-work-with-azure-

availability-sets)

[What are Network Security Groups?](#what-are-network-security-groups)

[What are Update Domains?](#what-are-update-domains)

[What are Fault Domains?](#what-are-fault-domains)

[What is an Availability Set?](#what-is-an-availability-set)

[What are virtual machine scale sets in Azure?](#what-are-virtual-machine-scale-

sets-in-azure)

[What is Azure MFA?](#what-is-azure-mfa)

[What are Cloud Service Roles and why do we use them?](#what-are-cloud-service-

roles-and-why-do-we-use-them)

[What is Azure Table Storage?](#what-is-azure-table-storage)

[What is Azure Resource Manager and why we need to use one?](#what-is-azure-

resource-manager-and-why-we-need-to-use-one)

[What is Azure Search?](#what-is-azure-search)

[What are Redis databases?](#what-are-redis-databases)

[Is it possible to create a Virtual Machine using Azure Resource Manager in a

Virtual Network that was created using classic deployment?](#is-it-possible-to-
create-a-virtual-machine-using-azure-resource-manager-in-a-virtual-network-that-
was-created-using-classic-deployment)

[How to create a new storage account and container using Power Shell?](#how-to-
create-a-new-storage-account-and-container-using-power-shell)
[ What is the meaning of application partitions?](#-what-is-the-meaning-of-
application-partitions)

[What is Azure VNET?](#what-is-azure-vnet)

[What is the difference between “price,” “software price,” and “total price” in the
cost structure for Virtual Machine offers in the Azure Marketplace?](#what-is-the-
difference-between-price-software-price-and-total-price-in-the-cost-structure-for-
virtual-machine-offers-in-the-azure-marketplace)

[How to create a Network Security Group and a Network Security Group Rule?](#how-
to-create-a-network-security-group-and-a-network-security-group-rule)

[How are Azure Marketplace subscriptions priced?](#how-are-azure-marketplace-

subscriptions-priced)

[Explain Azure NSG](#explain-azure-nsg)

[What VPN types are supported by Azure?](#what-vpn-types-are-supported-by-azure)

[What are special Azure Regions?](#what-are-special-azure-regions)

### What are the benefits of severless applications?

* Avoid managing servers

* Flexible scaling by demand
* Pay for time and resources it takes to execute your code

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What is Azure Cloud Service?

By creating a cloud service, you can deploy a multi-tier web application in Azure,
defining multiple roles to distribute processing and allow flexible scaling of your
application. A cloud service consists of one or more web roles and/or worker roles,
each with its own application files and configuration. Azure Websites and Virtual
Machines also enable web applications on Azure. The main advantage of cloud
services is the ability to support more complex multi-tier architectures

###### Source

* https://mindmajix.com/azure-interview-questions

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What is a web role?

A web role provides a dedicated Internet Information Services (IIS) web-server used
for hosting front-end web applications.

###### Source

* https://mindmajix.com/azure-interview-questions

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What is Azure Functions?
Azure Functions is a solution for easily running small pieces of code, or
"functions," in the cloud. We can write just the code we need for the problem at
hand, without worrying about a whole application or the infrastructure to run it
and use language of our choice such as C#, F#, Node.js, Java, or PHP. Azure
Functions lets us develop serverless applications on Microsoft Azure.

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What is serverless computing?

Serverless computing is the abstraction of servers, infrastructure, and operating

systems. When you build serverless apps you don’t need to provision and manage any
servers, so you can take your mind off infrastructure concerns. Serverless
computing is driven by the reaction to events and triggers happening in near-real-
time—in the cloud.

As a fully managed service, server management and capacity planning are invisible
to the developer and billing is based just on resources consumed or the actual time
your code is running.

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What is Azure Resource Group?

Resource groups (RG) in Azure is an approach to group a collection of assets in

logical groups for easy or even automatic provisioning, monitoring, and access
control, and for more effective management of their costs. The underlying
technology that powers resource groups is the Azure Resource Manager (ARM).

###### Source

* http://www.onlinetech.com/resources/references/how-to-use-azure-resource-groups-
a-simple-explanation

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What is Kudu?

Every Azure App Service web application includes a "hidden" service site called
**Kudu**.

Kudu Console for example is a debugging service for Azure platform which allows you
to explore your web app and surf the bugs present on it, like deployment logs,
memory dump, and uploading files to your web app, and adding JSON endpoints to your
web apps, etc.

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What is a role instance?

A role instance is a virtual machine on which the application code and role
configuration run. A role can have multiple instances, defined in the service
configuration file.

###### Source
* https://mindmajix.com/azure-interview-questions

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What is a guest operating system?

The guest operating system for a cloud service is the operating system installed on
the role instances (virtual machines) on which your application code runs.

###### Source

* https://mindmajix.com/azure-interview-questions

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What is Azure Blob Storage?

*Azure Blob storage* is Microsoft's object storage solution for the cloud. Blob
storage is optimized for storing massive amounts of unstructured data, such as text
or binary data. Azure Storage offers three types of blobs:
* **Block blobs** store text and binary data, up to about 4.7 TB. Block blobs are
made up of blocks of data that can be managed individually.
* **Append blobs** are made up of blocks like block blobs, but are optimized for
append operations. Append blobs are ideal for scenarios such as logging data from
virtual machines.
* **Page blobs** store random access files up to 8 TB in size. Page blobs store the
VHD files that back VMs.

###### Source

* https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/blobs/storage-blobs-introduction

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### How to include external dll into Azure Function?

* Add the assembly to the BIN directory using KUDU

* Include the assembly and code the Azure Function to use it
* Add the using declaration so that the methods within the DLL can be accessed.

```cs
#r "D:\home\site\wwwroot\GreetingsAssemblyReference\bin\benjamin.dll"

using benjamin;
```

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### Is Azure Table Storage Nosql?

**Azure Table storage** is a service that stores structured NoSQL data in the
cloud, providing a key/attribute store with a schemaless design.

###### Source

* https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/vpn-gateway/vpn-gateway-vpn-faq

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What is an Azure subscription?
A Windows **Azure subscription** grants you access to Windows Azure services and to
the Windows Azure Platform Management Portal. A Windows Azure subscription has two
aspects:
* The Windows Azure account, through which resource usage is reported
* Services are billed.

###### Source

* https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/arunrakwal/2012/04/09/create-windows-azure-
subscription/

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What is Azure ARM?

The **Azure Resource Manager (ARM)** is the service used to provision resources in
your Azure subscription. It was first announced at Build 2014 when the new Azure
portal ( portal.azure.com) was announced and provides a new set of API's that are
used to provision resources. The ARM is:

* Template-driven – Using templates to deploy all resources.

* Declarative – You declare the resources you want to have instead of imperative
where you need to make rules.
* Idempotent – You can deploy the template over and over again without affecting
the current state of resources.
* Multi-service – All services can be deployed using Azure Resource Manager,
Website, Storage, VMs etc.
* Multi region - You can choose in which region you would like to deploy the
resources.
* Extensible – Azure Resource Manager is extensible with more resource providers
and thus resources.

###### Source

* https://azurestack.blog/2015/06/azure-resource-manager-templates-json/

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### Explain the Azure ARM Templates

An Azure Resource Template is a JSON file used to deploy resources with Azure
Resource Manager. It defines:
* Parameters
* Variables
* Resources - the actual resources that you are going to deploy or update
* Outputs

###### Source

* http://www.onlinetech.com/resources/references/how-to-use-azure-resource-groups-
a-simple-explanation

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What is a cloud service role?

A cloud service role is comprised of application files and a configuration. A cloud

service can have two types of roles:
* web role
* worker role
###### Source

* https://mindmajix.com/azure-interview-questions

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What is Azure Redis Cache?

*Redis* is an open source (BSD licensed), in-memory data structure store, used as a
database, cache and message broker. **Azure Redis Cache** is based on the popular
open-source Redis cache. It gives you access to a secure, dedicated Redis cache,
managed by Microsoft, and accessible from any application within Azure. It supports
data structures such as strings, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets with range
queries, bitmaps, hyperloglogs and geospatial indexes with radius queries.

###### Source

* https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-common-questions-asked-in-Microsoft-Azure-
interview

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What is Azure Service Fabric?

Azure Service Fabric is a distributed systems platform that makes it easy to

package, deploy, and manage scalable and reliable micro-services. Service Fabric
also addresses the significant challenges in developing and managing cloud
applications. Developers and administrators can avoid complex infrastructure
problems and focus on implementing mission-critical, demanding workloads that are
scalable, reliable, and manageable. Service Fabric represents the next-generation
middleware platform for building and managing these enterprise-class, tier-1,
cloud-scale applications.

###### Source

* https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-common-questions-asked-in-Microsoft-Azure-
interview

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### How can I use applications with Azure AD that I’m using on-premises?

*Azure AD* gives you an easy and secure way to connect to the web applications you
choose. You can access these applications in the same way you access your SaaS apps
in Azure AD, no need for a VPN to change your network infrastructure.

###### Source

* https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-common-questions-asked-in-Microsoft-Azure-
interview

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What Is Azure Key Vault?

**Key Vault** help you safeguard cryptographic keys and other secrets used by your
applications whenever they are On-Premise or in the cloud. More and more services
on Azure are now integrating Azure Key Vault as their secret/key source for things
like deployments, data or even disk encryption.

###### Source

* https://www.codeisahighway.com/create-an-azure-key-vault-using-an-arm-template-
api-version-2015-06-01-and-azure-powershell-v1-0-4/

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What is a Blob Container?

A container organizes a set of blobs, similar to a folder in a file system. All

blobs reside within a container. A storage account can contain an unlimited number
of containers, and a container can store an unlimited number of blobs.

###### Source

* https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/blobs/storage-blobs-introduction

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### How can you stop a VM using Power Shell?

```sh
Stop-AzureRmVM -ResourceGroupName myResourceGroupVM -Name "myVM" -Force
```

###### Source

* https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-common-questions-asked-in-Microsoft-Azure-
interview

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### How can you retrieve the state of a particular VM?

```sh
Get-AzureRmVM `
-ResourceGroupName myResourceGroup `
-Name myVM `
-Status | Select @{n="Status"; e={$_.Statuses[1].Code}}
```

###### Source

* https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-common-questions-asked-in-Microsoft-Azure-
interview

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### How can one create a VM in Azure CLI?

```sh
az vm create ` --resource-group myResourceGroup ` --name myVM --image
win2016datacenter ` --admin-username azureuser ` --admin-password myPassword12
```

###### Source

* https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-common-questions-asked-in-Microsoft-Azure-
interview

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What do you know about Azure WebJobs?

**WebJobs** is a feature of Azure App Service that enables you to run a program or
script in the same context as a web app, API app, or mobile app. There is no
additional cost to use WebJobs.
The Azure WebJobs SDK is a framework that simplifies the task of writing background
processing code that runs in Azure WebJobs. It includes a declarative binding and
trigger system that works with Azure Storage Blobs, Queues and Tables as well as
Service Bus. You could also trigger Azure WebJob using Kudu API.

###### Source

* https://github.com/Azure/azure-webjobs-sdk/wiki

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What is a worker role?

Applications hosted within worker roles can run asynchronous, long-running or

perpetual tasks independent of user interaction or input.

###### Source

* https://mindmajix.com/azure-interview-questions

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### How can one create a Virtual Machine in Powershell?

```sh
# Define a credential object
$cred = Get-Credential
# Create a virtual machine configuration
$vmConfig = New-AzureRmVMConfig -VMName myVM -VMSize Standard_DS2 |
` Set-AzureRmVMOperatingSystem -Windows -ComputerName myVM -Credential $cred |
` Set-AzureRmVMSourceImage -PublisherName MicrosoftWindowsServer -Offer
WindowsServer `
-Skus 2016-Datacenter -Version latest | Add-AzureRmVMNetworkInterface -Id $nic.Id
```

###### Source

* https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-common-questions-asked-in-Microsoft-Azure-
interview

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### How much storage can I use with a virtual machine?

Each data disk can be up to 1 TB. The number of data disks which you can use
depends on the size of the virtual machine.

Azure Managed Disks are the new and recommended disk storage offerings for use with
Azure Virtual Machines for persistent storage of data. You can use multiple Managed
Disks with each Virtual Machine. Managed Disks offer two types of durable storage
options: Premium and Standard Managed Disks.

Azure storage accounts can also provide storage for the operating system disk and
any data disks. Each disk is a .vhd file stored as a page blob.

###### Source

* https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-common-questions-asked-in-Microsoft-Azure-
interview

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### Is it possible to add an existing VM to an availability set?

No. If you want your VM to be part of an availability set, you need to create the
VM within the set. There currently no way to add a VM to an availability set after
it has been created.

###### Source

* https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-common-questions-asked-in-Microsoft-Azure-
interview

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What is deployment environments?

Azure offers two deployment environments for cloud services:

* a staging environment in which you can test your deployment before you promote it
to
* the production environment.

The two environments are distinguished only by the virtual IP addresses (VIPs) by
which the cloud service is accessed. In the staging environment, the cloud
service’s globally unique identifier (GUID) identifies it in URLs
(GUID.cloudapp.net).

In the production environment, the URL is based on the friendlier DNS prefix
assigned to the cloud service (for example, myservice.cloudapp.net).

###### Source

* https://mindmajix.com/azure-interview-questions

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What is Azure VPN?

A VPN gateway is a specific type of virtual network gateway that is used to

send encrypted traffic between an Azure virtual network and an on-premises location
over the public Internet. You can also use a VPN gateway to send encrypted traffic
between Azure virtual networks over the Microsoft network.

###### Source

* https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/vpn-gateway/vpn-gateway-about-vpngateways

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What is the difference between Service Bus Queues and Storage Queues?

The *Azure Storage Queue* is simple and the developer experience is quite good. It
uses the local Azure Storage Emulator and debugging is made quite easy. The tooling
for Azure Storage Queues allows you to easily peek at the top 32 messages and if
the messages are in XML or Json, you’re able to visualize their contents directly
from Visual Studio Furthermore, these queues can be purged of their contents, which
is especially useful during development and QA efforts.

The Azure Service Bus Queues are evolved and surrounded by many useful mechanisms
that make it enterprise worthy! They are built into the Service Bus and are able to
forward messages to other Queues and Topics. They have a built-in dead-letter queue
and messages have a time to live that you control, hence messages don’t
automatically disappear after 7 days.
Furthermore, Azure Service Bus Queues have the ability of deleting themselves after
a configurable amount of idle time. This feature is very practical when you create
Queues for each user, because if a user hasn’t interacted with a Queue for the past
month, it automatically gets clean it up. Its also a great way to drive costs down.
You shouldn’t have to pay for storage that you don’t need. These Queues are limited
to a maximum of 80gb. Once you’ve reached this limit your application will start
receiving exceptions.

###### Source

* https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-common-questions-asked-in-Microsoft-Azure-
interview

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What are the differences between Subscription Administrator and Directory
Administrator?

By default, one is assigned the *Subscription Administrator* role when he/she signs
up for Azure. A subscription admin can use either a Microsoft account or a work or
school account from the directory that the Azure subscription is associated with.
This role is authorized to manage services in the Azure portal. If others need to
sign in and access services by using the same subscription, you can add them as co-
admins.

Azure AD has a different set of admin roles to manage the directory and identity-
related features. These admins will have access to various features in the Azure
portal or the Azure classic portal. The admin’s role determines what they can do,
like create or edit users, assign administrative roles to others, reset user
passwords, manage user licenses, or manage domains.

###### Source

* https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-common-questions-asked-in-Microsoft-Azure-
interview

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What is a VNet?

VNet is a representation of your own network in the cloud. It logically isolates

your instances launched in the cloud, from the rest of your resources.

###### Source

* https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-common-questions-asked-in-Microsoft-Azure-
interview

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What are stateful and stateless microservices for Service Fabric?

Service Fabric enables you to build applications that consist of microservices:

* Stateless microservices (such as protocol gateways and web proxies) do not

maintain a mutable state outside a request and its response from the service. Azure
Cloud Services worker roles are an example of a stateless service.

* Stateful microservices (such as user accounts, databases, devices, shopping

carts, and queues) maintain a mutable, authoritative state beyond the request and
its response.
###### Source

* https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-common-questions-asked-in-Microsoft-Azure-
interview

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What is key vault in Azure?

Microsoft Azure Key Vault is a cloud-hosted management service that allows

users to encrypt keys and small secrets by using keys that are protected by
hardware security modules (HSMs). Small secrets are data less than 10 KB like
passwords and .PFX files.

###### Source

* https://searchwindowsserver.techtarget.com/definition/Microsoft-Azure-Key-Vault

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### Do scale sets work with Azure availability sets?

###### Source

* https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-common-questions-asked-in-Microsoft-Azure-
interview

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What are Network Security Groups?

A *network security group (NSG)* contains a list of Access Control List (ACL) rules
that allow or deny network traffic to subnets, NICs, or both. NSGs can be
associated with either subnets or individual NICs connected to a subnet. When an
NSG is associated with a subnet, the ACL rules apply to all the VMs in that subnet.
In addition, traffic to an individual NIC can be restricted by associating an NSG
directly to a NIC.

###### Source

* https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-common-questions-asked-in-Microsoft-Azure-
interview

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What are Update Domains?

An update domain is a logical group of underlying hardware that can undergo

maintenance or can be rebooted at the same time. As you create VMs within an
availability set, the Azure platform automatically distributes your VMs across
these update domains. This approach ensures that at least one instance of your
application always remains running as the Azure platform undergoes periodic
maintenance. The order of update domains being rebooted may not proceed
sequentially during planned maintenance, but only one update domain is rebooted at
a time.
###### Source

* https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-common-questions-asked-in-Microsoft-Azure-
interview

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What are Fault Domains?

A fault domain is a logical group of underlying hardware that share a common

power source and network switch, similar to a rack within an on-premise data-
centers. As you create VMs within an availability set, the Azure platform
automatically distributes your VMs across these fault domains. This approach limits
the impact of potential physical hardware failures, network outages, or power
interruptions.

###### Source

* https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-common-questions-asked-in-Microsoft-Azure-
interview

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What is an Availability Set?

*An availability set* is a logical grouping of VMs that allows Azure to understand
how your application is built to provide redundancy and availability. It is
recommended that two or more VMs are created within an availability set to provide
for a highly available application and to meet the 99.95% Azure SLA. When a single
VM is used with Azure Premium Storage, the Azure SLA applies for unplanned
maintenance events.

###### Source

* https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-common-questions-asked-in-Microsoft-Azure-
interview

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What are virtual machine scale sets in Azure?

Virtual machine scale sets are Azure compute resource that you can use to deploy
and manage a set of identical VMs. With all the VMs configured the same, scale sets
are designed to support true autoscale, and no pre-provisioning of VMs is required.
So it’s easier to build large-scale services that target big compute, big data, and
containerized workloads.

###### Source

* https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-common-questions-asked-in-Microsoft-Azure-
interview

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What is Azure MFA?

Azure Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is Microsoft's two-step verification

solution. It delivers strong authentication via a range of verification methods,
including phone call, text message, or mobile app verification.

###### Source

* https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/authentication/multi-
factor-authentication

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What are Cloud Service Roles and why do we use them?

In Azure, a Cloud Service Role is a collection of managed, load-balanced,

Platform-as-a-Service virtual machines that work together to perform common tasks.
Cloud Service Roles are managed by Azure fabric controller and provide the ultimate
combination of scalability, control, and customizationThere are three types of
roles in Microsoft Azure:

* **Web Role** – A web role is basically used to deploy a website, using languages
supported by the IIS platform like, PHP, .NET etc. It is configured and customized
to run web applications.
* **Worker Role** – A worker role is more like an help to the Web role, it used to
execute background processes unlike the Web Role which is used to deploy the
website.
* **VM Role** – The VM role is used by a user to schedule tasks and other windows
services. This role can be used to customize the machines on which the web and
worker role is running.

###### Source

* https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-common-questions-asked-in-Microsoft-Azure-
interview

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What is Azure Table Storage?

*Azure Table storage* is a service that stores structured NoSQL data in the cloud,
providing a key/attribute store with a schemaless design. Because Table storage is
schemaless, it's easy to adapt your data as the needs of your application evolve.
Access to Table storage data is fast and cost-effective for many types of
applications, and is typically lower in cost than traditional SQL for similar
volumes of data.

###### Source

* https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db/table-storage-overview

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What is Azure Resource Manager and why we need to use one?

The **Azure Resource Manager (ARM)** is the service used to provision resources in
your Azure subscription. ARM provides us a way to describe resources in a resource
group using JSON documents (ARM Template). by using the ARM Template you have a
fully repeatable configuration of a given deployment and this is extremely valuable
for Production environments but especially so for Dev/Test deployments. By having a
set template, we can ensure that anytime a new Dev or Test deployment is required
(which happens all the time), it can be achieved in moments and safe in the
knowledge that it will be identical to the previous environments.

###### Source

* https://www.codeisahighway.com/create-an-azure-key-vault-using-an-arm-template-
api-version-2015-06-01-and-azure-powershell-v1-0-4/

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What is Azure Search?
*Azure Search* is a cloud search-as-a-service solution that delegates server and
infrastructure management to Microsoft, leaving you with a ready-to-use service
that you can populate with your data and then use to add search to your web or
mobile application.

Azure Search allows you to easily add a robust search experience to your
applications using a simple REST API or .NET SDK without managing search
infrastructure or becoming an expert in search.

###### Source

* https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-common-questions-asked-in-Microsoft-Azure-
interview

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What are Redis databases?

Redis Databases are just a logical separation of data within the same Redis
instance. The cache memory is shared between all the databases and actual memory
consumption of a given database depends on the keys/values stored in that database.
For example, a C6 cache has 53 GB of memory. You can choose to put all 53 GB into
one database or you can split it up between multiple databases.

###### Source

* https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-common-questions-asked-in-Microsoft-Azure-
interview

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### Is it possible to create a Virtual Machine using Azure Resource Manager in a
Virtual Network that was created using classic deployment?

This is not supported. You cannot use Azure Resource Manager to deploy a virtual
machine into a virtual network that was created using classic deployment.

###### Source

* https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-common-questions-asked-in-Microsoft-Azure-
interview

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### How to create a new storage account and container using Power Shell?

```sh
$storageName = "st" + (Get-Random)
New-AzureRmStorageAccount -ResourceGroupName "myResourceGroup" -AccountName
$storageName -Location "West US" -SkuName "Standard_LRS" -Kind Storage
$accountKey = (Get-AzureRmStorageAccountKey -ResourceGroupName myResourceGroup -
Name $storageName).Value[0]
$context = New-AzureStorageContext -StorageAccountName $storageName -
StorageAccountKey $accountKey
New-AzureStorageContainer -Name "templates" -Context $context -Permission Container
```

###### Source

* https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-common-questions-asked-in-Microsoft-Azure-
interview

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What is the meaning of application partitions?

*The application partitions* are a part of the Active Directory system and having
said so, they are directory partitions which are replicated to domain controllers.
Usually, domain controllers that are included in the process of directory
partitions hold a replica of that directory partition. The attributes and values of
application partitions is that you can replicated them to any specific domain
controller in a forest, meaning that it could lessen replication traffic.

While the domain directory partitions transfer all their data to all of the
domains, the application partitions can focus on only one in the domain area. This
makes application partitions redundant and more available.

###### Source

* https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-common-questions-asked-in-Microsoft-Azure-
interview

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What is Azure VNET?

An Azure Virtual Network (VNet) is a representation of your own network in the

cloud. It is a logical isolation of the Azure cloud dedicated to your subscription.

###### Source

* https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-network/virtual-networks-faq

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What is the difference between “price,” “software price,” and “total price” in
the cost structure for Virtual Machine offers in the Azure Marketplace?

* **Price** - refers to the cost of the Azure Virtual Machine to run the software.
* **Software price** - refers to the cost of the publisher software running on an
Azure Virtual Machine.
* **Total price** - refers to the combined total cost of the Azure Virtual Machine
and the publisher software running on an Azure Virtual Machine.

###### Source

* https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-common-questions-asked-in-Microsoft-Azure-
interview

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### How to create a Network Security Group and a Network Security Group Rule?

```sh
# Create an inbound network security group rule for port 3389
$nsgRuleRDP = New-AzureRmNetworkSecurityRuleConfig -Name
myNetworkSecurityGroupRuleRDP -Protocol Tcp
-Direction Inbound -Priority 1000 -SourceAddressPrefix * -SourcePortRange * -
DestinationAddressPrefix *
-DestinationPortRange 3389 -Access Allow

# Create an inbound network security group rule for port 80

$nsgRuleWeb = New-AzureRmNetworkSecurityRuleConfig -Name
myNetworkSecurityGroupRuleWWW -Protocol Tcp
-Direction Inbound -Priority 1001 -SourceAddressPrefix * -SourcePortRange * -
DestinationAddressPrefix *
-DestinationPortRange 80 -Access Allow

# Create a network security group

$nsg = New-AzureRmNetworkSecurityGroup -ResourceGroupName myResourceGroup -Location
EastUS
-Name myNetworkSecurityGroup -SecurityRules $nsgRuleRDP,$nsgRuleWeb
```

###### Source

* https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-common-questions-asked-in-Microsoft-Azure-
interview

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### How are Azure Marketplace subscriptions priced?

Pricing will vary based on product types. ISV software charges and Azure
infrastructure costs are charged separately through your Azure subscription.
Pricing models include:

* BYOL Model: Bring-your-own-license. You obtain outside of the Azure

Marketplace, the right to access or use the offering and are not charged Azure
Marketplace fees for use of the offering in the Azure Marketplace.

* **Free**: Free SKU. Customers are not charged Azure Marketplace fees for use of
the offering.

* Free Software Trial: Full-featured version of the offer that is promotionally

free for a limited period of time. You will not be charged Azure Marketplace fees
for use of the offering during a trial period. Upon expiration of the trial period,
customers will automatically be charged based on standard rates for use of the
offering.

* **Usage-Based**: You are charged or billed based on the extent of your use of the
offering. For Virtual Machines Images, you are charged an hourly Azure Marketplace
fee. For Data Services, Developer services, and APIs, you are charged per unit of
measurement as defined by the offering.

* **Monthly Fee**: You are charged or billed a fixed monthly fee for a subscription
to the offering (from the date of subscription start for that particular plan). The
monthly fee is not prorated for mid-month cancellations or unused services.

###### Source

* https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-common-questions-asked-in-Microsoft-Azure-
interview

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### Explain Azure NSG

A **network security group (NSG)** used to filter network traffic to and from Azure
resources in an Azure virtual network and includes rules that allow or deny
traffic to a virtual network subnet, network interface, or both.

###### Source
* https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/vpn-gateway/vpn-gateway-about-vpngateways

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What VPN types are supported by Azure?

Azure supports two types of Point-to-site VPN options:

* Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol (SSTP). SSTP is a Microsoft proprietary SSL-

based solution that can penetrate firewalls since most firewalls open the TCP port
that 443 SSL uses.
* IKEv2 VPN.

###### Source

* https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/vpn-gateway/vpn-gateway-vpn-faq

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

### What are special Azure Regions?

Azure has some special regions that you may wish to use when building your
applications for compliance or legal purposes. These special regions include:

* **US Gov Virginia** and **US Gov Iowa** - A physical and logical network-isolated
instance of Azure for US government agencies and partners, operated by screened US
persons. Includes additional compliance certifications such as FedRAMP and DISA.
* **China East** and **China North** - These regions are available through a unique
partnership between Microsoft and 21Vianet, whereby Microsoft does not directly
maintain the datacenters.
* **Germany Central** and **Germany Northeast** - These regions are available via a
data trustee model whereby customer data remains in Germany under control of T-
Systems, a Deutsche Telekom company, acting as the German data trustee.

###### Source

* https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-common-questions-asked-in-Microsoft-Azure-
interview

[[↑] Back to top](#Azure)

Common questions asked in Microsoft Azure interviews can cover a range of topics,
including:

Azure services and their use cases

Azure resource management and deployment
Azure networking and security
Azure monitoring and troubleshooting
Azure cost management and optimization
Azure governance and compliance

What is the difference between PaaS vs IaaS in Azure?

What is the difference between Scaling Up/down to Scaling in/Out?
What are Azure Storage Queues?
What is Poison Queue?
How to store files in Azure? BLOB vs File Storage difference?
What are Deployment Slots in Azure?
What are Azure Functions?
What are Azure Webjobs?
What are Application Insights?
What are Subscriptions and Resource groups?
What are ARM Templates? How to publish them?
How to use ARM templates to install SSL certificates?
How to put Application Settings in ARM Templates?

What is the difference between IaaS and PaaS in Azure?

Can you explain the key components of Azure IaaS?
How do you deploy a virtual machine in Azure?
What is Azure Resource Manager (ARM) and how is it used in IaaS deployments?
How do you scale resources in Azure IaaS?
What is Azure Virtual Network and how does it work?
Explain the concept of Azure Availability Sets and how they help in achieving high
availability.
What is Azure Blob Storage and how is it used in Azure PaaS?
How do you deploy a web application in Azure App Service?
What is Azure Functions and how does it differ from Azure App Service?
Can you explain the difference between Azure SQL Database and Azure Cosmos DB?
How do you monitor and manage resources in Azure IaaS/PaaS?
What are Azure Service Bus and Azure Event Grid, and how are they used in PaaS
solutions?
How do you ensure security and compliance in Azure IaaS/PaaS deployments?
Can you describe a scenario where you had to troubleshoot an issue in an Azure
IaaS/PaaS environment and how you resolved it?

Q. On premises application running few windows services, console applications to

handle certain tasks. What should be the approach for migration of such
applications to Azure?

Ans. It can be done by:

1. Azure Virtual Machine.

2. Worker Role.

3. Azure web jobs.

Q. What is the way to implement Caching or Session management mechanism in Azure?

Ans. Azure Redis Cache.

Q. What is Azure Resource Manager (ARM) and what are the benifits of ARM over
Classic services?

Ans. ARM is deployment methodology to deploy your Azure components. It's act like a
container of multiple resources with scalability. In comparison with classic
services it can help you deploy, manage and monitor all resources for you solution
as a group, rather than handling these resources individually.

Q. What is Windows Azure Traffic manager and what are it's benifits?

Q. What is Azure App Service and what are it's advantage over Mobile Service?

Q. On premises application running few windows services, console applications to

handle certain tasks. What should be the approach for migration of such
applications to Azure?

Ans. It can be done by:

1. Azure Virtual Machine.

2. Worker Role.

3. Azure web jobs.

Q. What is the way to implement Caching or Session management mechanism in Azure?

Ans. Azure Redis Cache.

Q. What is Azure Resource Manager (ARM) and what are the benifits of ARM over
Classic services?

Q. What is Windows Azure Traffic manager and what are it's benifits?

Q. What is Azure App Service and what are it's advantage over Mobile Service?

Won't list the exact questions but topics:

How you make an IaasS solutions, lets says a customer facing portal highly
available?
What about backup and recovery for that solution ?
What would be the SLA of that solution you draw and can you make it better?
How many tiers does the solution and why?
What about security ? At rest and in transit?
What operating system you will be using and why?
Are you using RBAC?
What about single sign on, for customers of that portal? Is it needed?
For Paas

Select an scenario and draw the components, let's say Service Bus for example
you need to exchange information between to entities, one in Azure the other not,
how would you exchange information using the servíce bus?
What If the Azure Datacenter goes down? How’d you prepare for that event ?
All these questions, I’ve needed to come up with the answer or I’ve been part of
the team doing the design/implementation

What is the difference between PaaS vs IaaS in Azure?

Surya Kameswara Rao Ravi

·
Follow
Former Solution and Technology Architect at Cloud Computing1y
Related
Which are the PaaS services offered by Microsoft Azure?
Some PaaS offerings by Azure:

Azure Active Directory

Azure DNS
Azure Firewall
Azure Load Balancer
Azure Bastion
Azure Application Gateway
Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS)
Azure Monitor
Azure Spring Cloud
App Services
Mobile Apps
Logic Apps
Azure Functions
Azure Web Jobs
Azure Event Grid
Azure Service Bus
Azure Storage (blob, tables, queues, file, disk)
Azure CosmosDB
Azure Cognitive Services
Azure CDN (Content Delivery Network)
Azure Redis Cache
Azure API Management
Azure SQL Managed Instance
Azure Relational Databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL)
Azure NoSQL Databases (MongoDB etc)
Azure Data Lake Storage
Azure Data Factory
ref:

Managed Disks offer two types of durable storage options: Premium and Standard
Managed Disks.
Azure storage accounts can also provide storage for the operating system disk and
any data disks. Each disk is a .vhd file stored as a page blob.

Each data disk can be up to 1 TB

azure managed disk and azure unmanaged disk

What Is Azure Key Vault?

Key Vault help you safeguard cryptographic keys and other secrets used by your
applications whenever they are On-Premise or in the cloud. More and more services
on Azure are now integrating Azure Key Vault as their secret/key source for things
like deployments, data or even disk encryption.

Explain the Azure ARM Templates

An Azure Resource Template is a JSON file used to deploy resources with Azure
Resource Manager. It defines:

Parameters
Variables
Resources - the actual resources that you are going to deploy or update
Outputs

What is Azure Blob Storage?

Azure Blob storage is Microsoft's object storage solution for the cloud. Blob
storage is optimized for storing massive amounts of unstructured data, such as text
or binary data. Azure Storage offers three types of blobs:

Block blobs store text and binary data, up to about 4.7 TB. Block blobs are made up
of blocks of data that can be managed individually.
Append blobs are made up of blocks like block blobs, but are optimized for append
operations. Append blobs are ideal for scenarios such as logging data from virtual
machines.
Page blobs store random access files up to 8 TB in size. Page blobs store the VHD
files that back VMs

What is Azure VNET?

An Azure Virtual Network (VNet) is a representation of your own network in the
cloud. It is a logical isolation of the Azure cloud dedicated to your subscription.

https://github.com/Devinterview-io/azure-interview-questions

---------------------------------------------

![](media/image1.jpeg){width="1.8732392825896762in" height="4.2in"}

Abstract
========

Microsoft launched Azure in year 2009 as "Windows Azure". In the recent

years, Microsoft brought lot of openness into their entire range of
products and platform. With this, it is now no longer "Windows Azure"
but it is now "Microsoft Azure".

About Us and idea of this book

Hence we thought we should address this concern and to start with

What this book will do?

Let's get started!!

Contents {#contents .TOC-Heading}

========

[Abstract 1](#abstract)

[Structure of the book 3](#structure-of-the-book)

[General 4](#general)

[Azure Services - Compute 10](#azure-services---compute)

[Azure Services - Data and Storage

16](#azure-services---data-and-storage)

[Azure Networking -- VNET 18](#azure-networking-vnet)

[Azure Migration 18](#azure-migration)

[Azure Messaging -- Service Bus 21](#azure-messaging-service-bus)

[Identity in Azure -- Azure Active Directory

23](#identity-in-azure-azure-active-directory)

[References 24](#references)

[An Appeal to readers 24](#an-appeal-to-readers)

Structure of the book

=====================

General
=======

This section highlights introductory questions and answers for general

cloud concepts with MS Azure as a focus.

What is cloud computing

-----------------------

> Cloud computing is basically a great level of abstraction over the

**Deep dive:**

To understand why and what is cloud computing refer to below description

Let's say I wish to develop a banking application using asp.net MVC.

When we think about developing a new enterprise level web application,
the first thought comes to mind is how am I going to host it? So this
leads to list of below requirements --

1. Servers hardware with server OS for various environments like Dev,

QA, UAT, Production, Failover

2. Database servers and licenses

3. Source control and version management server and licenses

4. Dedicated office space

5. Power and cooling mechanism

6. Network and bandwidth configurations and setup

7. Developer workstations with client OS like Windows 7/8/8.1/10 and

their licenses
8. Developer tools like Visual Studio and SSMS and so on.

9. Team of experts to manage this entire setup

This is the bare minimum list for one application and this is the
problem. Our main aim was to develop banking application but we did not
think about

- Who will be users of my application

- What functionality my application will support

- Whether to allow 3^rd^ party payment or no and so on.

What are the benefits, advantages of cloud computing?

-----------------------------------------------------

- Scalability

- Agility

- High Availability

- Pay as you go

- Moving from Capex to Opex

- Fault Tolerance

- High Response Time

- High Bandwidth

- Low Latency

**Deep dive:**

#### Scalability

It can be termed as an ability of the application to handle growing

amount of work without degrading the performance. Basically system can
grow without limits based on demand. Scalability is of 2 types --

1. Vertical or Scale Up -- In this type of scaling configuration we

2. Horizontal or Scale Out -- In this type of scaling configuration we

#### Agility

The system is easy to evolve as business changes. This defines a degree

to which your application can be evolved/ changed/ modified depending on
the business or requirement changes.

#### High Availability

- Hardware failures

- Application updates

- Configuration changes

- OS update restarts

- Heavy load restarts

#### Pay as you go

#### Moving from Capex to Opex

This stands for moving from "Capital Expenditure to Operational

#### Fault Tolerance

It is the ability of the system to continue operating in full capacity

and fully functional in the event of failure of some of its components.
This simply means, if I have a web application and interacting with
database then if the database is not accessible/down still my web
application will be available for users. This means your application is
fault tolerant.
Microsoft Azure applies various replication and redundancy strategies to
make azure hosted services and applications as fault tolerant.

What is Microsoft Azure

-----------------------

On similar lines Microsoft also created a product based on cloud

computing concept and it is called as "Microsoft Azure". So MS Azure
provides a platform with cloud computing capabilities so that you can
get all the benefits of cloud computing.

**Deep Dive:**

Here while answering this you can also start with answer to question
"what is cloud computing" and then explain above paragraph.

What is IaaS, PaaS and SaaS?

----------------------------

![D:\\Kunal_Apps\\Azure\\Boot Camps\\MyBooks\\Book
Images\\IaaS-PaaS-SaaS-2.png](media/image2.png){width="6.5in"
height="2.4721150481189853in"}

The summary of these terminologies is as follows --

1. IaaS -- Infrastructure as a Service -- a set of infrastructure

level capabilities such as an operating system, network
connectivity, etc. that are delivered as pay for use services and
can be used to **Host** applications.

Example, Azure VM, VNET.

2. PaaS -- Platform as a Service -- is about abstracting developers

3. SaaS -- Software as a Service -- applications that are delivered

Example, Office 365, Gmail, Saleforce.com, SharePoint online, CRM online

and so on.

**Deep Dive:**

Following diagram explains important difference between IaaS, PaaS and

SaaS.

![](media/image3.png){width="6.489583333333333in"
height="4.083333333333333in"}

What is Public, Private and Hybrid cloud implementation with respect to Azure?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The short answer for this questions is as below --

Public Cloud -- All components of your application/ system are running

in Azure only.

Private Cloud -- You are running Azure services and features within
on-premises data center OR you are using on premises data center for
hosting your system or applications.

Hybrid Cloud -- Combination of Public and Private. Some part or

components of your application running on Azure where as some part of
your application is running within on premises datacenter.

**Deep Dive:**

Following diagram represents the essence of Public, Private and Hybrid

cloud.

![](media/image4.png){width="6.5in" height="3.53125in"}

Public Cloud example --

You are running an application of Hospital Management system on Azure

Private Cloud example -

You are running an application of Hospital Management system on VM in

Hybrid Cloud example -

You are running an application of Hospital Management system on Azure

Azure Services - Compute

========================

This section highlights common questions around important azure services

1. Cloud services

2. Azure Web Apps

3. Azure Virtual Machines

4. Difference between Cloud Services and Web Apps

What is Azure cloud service?

----------------------------

Azure cloud service is an offering from Azure and specifically designed

To develop an application cloud service, roles aware we need Azure SDK.

Using Azure SDK one can create cloud service type of project from tools
such as Visual Studio (for .net) or Eclipse (for java).

**Deep Dive:**

Following diagram shows the overall hierarchy of cloud services.

![](media/image5.png){width="6.5in" height="3.3333333333333335in"}

Important - Cloud services can have roles or standalone VMs running

What is purpose of cloud service configuration file (.cscfg)?

-------------------------------------------------------------

Every cloud service type of project contains .cscfg file and primarily
is used for storing --

- Number of role instances to deploy for each role in cloud service

project
- Thumbprint of certificates used if any

- And most important, User defined configuration settings

The primary aim or purpose of this file is to allow configuration

changes in production environment without downtime of your application.

**Deep Dive:**

When you make changes to web configuration file while web application is
running and active in IIS, the App Pool gets restarted, current user
sessions are lost. For instance, imagine web application hosted in IIS
as "desktop application". So if you save web.config file it's exactly
similar to closing the opening the desktop application again. Therefore,
let's say if we store azure storage connection string in web config file
and after certain days or weeks you regenerated the primary key of
storage account for security reasons, then you need to change it in web
config file. However, if you do that, app pool will be restarted and
application downtime may be experienced. Therefore, you may want to
store these changing configuration settings (like azure storage
connection string) in a file which is external to application binaries
and deployment package so that change in it will not affect the running
application at all. This can have treated as [External Configuration
Store](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn589803.aspx) Design
Pattern and cloud service configuration file is the implementation of
this pattern.

As cloud configuration file is not bound with application no app pool

restart scenario happens upon changes.

Run at least 2 instances of each role within a cloud service. When we

**Deep Dive:**

Fault domain is a physical unit of failure. In simple form when your

computer is connected to power supply and if power supply is down then
your computer can not be operational. So computer itself connected to
power supply is a Fault domain.

Definition - So a fault domain is set of hardware components like

computers, switches that share single point of failure.

What is single point of failure -- is a part of the system, if it

fails, will stop the entire system from working.
The infrastructure of each Azure data center is divided into multiple
sections which are treated as fault domains. These sections of the
infrastructure (which are not necessarily individual servers or server
racks) are designed in such a way that a failure of one fault domain is
extremely unlikely to affect any other fault domain. When you deploy a
service, the Azure Fabric Controller automatically locates the roles in
at least two different fault domains so that a failure in one domain
will not affect all instances of your service.

This is the reason why Azure recommends you to have 2 instances so that
Azure fabric will place your application role instances in more than one
fault domain to avoid failure.

Upgrade Domain -

It is a logical unit of grouping the role instances and it does not

Why Azure recommends to run at least 2 instances of cloud service roles?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Answered as part of Deep Dive section of question no 8.

What is difference between Cloud Service "Role Instance VM" and "Cloud Service
VM\"?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-

Following table highlights important points about the difference between

"Role Instance VM" and "Cloud Service VM"

Sr. No. Role Instance VM

**Deep Dive:**

IaaS means you get support only virtualization and after everything is
your responsibility.

2. Changes made to VM are not persistent. For example, if we create a

text file on C drive, then if cloud service role is recycled due to
hardware failure then new VM gets allocated to Role instance and
earlier save Text file will not be present.

For example, if we create a text file on C drive, then if hardware

failure occurs then new VM gets allocated to automatically and earlier
saved Text file will be present.

3. VM provisioned in role instances already have all pre-requisites

installed and configured for running an application.

However, in case of IaaS VM we only get VM with OS. Everything after

that is user's responsibility. So for running web application in IaaS
.NET framework installation, IIS installation etc. will be required to
be done by user.

4. Vertical scalability means increasing the capacity of existing VM.

In case of IaaS VM it can be directly changed from Portal and that's it.

5. As role instances being PaaS offering and VM management is done by

On the other hand, the no. of VM to be scaled horizontally is limited by

6. AS Role instance VMs are not persistent as stated in points 2, you

can't really use it for any other work whereas IaaS VM can be used
to perform any task, run any standard software along with your web
site like SQL server and so on.

7. In case of IaaS VMs the underlying OS disk \[which may be making up

In case role instance VMs underlying OS disks are managed by azure

platform and we don't access to it at all.

8. As role instance VM management is not user's responsibility there is

no need to configure backup, anti-virus, OS upgrades etc.
traditional managed services task as they are taken care by Azure
platform only.

In case Azure IaaS VMs all types of managed services tasks are user's
responsibility as you are the owner of that VM.

9. As of today role instance VMs can only have Windows OS flavors to

10. This point is self-explanatory.

For achieving high availability in case of Azure IaaS VMs --

Availability sets should be used along with at least 2 instances of VMs
and implement this redundancy at every web tier and DB tier.

**Deep Dive:**

For database VMs again it is recommended to run them in separate

If cost is not the factor, then SQL Server Always On configuration is

best and recommended approach for achieving HA at DB tier VMs.

Following diagram illustrates the above best practice -

![](media/image6.png)

Azure Services - Data and Storage

=================================

This section highlights Azure storage, SQL azure specific questions.

What are different types of Azure blobs and difference between them?
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Azure storage has two type of blob -- Block and Page.

What is the difference between Table Storage and SQL Azure Table?
-----------------------------------------------------------------

**Deep Dive:**

**Point no 3 -**

We have seen people face difficulties in understanding the statement

"Schema is not enforced on table storage". Below diagram explains this
scenario well --

![](media/image7.png){width="6.489583333333333in"
height="3.3645833333333335in"}

What is the difference between SQL Server on Azure VM and Azure SQL Database?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Azure Networking -- VNET

========================

This section will cater to some example questions where Hybrid

implementation is the key focus of Azure deployment.

Looking at the requirement of connecting single on premises DB machine

What are the other VNET options for achieving connectivity with on premise and
azure resources?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------

Site to Site and express route are other options for achieving cross
premises connectivity. Site to site to specifically use when you have
large number of resources to be connected.

In some cases, Site to Site or Point to Site connectivity may introduce

In such case, a WCF service can be developed and hosted on premises.

This WCF service will have CRUD operations specifically against the on
premises database. Then Service bus relay option can be used for
invoking on premises WCF service from Azure hosted web application to
access the database. Use of WCF and service bus relay will avoid the
option of VPN connectivity using Azure VNETs offerings.

Azure Migration
===============

This section highlights real world migration interview questions for

IaaS or PaaS migration from on premises to Azure.

On premises application running few windows services, console applications to

There are 3 ways by which we can achieve background process migration to

Azure --

1. Azure Virtual Machine

2. Worker role

3. Azure Web Jobs

**Deep dive:**

The obvious way can be --

Azure VM: This is actual VM running in Azure. Current on premises

console applications, windows services can be configured on this VM.
Then it can function the way it was functioning on premises. However,
managing the VM will be our onus.

Better way can be --

a. Worker Role: If current windows service is written in C\# \[or any

If we are looking for Micro-service based architecture (loosely couple

application in all respect) --

Then, Azure functions is another way of doing it. Although it is not

cost effective as webjobs but it follows "Single Responsibility
Principal" providing you true nature of loosely couple applications.

What is the way to implement Caching/Session Management mechanism in Azure?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

**Deep dive:**

Earlier Microsoft Azure AppFabric Distributed Cache service was the

primary option for Caching implementations in Azure, however it is now
deprecated and no longer recommended.

**Redis Cache:**

There are three main offerings/tiers of Redis as:

1. Basic -- Single instance with no SLA

2. Standard -- Two instance with HA (High Availability) SLA

3. Premium -- It is designed for bigger workloads and DR (disaster

recovery) with all features of Standard tier and high availability
SLA

You can also monitor Azure Redis Cache activities. You can also setup
Redis Cache instance from PowerShell like:

New-AzureRmRedisCache -ResourceGroupName myGroup -Name mycache -Location

\"West US\"

Based on your business requirement you can choose any tier for your
application. It is highly recommended to use Redis Cache in Cloud First
applications (Purely cloud based) than Hybrid Workloads/Applications.
What is Azure Resource Manager (ARM) and what are benefits of ARM over Classic
services (Cloud Services)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------

Azure Resource Manager (ARM) is the deployment methodology/strategy to

Following are the benefits of using Azure Resource Manager (ARM) over
Classic Services (Cloud Services):

What is Log Analytics (Operational Management Suite)?

-----------------------------------------------------

Log Analytics (OMS) (formerly known by "Operational Insights") in Azure

What are the various ways by which an on premises VM can be migrated to Azure?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The best and quick way can be to migrate the associated OS disk and data
disks from on premises to Azure storage, and then provision VM out of
it.

For migration of on premises VM, we need to understand what is the

Azure Messaging -- Service Bus

==============================

This section focusses on important and common questions related to Azure

Service bus offering.

What is the difference between Storage queue and Service Bus queue?
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Below are the important difference between storage queue and service bus
queue -

Sr. No. Storage Queue Service

**Deep Dive:**

Point 1 & 2 -

Storage Queue - At Least Once --

Storage Queue has two methods of receiving message from queue.

When GetMessage is used then received message remain invisible for some
default duration for other receivers. If it is not deleted within that
period, then automatically message reappears for other receivers to
consume again. So typically if you want your message to be processed
only once then call GetMessage method and after processing call
DeleteMessage method. In this case if any error is encountered during
processing of the message before calling delete message then the message
will re-appear in the queue after default time period of invisibility.

As here we can see using GetMessage and DeleteMessage method combination

every message in storage queue "always gets delivered or received" hence
it is termed as "At Least Once" delivery.

Service Bus Queue -- At Most Once -

Service bus queue message can be received using ReceiveAndDelete method.

As the message receiving attempt is made only once and after that it
gets deleted this is referred as "At Most Once".

Service Bus Queue -- At Least Once -

Service Bus Queue -- Exactly Once -

Service bus queue supports automatic duplicate detection of message

What are different receive methods can be used for Azure Service Bus Queue?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Answered as a part of deep dive section of question no. 12.

Identity in Azure -- Azure Active Directory

===========================================

This section highlights important and common questions around security

in Azure that are asked during interviews.

What is the difference between Azure AD and Windows Server AD?

--------------------------------------------------------------

References
==========

<https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/get-started/>

An Appeal to readers
====================

E-mail: cloudqna2016\@outlook.com
Or

Tweet: \@AzureInterviews (AzureQNA)

Fault domain is a physical unit of failure. In simple form when your computer is
connected to power supply and if power supply is down then your computer can not be
operational. So computer itself connected to power supply is a Fault domain

Upgrade Domain -

. So at any point of time during upgrade at least one instance is alive and serving
the users request hence you don't face the downtime of your application.

What are the other VNET options for achieving connectivity with on premise and
azure resources?
Site to Site and express route are other options for achieving cross premises
connectivity. Site to site to specifically use when you have large number of
resources to be connected.

In some cases, Site to Site or Point to Site connectivity may introduce network
latency as VPN created by these features work on public infrastructure (Internet)
only. To overcome on this situation "Express Route" option can be taken which
offers dedicated Leased Line based offering to overcome on latency issue.

High Availability
Basically this defines how much your application is available for its end users.
Customers or users will always expect zero downtime of the application. High
availability means your application can withstand below common types of downtime
scenarios --

Hardware failures

Application updates

Configuration changes

OS update restarts

Heavy load restarts

PaaS means you focus only on Application and Data

Best practice: Don't assign allow rules with broad ranges (for example, allow
0.0.0.0 through 255.255.255.255).
The private IP address spaces available are in the Class A (10.0.0.0/8), Class B
(172.16.0.0/12), and Class C (192.168.0.0/16) ranges.

Best practice: Segment the larger address space into subnets.

Detail: Use CIDR-based subnetting principles to create your subnets.

Best practice: Create network access controls between subnets. Routing between
subnets happens automatically, and you don't need to manually configure routing
tables. By default, there are no network access controls between the subnets that
you create on an Azure virtual network.

NSGs use the 5-tuple approach (source IP, source port, destination IP, destination
port, and layer 4 protocol) to create allow/deny rules for network traffic. You
allow or deny traffic to and from a single IP address, to and from multiple IP
addresses, or to and from entire subnets.

When you use network security groups for network access control between subnets,
you can put resources that belong to the same security zone or role in their own
subnets.

Using small subnets adds limited security value, and mapping a network security
group to each subnet adds overhead. Define subnets broadly to ensure that you have
flexibility for growth.

Site-to-site VPN. It's a trusted, reliable, and established technology, but the
connection takes place over the internet. Bandwidth is constrained to a maximum of
about 1.25 Gbps. Site-to-site VPN is a desirable option in some scenarios

Azure ExpressRoute. We recommend that you use ExpressRoute for your cross-premises
connectivity. ExpressRoute lets you extend your on-premises networks into the
Microsoft cloud over a private connection facilitated by a connectivity provider.

you can establish connections to Microsoft cloud services like Azure, Microsoft
365, and Dynamics 365. ExpressRoute is a dedicated WAN link between your on-
premises location or a Microsoft Exchange hosting provider.

A popular and effective method for enhancing availability and performance is load
balancing. Load balancing is a method of distributing network traffic across
servers that are part of a service. For example, if you have front-end web servers
as part of your service, you can use load balancing to distribute the traffic
across your multiple front-end web servers.

Option: Point-to-site VPN

Scenario: Enable a single user to connect to an Azure virtual network over the
internet.

Scenario: Enable a single user to connect to an Azure virtual network over the
internet.
Option: Point-to-site VPN is another term for a remote access VPN client/server
connection. After the point-to-site connection is established, the user can use RDP
or SSH to connect to any VMs located on the Azure virtual network that the user
connected to via point-to-site VPN. This assumes that the user is authorized to
reach those VMs.

Use Azure Private Link to access Azure PaaS Services

Scenario: Enable users on your on-premises network to connect to VMs on your Azure
virtual network. --> site-to-site VPN

Optimize uptime and performance

If a service is down, information can't be accessed. If performance is so poor that
the data is unusable, you can consider the data to be inaccessible. From a security
perspective, you need to do whatever you can to make sure that your services have
optimal uptime and performance.

This distribution of traffic increases availability because if one of the web

servers becomes unavailable, the load balancer stops sending traffic to that server
and redirects it to the servers that are still online. Load balancing also helps
performance, because the processor, network, and memory overhead for serving
requests is distributed across all the load-balanced servers.
--------------------------------------------

Network security

Azure networking
Network access control
Azure Firewall
Secure remote access and cross-premises connectivity
Availability
Name resolution
Perimeter network (DMZ) architecture
Azure DDoS protection
Azure Front Door
Traffic manager
Monitoring and threat detection

Virtual network security appliances

While NSGs, UDRs, and forced tunneling provide you a level of security at the
network and transport layers of the OSI model, you might also want to enable
security at levels higher than the network.

For example, your security requirements might include:

Authentication and authorization before allowing access to your application

Intrusion detection and intrusion response
Application layer inspection for high-level protocols
URL filtering
Network level antivirus and Antimalware
Anti-bot protection
Application access control
Additional DDoS protection (above the DDoS protection provided by the Azure fabric
itself)

The point-to-site VPN connection enables you to set up a private and secure
connection between the user and the virtual network. When the VPN connection is
established, the user can RDP or SSH over the VPN link into any virtual machine on
the virtual network. (This assumes that the user can authenticate and is
authorized.) Point-to-site VPN supports:

Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol (SSTP), a proprietary SSL-based VPN protocol. An

SSL VPN solution can penetrate firewalls, since most firewalls open TCP port 443,
which TLS/SSL uses. SSTP is only supported on Windows devices. Azure supports all
versions of Windows that have SSTP (Windows 7 and later).

IKEv2 VPN, a standards-based IPsec VPN solution. IKEv2 VPN can be used to connect
from Mac devices (OSX versions 10.11 and above).

Azure Firewall is a cloud-native and intelligent network firewall security service

that provides threat protection for your cloud workloads running in Azure.

Service endpoints
Service endpoints are another way to apply control over your traffic. You can limit
communication with supported services to just your VNets over a direct connection.
Traffic from your VNet to the specified Azure service remains on the Microsoft
Azure backbone network.

https://github.com/microsoft/MTC_IL_WORKSHOP_Azure_Administrator

Network topology
The network architecture of an Azure datacenter consists of the following
components:

Edge network
Wide area network
Regional gateways network
Datacenter network

https://github.com/VikramPendse/AzureInterviewQuestions/blob/master/Azure
%20Interview%20Questions%20by%20Kunal%20and%20Vikram.md
https://github.com/Devinterview-io/azure-interview-questions (100 Common Azure
Interview Questions)
https://github.com/FAQGURU/FAQGURU/blob/master/topics/en/azure.md#what-is-azure-
vnet ************

https://github.com/FAQGURU/FAQGURU/blob/master/topics/en/azure.md#what-is-the-
difference-between-price-software-price-and-total-price-in-the-cost-structure-for-
virtual-machine-offers-in-the-azure-marketplace **************

What are Network Security Groups?

A network security group (NSG) contains a list of Access Control List (ACL) rules
that allow or deny network traffic to subnets, NICs, or both. NSGs can be
associated with either subnets or individual NICs connected to a subnet. When an
NSG is associated with a subnet, the ACL rules apply to all the VMs in that subnet.
In addition, traffic to an individual NIC can be restricted by associating an NSG
directly to a NIC.

What are Update Domains?

An update domain is a logical group of underlying hardware that can undergo
maintenance or can be rebooted at the same time. As you create VMs within an
availability set, the Azure platform automatically distributes your VMs across
these update domains. This approach ensures that at least one instance of your
application always remains running as the Azure platform undergoes periodic
maintenance. The order of update domains being rebooted may not proceed
sequentially during planned maintenance, but only one update domain is rebooted at
a time.

What are Fault Domains?

A fault domain is a logical group of underlying hardware that share a common power
source and network switch, similar to a rack within an on-premise data-centers. As
you create VMs within an availability set, the Azure platform automatically
distributes your VMs across these fault domains. This approach limits the impact of
potential physical hardware failures, network outages, or power interruptions.

What is an Availability Set?

An availability set is a logical grouping of VMs that allows Azure to understand
how your application is built to provide redundancy and availability. It is
recommended that two or more VMs are created within an availability set to provide
for a highly available application and to meet the 99.95% Azure SLA. When a single
VM is used with Azure Premium Storage, the Azure SLA applies for unplanned
maintenance events

What are virtual machine scale sets in Azure?

What is Azure MFA?

Azure Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is Microsoft's two-step verification
solution. It delivers strong authentication via a range of verification methods,
including phone call, text message, or mobile app verification.
Web Role – A web role is basically used to deploy a website, using languages
supported by the IIS platform like, PHP, .NET etc. It is configured and customized
to run web applications.
Worker Role – A worker role is more like an help to the Web role, it used to
execute background processes unlike the Web Role which is used to deploy the
website.
VM Role – The VM role is used by a user to schedule tasks and other windows
services. This role can be used to customize the machines on which the web and
worker role is running.

What is Azure Blob Storage?

Explain Azure NSG

A network security group (NSG) used to filter network traffic to and from Azure
resources in an Azure virtual network and includes rules that allow or deny traffic
to a virtual network subnet, network interface, or both.

What VPN types are supported by Azure?

Azure supports two types of Point-to-site VPN options:

Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol (SSTP). SSTP is a Microsoft proprietary SSL-based

solution that can penetrate firewalls since most firewalls open the TCP port that
443 SSL uses.
IKEv2 VPN.

What are Network Security Groups?

Do scale sets work with Azure availability sets?

Yes. A scale set is an implicit availability set with 5 fault domains and 5 update
domains. Scale sets of more than 100 VMs span multiple placement groups, which are
equivalent to multiple availability sets. An availability set of VMs can exist in
the same virtual network as a scale set of VMs. A common configuration is to put
control node VMs (which often require unique configuration) in an availability set
and put data nodes in the scale set.
What is key vault in Azure?
Microsoft Azure Key Vault is a cloud-hosted management service that allows users to
encrypt keys and small secrets by using keys that are protected by hardware
security modules (HSMs). Small secrets are data less than 10 KB like passwords
and .PFX files.

What is Azure VPN?

A VPN gateway is a specific type of virtual network gateway that is used to send
encrypted traffic between an Azure virtual network and an on-premises location over
the public Internet. You can also use a VPN gateway to send encrypted traffic
between Azure virtual networks over the Microsoft network.

Explain the Azure ARM Templates

An Azure Resource Template is a JSON file used to deploy resources with Azure
Resource Manager. It defines:

Parameters
Variables
Resources - the actual resources that you are going to deploy or update
Outputs

What is Azure ARM?

The Azure Resource Manager (ARM) is the service used to provision resources in your
Azure subscription. It was first announced at Build 2014 when the new Azure portal
( portal.azure.com) was announced and provides a new set of API's that are used to
provision resources. The ARM is:

What is the difference between “price,” “software price,” and “total price” in the
cost structure for Virtual Machine offers in the Azure Marketplace?
Price - refers to the cost of the Azure Virtual Machine to run the software.
Software price - refers to the cost of the publisher software running on an Azure
Virtual Machine.
Total price - refers to the combined total cost of the Azure Virtual Machine and
the publisher software running on an Azure Virtual Machine.

What is Azure VPN?

Is it possible to add an existing VM to an availability set?

No. If you want your VM to be part of an availability set, you need to create the
VM within the set. There currently no way to add a VM to an availability set after
it has been created.

How much storage can I use with a virtual machine?

Each data disk can be up to 1 TB. The number of data disks which you can use
depends on the size of the virtual machine.

Azure storage accounts can also provide storage for the operating system disk and
any data disks. Each disk is a .vhd file stored as a page blob.

What Is Azure Key Vault?

This article addresses the following best practices:

Shared access signatures (SAS)

Azure role-based access control (Azure RBAC)
Client side encryption for high value data
Storage Service Encryption

The steps were followed as per the plan and no issues were observed.

Thanks & Regards,

M.vijayanand | Wintel—LBA | M +918919407664 | Email- vijayanand.mandha@dsm-
firmenich.com| DSM Shared Services India

This email, including any attachments, may be confidential and legally privileged.
If you are not the intended recipient, please accept our apologies, and please do
not disclose, copy, or distribute information in this email nor take any action in
reliance on its contents: to do so is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful.
Please inform us that this message has gone astray before deleting it. Thank you
for your cooperation

[email protected]

USAME11IS001
USAME11IS001 [PROD] || No route to host
USAME11AS002 [PROD] || No route to host
USAME11AS001 [PROD] || No route to host
USAME11PSM001 [PROD] || No route to host

taskkill /F /PID 3020

United States, Ames, IA, 702

Hyderabad-1@12345$$

CHSIS66NTFS160_F_UV_THERMO_BAU305_WORKBOOKSxL (DCHKAUPROD\
CHSIS66NTFS160_F_UV_THERMO_BAU305_WORKBOOKSxL

AZ 900.prepaway - Premium.exam.230q
100% (1)
AZ 900.prepaway - Premium.exam.230q
185 pages
Azure Real Project
No ratings yet
Azure Real Project
8 pages
130+ Microsoft Azure Interview Questions and Answers 2020 (UPDATED) Imp VV
100% (1)
130+ Microsoft Azure Interview Questions and Answers 2020 (UPDATED) Imp VV
32 pages
Azure
No ratings yet
Azure
297 pages
INTUNE Interview Questions
No ratings yet
INTUNE Interview Questions
68 pages
Azure for .NET Core Developers: Implementing Microsoft Azure Solutions Using .NET Core Framework
From Everand
Azure for .NET Core Developers: Implementing Microsoft Azure Solutions Using .NET Core Framework
Kasam Ahmed Shaikh
No ratings yet
Azure Concepts
No ratings yet
Azure Concepts
6 pages
Mastering Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS): Rapidly Build and Scale Your Containerized Applications with Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (English Edition)
From Everand
Mastering Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS): Rapidly Build and Scale Your Containerized Applications with Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (English Edition)
Abhishek Mishra
No ratings yet
SIGMA Optimization Pro Instruction Manual
No ratings yet
SIGMA Optimization Pro Instruction Manual
24 pages
Introduction To Microsoft Azure Basics: A Beginner's Guide
No ratings yet
Introduction To Microsoft Azure Basics: A Beginner's Guide
16 pages
Azure Question Latest
No ratings yet
Azure Question Latest
11 pages
Microsoft Azure Interview Questions by Kunal and Vikram v1.0
100% (5)
Microsoft Azure Interview Questions by Kunal and Vikram v1.0
25 pages
Azure Interview Questions by Kunal and Vikram
No ratings yet
Azure Interview Questions by Kunal and Vikram
25 pages
Azure Interview Questions and Answers-2
No ratings yet
Azure Interview Questions and Answers-2
20 pages
Best Microsoft Azure Interview Questions and Answers
No ratings yet
Best Microsoft Azure Interview Questions and Answers
44 pages
Azure Interview Questions PDF
No ratings yet
Azure Interview Questions PDF
8 pages
Dokumen - Pub - Microsoft Azure in Action Meap v06
100% (1)
Dokumen - Pub - Microsoft Azure in Action Meap v06
341 pages
Learn Microsoft Azure: Step by Step in 7 day for .NET Developers
From Everand
Learn Microsoft Azure: Step by Step in 7 day for .NET Developers
Saillesh Pawar
No ratings yet
Windows Azure For ISVs v1 11 - Chappell
No ratings yet
Windows Azure For ISVs v1 11 - Chappell
13 pages
Download Microsoft Azure in Action (MEAP V06) Lars Klint ebook All Chapters PDF
100% (4)
Download Microsoft Azure in Action (MEAP V06) Lars Klint ebook All Chapters PDF
40 pages
User Guide of UWTSD London's Web Application
No ratings yet
User Guide of UWTSD London's Web Application
13 pages
Azure Fundamentals - Cloud Computing Transcript
No ratings yet
Azure Fundamentals - Cloud Computing Transcript
15 pages
Introduction to Microsoft Azure
No ratings yet
Introduction to Microsoft Azure
16 pages
Microsoft Azure in Action (MEAP V06) Lars Klint - Read the ebook online or download it to own the full content
100% (6)
Microsoft Azure in Action (MEAP V06) Lars Klint - Read the ebook online or download it to own the full content
72 pages
Intro To Azure - Azure Fundamentals
No ratings yet
Intro To Azure - Azure Fundamentals
36 pages
Azure Interview 2
No ratings yet
Azure Interview 2
42 pages
101429232
No ratings yet
101429232
81 pages
Azure Fundamentals & Interview Questions
No ratings yet
Azure Fundamentals & Interview Questions
18 pages
Azure Interview Questions
No ratings yet
Azure Interview Questions
5 pages
Azure® Essentials
From Everand
Azure® Essentials
iCertify Training
No ratings yet
Azure Developer Guide Ebook
No ratings yet
Azure Developer Guide Ebook
39 pages
Microsoft Azure Interview Questions & Answers - You Need To Know!!
No ratings yet
Microsoft Azure Interview Questions & Answers - You Need To Know!!
4 pages
Pro .NET on Amazon Web Services: Guidance and Best Practices for Building and Deployment 1st Edition William Penberthy - Download the ebook and start exploring right away
100% (1)
Pro .NET on Amazon Web Services: Guidance and Best Practices for Building and Deployment 1st Edition William Penberthy - Download the ebook and start exploring right away
52 pages
Mastering Azure Serverless Computing: Design and Implement End-to-End Highly Scalable Azure Serverless Solutions with Ease
From Everand
Mastering Azure Serverless Computing: Design and Implement End-to-End Highly Scalable Azure Serverless Solutions with Ease
Abhishek Mishra
No ratings yet
Azure Interview Question-3
No ratings yet
Azure Interview Question-3
16 pages
Ebook A Web Developers Guide
No ratings yet
Ebook A Web Developers Guide
21 pages
AZ 900 Udemy Practice Test 1
No ratings yet
AZ 900 Udemy Practice Test 1
118 pages
Cloud Computing and Microsoft Azure - FAQ's
No ratings yet
Cloud Computing and Microsoft Azure - FAQ's
23 pages
Questions and Answers of Cloud Computing and Microsoft Azure
No ratings yet
Questions and Answers of Cloud Computing and Microsoft Azure
33 pages
Azure Questions
No ratings yet
Azure Questions
4 pages
Top 50 Azure Interview Questions and Answers in 2025 - Copy
No ratings yet
Top 50 Azure Interview Questions and Answers in 2025 - Copy
10 pages
Azure Qns
No ratings yet
Azure Qns
82 pages
Azure Interview Questions and Answers
No ratings yet
Azure Interview Questions and Answers
12 pages
1721102109781
No ratings yet
1721102109781
8 pages
MicrosoftAzure StartGuide Developers
No ratings yet
MicrosoftAzure StartGuide Developers
40 pages
Integrating Applications With The Cloud
No ratings yet
Integrating Applications With The Cloud
300 pages
Introducing The Windows Azure Platform
No ratings yet
Introducing The Windows Azure Platform
21 pages
1ca05c8c07684470a0b3d1d5047af005
No ratings yet
1ca05c8c07684470a0b3d1d5047af005
388 pages
Module 1
No ratings yet
Module 1
11 pages
Practical No. 1: Title: Study of Any Cloud Architecture and It's Service Provider
No ratings yet
Practical No. 1: Title: Study of Any Cloud Architecture and It's Service Provider
7 pages
Azure
No ratings yet
Azure
23 pages
AWS - Ebook
No ratings yet
AWS - Ebook
34 pages
What Is Cloud Computing?
No ratings yet
What Is Cloud Computing?
5 pages
Rahmad Kurniawan, Windows Azure As A Cloud Computing Platform
No ratings yet
Rahmad Kurniawan, Windows Azure As A Cloud Computing Platform
3 pages
Azure for Developers Implement Rich Azure PaaS Ecosystems Using Containers Serverless Services and Storage Solutions 2nd edition by Kamil Mrzyglod 9781803238548 1803238542 - Download the ebook with all fully detailed chapters
100% (5)
Azure for Developers Implement Rich Azure PaaS Ecosystems Using Containers Serverless Services and Storage Solutions 2nd edition by Kamil Mrzyglod 9781803238548 1803238542 - Download the ebook with all fully detailed chapters
84 pages
Cloud Note
No ratings yet
Cloud Note
24 pages
Cloud 2
No ratings yet
Cloud 2
6 pages
Building Web Services With Microsoft Azure - Sample Chapter
No ratings yet
Building Web Services With Microsoft Azure - Sample Chapter
53 pages
Interview Prep
No ratings yet
Interview Prep
131 pages
Azure Networking Basics Course Content
No ratings yet
Azure Networking Basics Course Content
61 pages
Pro .NET on Amazon Web Services: Guidance and Best Practices for Building and Deployment 1st Edition William Penberthy instant download
100% (1)
Pro .NET on Amazon Web Services: Guidance and Best Practices for Building and Deployment 1st Edition William Penberthy instant download
81 pages
CH 10
No ratings yet
CH 10
37 pages
How To Build Your Own Firewall
No ratings yet
How To Build Your Own Firewall
4 pages
Face
No ratings yet
Face
39 pages
Association Rule Mining
No ratings yet
Association Rule Mining
34 pages
Enhancement of Material Master Data Mm01
No ratings yet
Enhancement of Material Master Data Mm01
12 pages
Transport Synchronization in SDH Synchronization in SDH Systems
No ratings yet
Transport Synchronization in SDH Synchronization in SDH Systems
4 pages
7 Configuration Management
No ratings yet
7 Configuration Management
19 pages
Research Proposal
No ratings yet
Research Proposal
8 pages
A26361 D2594 Z110 Muli
No ratings yet
A26361 D2594 Z110 Muli
20 pages
Datacolor Portable Spectrophotometers
No ratings yet
Datacolor Portable Spectrophotometers
2 pages
Restricting Element Entries Using Form Customization in HRMS
No ratings yet
Restricting Element Entries Using Form Customization in HRMS
6 pages
2019 Winter Model Answer Paper (Msbte Study Resources)
No ratings yet
2019 Winter Model Answer Paper (Msbte Study Resources)
23 pages
Computer Hardware and Software PDF
No ratings yet
Computer Hardware and Software PDF
27 pages
Microsoft Word - Mail Merge Lesson Plan
No ratings yet
Microsoft Word - Mail Merge Lesson Plan
5 pages
ALS1
No ratings yet
ALS1
3 pages
SQL Basics
No ratings yet
SQL Basics
4 pages
Whitepaper: What's New at COM Express Revision 2.0
No ratings yet
Whitepaper: What's New at COM Express Revision 2.0
6 pages
Introduction To Microprocessors
No ratings yet
Introduction To Microprocessors
42 pages
AFG1022 Arbitrary/Function Generator Quick Start User Manual
No ratings yet
AFG1022 Arbitrary/Function Generator Quick Start User Manual
61 pages
CI Assignment I & II S2Y23_24 (1)
No ratings yet
CI Assignment I & II S2Y23_24 (1)
6 pages
EFI Boot Menu
No ratings yet
EFI Boot Menu
6 pages
HP Touchsmart Tx2 Notebook PC: Key Specs World-Class Support
No ratings yet
HP Touchsmart Tx2 Notebook PC: Key Specs World-Class Support
2 pages
2R
No ratings yet
2R
48 pages
H77H2-M4 V2.0 Low
No ratings yet
H77H2-M4 V2.0 Low
80 pages
Shrikanta Balaganchi Bangalore 12.06 Yrs
No ratings yet
Shrikanta Balaganchi Bangalore 12.06 Yrs
6 pages
A Web Application to Report Drug Trafficking Crime Anonymously
No ratings yet
A Web Application to Report Drug Trafficking Crime Anonymously
5 pages
Epson RC PL 70 Users Guide-Rc700a Rc90 T 1 256
No ratings yet
Epson RC PL 70 Users Guide-Rc700a Rc90 T 1 256
256 pages
Scapy
No ratings yet
Scapy
105 pages
CN Unit-5 Notes
No ratings yet
CN Unit-5 Notes
73 pages