Azure Compute

Azure Compute

It gives the products that are of building level which determines the execution of an application deployed in the Azure platform. Following are the different services that Azure provides:

Azure Virtual machine: it is an environment that allows the user to have a similar experience as that of while using dedicated hardware.

• Azure Virtual Machine Set: They are used to create thousands of identical virtual machines in a jiffy.
• Azure Container Service: Containers are packages that do not need virtual machines and instead depend on virtual isolation to run applications that have shared OS kernel. And Azure container service creates a container hosting solution.
• Azure Container Registry: It is used to store and manage container images.
• Azure Functions: It doesn’t have a server and lets you run code-on-demand without infrastructure.
• Azure Batch: It is used to scale N number of virtual machines at a time.
• Azure Service Fabric: It is a distributed platform that simplifies the deployment and lifecycle management of a small service-based application.
• Azure Cloud Services: They focus on apps and support Java, Node.js, PHP, Python, .Net, and Ruby.
• Web Apps: They create and deploy web apps at scale very quickly.
• Azure Mobile App: It is used in building and hosting backend for any application on mobile.
• API Apps: It is used to build cloud APIs easily.
• Azure Search: It provides search-as-a-service which is fully managed.
• Notification Hubs: They are used to send push notifications to any platform from any backend easily.
• Azure Logic Apps: It is a cloud service that will help you in automating workflows, business processes, etc.
• Azure Event Hub: It is a collection of events that can be stored.

Compute

It offers computing operations like app hosting, development, and deployment in Azure Platform. It has the following components:

• Virtual Machine: Allows you to deploy any language, workload in any operating system
• Virtual Machine Scale Sets: Allows you to create thousands of similar virtual machines in minutes
• Azure Container Service: Create a container hosting solution which is optimized for Azure. You scale and arrange applications using Kube, DC/OS, Swarm or Docker
• Azure Container Registry: This service store and manage container images across all types of Azure deployments
• Functions: Let's you write code regardless of infrastructure and provisioning of servers. In the situation when your functions call rate scales up.
• Batch: Batch processing helps you scale to tens, hundreds or thousands of virtual machines and execute computer pipelines.
• Service Fabric: Simplify microservice-based application development and lifecycle management. It supports Java, PHP, Node.js, Python, and Ruby.

Microsoft Azure Architecture

Microsoft Azure Architecture

Let us try to understand, Microsoft Azure Architecture by the diagram given below:

Image source: Mastering Cloud Computing, a book authored by Rajkumar Buyya

AppFabric is the middleware which comprises of services such as compute, storage, networking, and identity management. Azure is hosted within Microsoft data centers and is accessible from Microsoft Azure Management Portal. Next, let’s talk about the middleware in detail below, as services.

Let us now explore some of the services that are provided by Microsoft Azure in the segment below.

Want to become a Microsoft Certified Azure Professional? Check out Intellipaat’s Azure Course now!

Microsoft Azure Services

By now, you might be having a rough idea about the entire cloud services and what is Microsoft Azure. Let us deep-dive into the Azure services.

There is an endless list of services that Microsoft Azure provides you with. We will be focusing on all the important services which are frequently asked in the certification exams.

For better understanding, let’s categorize them into domains as follows:

1. Azure Compute
2. Azure Networking
3. Azure Storage
4. Azure Database

AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud

To understand what is Microsoft Azure, we must also know about other cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Service (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform. Without going into details, let us just compare them to avoid confusion.

Here are some of the differences between the three cloud service providers.

AWS	Microsoft Azure	Google Cloud Platform
12 years old	7 years old	6 years old
Amazon S3 is mostly used for secondary backup	Backup is built into Azure	Does not provide any backup
Gives managed virtual tape infrastructure across hybrid environments	Enterprise-grade hybrid cloud storage	It relies on partners like Egnyte
Dominant market position	Second largest provider	Recently launched and new
Pricing is per hour	Pricing is per minute	Pricing is per minute

Cloud Computing is in its nascent stage, and therefore there is a lot of scope to grow in this area as a professional with the right certification and the right platform.

Azure holds the largest market share, after AWS. With the extensive use of AWS, there are many professionals who already have mastered it and the job market for AWS has now become saturated. On the other hand, opting for Google Cloud would not help you much, since most of the Fortune 500 companies are not on Google Cloud right now. Hence, the number of jobs available for Google Cloud is comparatively less. Being in the middle ground, getting certified as an Azure Professional is going to be a strategically good choice.

Now that we know learning Azure is the right thing to do, let’s move on in this ‘what is Microsoft Azure’ blog and learn how Azure actually works by discussing the Microsoft Azure architecture.

Top 30 Microsoft Azure Interview Question

A list of top 30 frequently asked Microsoft Azure Interview Questions and answers are given below.

1) What is Cloud Computing?

It is a platform where we can store and access our data over the internet. We can store and access our data from anywhere in the world.

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2) What is Azure Cloud Service?

The Azure Cloud service offers multiple web applications in Azure; it categorizes the services and allows us the flexible scaling for our use. The Azure cloud service was launched in the year 2010. It is a dynamic cloud platform that offers development, data storage, service hosting, and service management.

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3) Which service in Azure can be used to manage resources?

Azure Resource Manager is used to manage resources in Microsoft Azure. It is used to deploy, manage, and delete all the resources together using a simple JSON script.

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4) What type of web application can be deployed with Azure?

Microsoft released SDKs for both Java and Ruby to allow applications written in those languages to place calls to the Azure Service Platform API to the AppFabric Service.

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5) Explain Role in terms of Microsoft Azure.

Roles are nothing, but the servers are layman terms. Servers are managed, load-balanced, platform as a Service virtual machines that work together to achieve a common goal.

These roles are divided into three parts

• Web Role: It is used to deploy a website, using the languages supported by the IIS platform (like PHP, .NET, etc.). It was configured and customized to run web applications.
• Worker Role: It helps the web role to execute background processes, unlike the web Role, which is used to deploy the website.
• VM Role: It can be used by a user to schedule tasks and other windows services. We can use the VM role to customize the machine on which the web and worker role is running.

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6) What is Virtual Machine scale sets?

It is an Azure compute resource that we can use to deploy and manage a set of identical VMs. It is easy to build large-scale services that target big compute, big data, and containerized workloads if all the VMs configured the same.

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7) What are the principal segments of the Windows Azure platform?

Windows Azure has the following three principal segments:

• Windows Azure Compute: It gives a code that can be managed by the hosting environment. It provides the benefit of calculation through parts. It consists of three types of roles - Web Role, Worker Role, and VM Role.
• Windows Azure Storage: It gives four types of Storage services - Queue, Tables, Blobs, and Windows Azure Drives (VHD)
• Windows Azure AppFabric: AppFabric provides five services - Service bus, Access, Caching, Integration, and Composite.

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8) What do you understand by autoscaling in Azure?

Azure provides the scaling of the services automatically when needed. It depends upon the use, time, and traffic that comes to our application. For example - The traffic will be higher during the examination on any exam-related application or website. Then Azure will automatically modify the setting and provide the resources as required.

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9) What is the storage key?

A storage key is an authentication method that can be used to validate access for the storage service account to control data based on our prerequisites. We have an alternative to give a primary access key and a secondary access key. The main reason for using a secondary access key is to avoid downtime to the application or website.

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10) Explain the SQL Azure database.

Microsoft Azure SQL database is a way to get associated with cloud services where we can store our database into the cloud. It has a similar component of SQL Server, i.e., high accessibility, versatility, and security in the core.

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11) Explain cmdlet in Azure?

A cmdlet is a lightweight command that can be used as a part of the Microsoft Azure PowerShell environment. The cmdlets are summoned by the Azure PowerShell that automates the script, which is in the command line. Azure PowerShell runtime additionally invokes them automatically through Azure PowerShell APIs.

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12) Explain the Migration Assistant tool in Microsoft Azure.

The migration assistant tool examines our IIS installation and recognizes the sites that can be migrated to the cloud, featuring any components which can't be relocated or not supported by the platform. This tool similarly creates websites and databases provided under the given Azure membership.

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13) What is Azure SLA (Service Level Agreement)?

The SLA ensures that when we send two or more role instances for each role. Access to our cloud service will be maintained with an accuracy of 99.95 % of the time. The identification and re-correction activities will be started 99.9 % of the time whenever a role instance's procedure is not running.

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14) What is Availability Set in Azure?

Availability Set is a grouping of Azure Virtual Machines. The availability set allows the Azure cloud to build and understand how the application for a user is constructed to provide availability and redundancy.

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15) What steps should we take in case of drive failure?

In case of a drive failure, we should follow these steps:

• Unmount the drive, which allows the Azure storage object to function without fault.
• In the case of replacement, we will format and remount the drive.

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16) Why we use VNet? Name the power states of a Virtual Machine.

We can represent our network within the cloud using VNet. VNet logically isolates our instances launched in the cloud, from the rest of our resources. The various power state of a Virtual Machine is: Running, Starting, Stopping, Deallocating, etc.

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17) What is network security groups?

A network security group allows us to manage the network traffic to NIC or subnets etc. The network load will be distributed as needed if it is connected wisely.

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18) What is cspack?

Cspack is a command-line tool, which is used to generate a service package file. It helps us to prepare an application for deployment, either in compute emulator or Microsoft Windows Azure.

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19) Name two blobs used in Microsoft Azure.

The two types of blobs in Azure are:

• Block Blob
• Page Blob

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20) Can we add an existing VM to an availability set?

No, if we want our VM to be part of an availability set, then we need to create the VM within the set.

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21) How much storage can we use with a virtual machine?

In Azure, each data disk can be up to 1 TB. The number of disks we can use depends upon the size of the virtual machine. Azure Managed Disks are the recommended disk storage offering to use with Azure Virtual Machines for persistent storage of data. We can use multiple Managed Disks with each Virtual Machine.

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22) How to create a VM in Azure CLI?

1. az vm create `   
2. --resource-group myResourceGroup `   
3. --name myVM --image win2016datacenter `   
4. --admin-username Azureuser `   
5. --admin-password myPassword12  

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23) What is Azure Search?

It is a cloud search-as-a-service solution that delegates server and infrastructure management to Microsoft, leaving us with a ready-to-use service that we can populate with our data and then use to add search to our web or mobile application. Azure search allows us to easily add a robust search experience to our applications using a simple REST API or .NET SDK without managing search infrastructure or becoming an expert in search.

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24) Explain stateful and stateless micro-services for Service Fabric?

Service Fabric enables us to build applications that consist of microservices. Stateless micro-service doesn't maintain a mutable state outside a request. Azure Cloud Service's worker role is an example of a stateless service. Stateful microservice maintains a mutable, authoritative state beyond the request and its response.

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25) What is a Web role in Azure Cloud Service?

A web role in Azure is a virtual machine instance running Microsoft IIS Web server that can accept and respond to HTTP or HTTPS requests.

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26) Can we create a VM using Azure Resource Manager in a Virtual Network that was created using classic deployment?

It is not supported by the Azure portal. We cannot use Azure Resource Manager to deploy a Virtual machine into a virtual network which was created using classic deployment.

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27) What are the options available in Azure for data storage?

Options for storing data includes:

• Azure files
• OS drive
• Scale set
• Temp drive
• Azure data service
• External data service

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28) What is Azure Redis Cache?

Redis cache is an open-source, in-memory data structure store, which is used as a database, cache, and message broker. Azure Redis Cache resembles the famous open-source Redis cache. It provides access to a secure and dedicated Redis cache that is managed by Microsoft and accessible from any application inside Azure.

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29) What are Redis databases?

It is a fully managed, open-source, compatible in-memory data store to power fast and scalable applications.

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30) How to create a VM in PowerShell?

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

Azure DevOps Pipeline

Azure Pipeline is a cloud service that we can use to build and test our code project automatically. The Azure pipeline has a lot of capabilities such as continuous integration and continuous delivery to regularly and consistently test and builds our code and ship to any target.

There are three key distinct advantages of using Azure DevOps pipelines.

Version control system: Azure Pipelines integrates with GitHub, GitHub Enterprise, Azure Repos Git & TFVC, Bitbucket Cloud, and Subversion.

Language and application types: We can use Azure Pipeline with most application types and languages, such as Java, JavaScript, Node.js, Python, .Net, C++, Go, PHP, and Xcode.

Deployment target: We can use Azure Pipelines to deploy our code to multiple targets. Targets include - container registries, virtual machines, Azure services, or any on-premises or cloud target.

Azure DevOps Pipeline concepts

1. Pipeline: It is a workflow that defines how our test, build, and deployment steps are run.
2. Stage: It is a logical boundary in the pipeline. It can be used to mark the separation of concerns. Each stage contains one or more jobs.
3. Job: A stage can contain one or more jobs. Each job runs on an agent. It represents an execution boundary of a set of steps.
4. Step: It is the smallest building block of a pipeline. It can either be a script or a task. A task is simply an already created script offered as a convenience to you.
5. Agent and Agent pools: An agent is an installable software that runs one job at a time. Instead of managing each agent individually, you organize agents into agent pools.
6. Artifact: It is a collection of files or packages published by a run. The Artifact is made available to subsequent tasks, such as distribution or deployment.
7. Trigger: It is something that is set up to tell the pipeline when to run. We can configure a pipeline to run upon a push to the repository, at scheduled times, etc.
8. Environment: It is a collection of resources, where you deploy your application. It contains one or more virtual machines, containers, web apps, etc.
9. Checks: Checks define a set of validations required before a deployment can be performed.
10. Runs: It represents a single execution of a pipeline and collects the logs associated with running the steps and the results of running tests.

Publish ARM deployment project into DevOps Repos and deploy using pipeline

Step 1: Go into the Azure DevOps project and click on pipelines. After that, click on the New pipeline button.

Step 2: Now, Click on the "use the classic editor" link down below.

Step 3: Select the project and repository where you want to create the pipeline then click on Continue.

Step 4: Click on the Empty job link to create a job.

Step 5: Now, you need to add a task for building the activity. Click on the add button on the Agent job 1, then type-in resource group. Finally, click on the Azure Resource group deployment add button.

Step 6: Now, you need to select in which Azure subscription you want to deploy the infrastructure, into which resource group you want to deploy, and what you want to deploy in the form of JSON.

Step 7: Select the template from the repository.

Step 8: After that, select the parameters file.

Step 9: Finally, click on Save & Queue. The deployment will take some time.

Step 10: Now, you can see the build has been completed successfully.

Azure DevOps Repository

Azure Repository is a set of version control tools that we can use to manage our code. In case if we are entirely new to version control, then version control enables us to track changes we make in our code over time. There are so many software that is available in the market to enable version control on our code. We can use the version control system to keep track of each change done by each developer, safely merge them, test the changes, and publish the change into production.

There are two types of version control in Azure Repos.

• Git: It is a distributed version control.
• Team Foundation Version Control: It is a centralized version control.

Azure Repos Concepts

1. Repository: A repository is a location for our code, which is managed by version control. It supports Git and TFVC so we can create multiple repositories in a single project and various branches for each repository.
2. Branch: A branch is a lightweight reference that keeps a history of commits and provides a way to isolate changes for a feature or a bug fix from our master branch and other work.
3. Branch policies: It is an essential part of the Git workflow. We use them to help protect the critical branches is our development, as the master.
4. Pull and Clone: Create a complete local copy of an existing Git repo by cloning it. A pull command updates the code in our local repository with the code that is in the remote repository.
5. Push and Commit: A commit is a group of change saved to our local repository. We can share these changes to the remote repository by pushing.
6. Fork: A fork is a complete copy of a repository, including all file commits, and (optionally) branches.
7. Git: Git is a distributed version control system. Our local copy of code is a complete version control repository that makes it easy to work offline or remotely.
8. Notification: Using notification, we will receive an email whenever any changes occur to work items, code reviews, pull requests, source control files and builds.
9. Projects: A project provides a place where a group of people can plan, track progress, and collaborate on building software solutions.
10. Teams: A team corresponds to a selected set of project members. With teams, organizations can subcategorize work to better focus on all of the work they track within a project.

Publish ARM Deployment project into DevOps

Step 1: Open Visual Studio and click on create a new project.

Step 2: Now, search for the Azure Resource Group. Then select it and click on Next.

Step 3: Configure your new project and click on create.

Step 4: Select the Web app from the available Azure Template in Visual Studio.

Step 5: Click on the website.json file, then you will find the available resources on the left-hand side file explorer.

Step 6: Now, delete the 'appinsightcomponent' resource from the file. Because we don't need this service right now.

Step 7: To publish this code to the Azure DevOps portal, add this solution to source control. Then Right-click on the solution and then click on add solution to source control.

Step 8: A new git repository has been created. You can see the message in the output window.

Step 9: Click on Team Explorer as shown in the figure below, then right-click on the dropdown menu and select sync.

Step 10: Now, Click on the Publish Git Repo button to publish this project in the Azure DevOps organization.

Step 11: Select the project and repository where you want to push this git repository in the Azure DevOps portal. Finally, Click on publish repository.

Step 12: To see your repository, open the Azure DevOps portal. And go through the organization that you have selected during the publishing. Click on the Repos to view the files.

Step 13: To see the branches associated with your repository, click on Branches. Here we have only one branch right now, which is the default master branch.

Azure DevOps

Azure DevOps provides developer service to support team to plan work, collaborate on code development, build and deploy the application.

For example - We have a very simple application, and the only developer can make changes to that application. Once the changes are completed, the application will be submitted to testing, and once the testing has been done successfully, it will be published into production. However, if our application is a very complex application with multiple modules, and we have different developers working on the enhancement of various modules within the application. Then it will become very complex to merge changes done by different developers and also take it through testing and finally building the application and deploying the application into production. The more developer we have, the more complicated the process is going to be; precisely that complexity can be addressed using Azure DevOps. We can use Azure DevOps to deploy both infrastructure and code into Azure.

Services of Azure DevOps

Azure DevOps has a number of services that we can take advantage of to manage our code development, building the application, deploying the applications, and also making our developers collaborate.

• Azure Repository: It is a set of version control tools that we can use to manage our code. We can either use Git repositories or team foundation version control for source control of our code. In Azure repositories, we can create multiple branches, and each branch represents a version of code, and we can provide access to a particular branch to a specific developer.
• Azure pipeline: It is a fully-featured continuous integration and continuous delivery service. It works with our preferred Git provider and can deploy to most major cloud services, which includes Azure services also. Using Azure pipelines, we can able to define a build pipeline to build our code and also a release pipeline to carry out release into a specific destination.
• Boards: It provides a rich set of capabilities, including native support for Scrum and Kanban, customizable dashboards, and integrated reporting. We can create different activities, track activities, and we can move activities between different buckets like Dun bucket, backlog bucket, in progress bucket, etc.
• Test Plan: It provides a browser-based test management solution with all capabilities required for planned manual testing, exploratory testing, etc.
• Artifacts: It is very important because most of our application will have some dependency on different packages, for example, NuGet package, npm, Maven package, etc. It also supports universal Packages, which can store any file or set of files.
• Collaboration tools: It includes a customizable team dashboards with configurable widgets to share information progress and trends. We can create Wiki packages for sharing information, and also we can configure some notifications.

Structure of DevOps

Organization: An organization in Azure DevOps is a mechanism for organizing and connecting groups of related projects. For example - business divisions, regional divisions, or other enterprise structures.

Projects: A project contains a following set of features in Azure DevOps:

• Boards and backlogs for agile planning
• Pipelines for continuous integration and deployment.
• It contains repositories for version control, management of source code, and artifacts.
• It keeps continuous test integration throughout the project life cycle.

Azure DevOps Portal

Azure DevOps portal is a centralized portal where we can manage all the Azure DevOps services. We need to create an account on the Azure portal to avail of all of the facilities. For the training purpose, we will take the free services. To create an Azure portal, organization, and project follow these steps carefully.

Step 1: Go to https://Azure.microsoft.com/en-in/services/devops/ and click on Start Free.

Step 2: After that, it will ask you to fill the details and region. Fill the details and click next.

Step 3: Your Azure DevOps account has been created. And now, we will create an organization and create a project inside the organization.

Step 4: Click on New Organization.

Step 5: Provide a name to your organization and select the location from where you want to get hosted your organization.

Step 6: Your organization has been created. Here you will see the Create a project page.

Step 7: Provide a name to your project. After that, click on advanced, then select the version control and work item process.

Step 8: Finally, click on the create project button. Your project has been created. Now, you can invite members to your project.