1. What do you understand by cloud computing?
Cloud computing refers to a digital infrastructure design where the computing resources are hosted and fetched from remote servers instead of on-premise hardware. Public cloud services like Microsoft Azure enforce an abstraction on infrastructure management.
The end-user has little to no awareness of the physical technicalities of server operations, such as electrical supply or cooling. They can simply focus on providing and utilizing cloud computing resources and various Azure services to complete infrastructure and development tasks.
Currently, three key public cloud players dominate this segment – Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Microsoft Azure. Microsoft offers both public and private cloud capabilities so that organizations can tailor their cloud computing implementations as required.
2. What is the purpose of Azure DevOps?
Azure DevOps is a SaaS solution hosted on the Microsoft Azure cloud. It is helpful for teams building applications and services that will be deployed on Azure while following the DevOps methodology. Importantly, DevOps refers to a highly collaborative software development process where developers and IT operations managers continually work together to deliver releases. Azure DevOps equips teams with the following tools to support and simplify the process:
- Azure Boards: It is a project management tool that helps estimate, track, and discuss tasks and collaborate with other team members.
- Azure Pipelines: It is a continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) enabler that integrates with version control tools like GitHub.
- Azure Repos: It is a cloud-hosted git repository that provides unlimited space to store code blocks and participate in collaborative coding.
- Azure Test Plans: It is a set of testing tools and frameworks that allows developers to conduct quality assurance assessments without moving away from the azure environment.
- Azure Artifacts: It is a package management tool that enables DevOps teams to create and share code packages in Maven, npm, NuGet, and Python.
Apart from this, Azure DevOps also integrates with business productivity apps like Slack.
3. What is an Azure role?
An Azure role is essentially a set of permissions assigned to a user or a service to determine what they can and cannot do inside the Azure environment. Microsoft Azure has 120+ built-in roles and also supports the creation of custom ones.
One can use the Azure portal, PowerShell, or Azure command-line interface (CLI) to manage Azure roles. Cloud computing roles also refer to linked servers that manage application and platform services delivery. Three main roles are typically implemented by organizations running Azure:
- Web role: It enables web-based solutions and supports the frontend experience.
- Worker role: It enables solutions for background services and has permission to run lengthy and ongoing activities.
- Virtual machine role: It helps execute the objectives of web roles and worker roles in a virtual machine hosted on Azure.
4. Explain the three core parts of the Azure platform.
The Azure platform has three main components:
- Azure AppFabric: It is a set of middleware technologies by Microsoft which helps in app hosting and caching. It is a legacy service, and organizations nowadays implement Azure Service Fabric instead. The purpose remains the same, and it continues to be a key part of Microsoft Azure.
- Azure Storage: Azure storage provides the cloud storage capacity necessary for software development. It is a durable storage space in the cloud where one can host tables, blobs, and message queues relevant to the functioning of an application. It is typically accessed through hypertext transmission protocol (HTTP).
- Azure Compute: It provides on-demand resources and service capabilities to run applications on the Azure cloud. For example, the Azure Compute component manages the provisioning of processes and network capacity for cloud-hosted applications.
5. What is the difference between IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS?
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS) are the three primary ways to gain from cloud computing.
IaaS refers to a cloud-based infrastructure provisioning model where organizations can get raw hardware capacity without dealing with physical infrastructure. For example, server components and networking components may be provisioned through IaaS. The enterprise pays for the offering on a monthly subscription model and does not have to purchase or house hardware permanently.
PaaS refers to cloud-based application development, delivery, and hosting environments. It allows enterprises to build and publish internal and external apps via the cloud without getting into the underlying operating systems or hardware. It provides an added level of abstraction on top of IaaS.
Finally, SaaS refers to a fully packaged software deployed and used on the cloud. Most of the applications we use today, from Slack to Microsoft Teams, are SaaS products. Microsoft offers its own SaaS products on Azure, such as the Azure DevOps platform.
The above five questions that are frequently asked during entry-level Azure interviews.
See More: Platform as a Service (PaaS) vs. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Key Comparisons
6. Explain the functioning of Azure Diagnostics.
Azure Diagnostics is an optional extension that one can add to Microsoft’s primary cloud monitoring service, Azure Monitor. Azure Monitor allows enterprises, development teams, and IT professionals to maximize the performance of their applications and services.
It supports the addition of agents and extensions that collects monitoring data from various resources, components and workloads running on Azure. Azure diagnostics is one of the most popular extensions companies use as it allows users to collect and analyze data from guest operating systems. It is also a free service and can be added to Azure Monitor for no added cost.
7. What is the difference between Azure and AWS? Would you choose Azure over AWS and why?
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is another leading cloud provider, and it is slightly older than Microsoft Azure. The e-commerce giant Amazon launched AWS in 2006, and it is now the company’s biggest revenue generator. Some of the key differences between AWS and Azure include:
- Both companies follow a pay-as-you-go pricing model, but AWS is chargeable hourly. In contrast, Azure is chargeable as a permanent installment.
- While generally, Azure is considered more expensive due to a large number of products and services, Azure is more cost-effective when running Windows Servers and SQL servers.
- AWS lays greater stress on the Internet of Things (IoT), while Microsoft Azure focuses on enterprise productivity and business outcomes.
In addition to this, there are service-related differences between Azure and AWS, while both cover analytics, backup, content delivery networks (CDNs), data orchestration, and hybrid cloud.
One of the key reasons to choose Azure over AWS is Microsoft’s continued support for Windows Server and exchange applications. Further, Microsoft has decades of experience building developer tools for itself and external customers.
See More: AWS vs. Azure: Your Guide to Choosing the Best Cloud Provider in 2021
8. Are you a certified Microsoft Azure professional?
This is a commonly asked question during Azure interviews for mid-career roles. By this time, it is expected that candidates will either have a few years of hands-on experience in managing Azure infrastructure or they should have the requisite certifications from Microsoft. If the candidate is yet to get certified, they should discuss the potential options and mention to the interviewer that they are actively participating in the learning track.
Microsoft Azure certifications begin with the AZ-900: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals course, available as online self-paced courses and instructor-led learning tracks. It teaches you about cloud components, the core Azure services, solutions and management tools, security features, and cost management. Following this, candidates can obtain specialized certifications to support their careers after a few years of experience. This includes courses like Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate and Microsoft Certified: Azure for SAP Workloads Specialty.
9. What are the key Azure services for a modern enterprise?
Microsoft Azure offers 200+ cloud-based products and services. Some of the key offerings for enterprises include the following:
- Azure Blob Storage: Azure Blob Storage is an object storage solution from Microsoft. It is optimized for large volumes of unstructured data and data lakes, which do not require a specific data model or definition. It primarily supports analytics and machine learning.
- Azure Cosmos: Cosmos is a managed NoSQL database that helps run data-driven applications. It has a library of open APIs to drive easy scalability and guarantees single-digit millisecond response times and 99.999% availability for applications.
- Azure CDN: A content delivery network (CDN) enables the seamless distribution of various content types like gaming software, IoT, firmware updates, streaming media, etc. Azure offers a cloud-based CDN that reduces latency and boosts high bandwidth content services performance.
- Azure Active Directory (AD): Azure AD is one of Microsoft’s most popular cloud-based services, also used by enterprises that aren’t Azure infrastructure customers. It enables identity-based security through single sign-on, multifactor authentication, and conditional access. Admins can manage different user identities from a unified portal.
- Azure Sentinel: Sentinel is Microsoft’s cloud-hosted security event and information management (SIEM) platform that helps protect both Azure and non-Azure infrastructure. It has built-in AI capabilities, as well as powerful behavior analytics. Azure sentinel is a Saas product.
10. How do Azure Managed Services work?
One of the top employers of Microsoft Azure professionals is managed service providers (MSPs). These companies act as Microsoft partners, resellers, and remote maintenance experts so that enterprises do not have to hire in-house cloud talent.
Microsoft has a robust partner system and an Azure Expert Managed Services Provider (MSP) program. Leading managed service providers can get audited by a third-party investigator and become certified Azure Expert MSP. Managed service providers must be well-versed in Azure products and services, particularly their IaaS offerings. The provider will rely on MSP tools to provide client companies with a high-availability, bottleneck-free cloud environment.
Now let us discuss five questions likely to be asked during senior-level Azure interviews.
11. How would you optimize Azure cloud costs?
Cost management is a major part of any cloud deployment, as the pay-as-you-go model could lead to cost overruns. Without astute management, enterprises risk exceeding their cloud budgets, often by a large margin. Senior-level Azure professionals are often hired to generate more value from Azure investments by implementing cost optimization measures. There are several ways to achieve this:
- Refer to the Cost Analysis report in the Azure Cost Management module. Administrators can use this feature to analyze real-time expenditure, find cost anomalies, predict invoice amounts, and share costs between departments.
- Define a budget based on historical usage. The Azure Budgets feature is an automation tool that lets you define business rules around the budget scope and what to do once it is exceeded. For example, organizations can switch to a different service plan based on budget triggers.
- Refer to the Pricing Calculator before deploying new workloads. It simulates the costs involved in running different configurations, with unique memory combinations, operating systems, server types, etc. It helps keep up with workload fluctuations.
See More: 5 Ways To Stop Your Cloud Costs From Ballooning Beyond Your Control
12. What is the importance of Azure Advisor?
Azure Advisor can be an indispensable tool for running high-performing Azure instances. It analyzes the entire implementation and component subscriptions to highlight bottlenecks, opportunities, and recommendations.
The Advisor module can be accessed from the main Azure portal homepage. It reveals a dashboard with five modules – availability, security, performance, operational excellence, and costs. Across these modules, administrators can view a list of recommendations and the number of resources that the change will impact.
13. Tell me about a problem that you solved in your previous role?
This question is commonly asked during Azure interviews to gauge a person’s hands-on expertise and experience. Candidates can take this opportunity to speak about common challenges in Azure implementations like security.
Microsoft Azure is a secure cloud – however, the company shares the ownership of security with its customers. In many scenarios, organizations leave cloud security entirely up to Microsoft and overlook the gaps in their own responsibilities. Therefore, Azure experts should intervene and use the tools available to secure their implementation.
Virtual machines should be encrypted at rest, endpoint protection should be in place, and organizations can gain from the various features available in the Azure Security Center.
14. What will you do in case of an Azure service failure?
While Microsoft Azure offers 99.99% and higher uptime as per its service level agreements (SLAs), enterprises may occasionally witness a service outage. There are several things one can do in case of a service failure. To begin with, one should halt the ongoing service operations so that its associated objects can withstand the failure.
Next, Azure experts can conduct failure mode analysis (FAA) to check for application and service resiliency. This helps identify the different failure modes possible and the risk levels involved. Organizations should also factor in additional cold start costs incurred every time a service fails unexpectedly and has to restart.
Finally, the Azure Service Health module should be configured appropriately so that IT and cloud administrators receive timely alerts whenever there is a service issue. This module also assists in root cause analysis and audits.
15. What is the newest Microsoft Azure update that caught your attention?
Senior Azure professionals are expected to be actively involved in cloud computing thought leadership and analysis beyond only foundational knowledge. Therefore, interviewers may ask this question to check your familiarity with the latest news and emerging technologies in the Azure ecosystem, which will eventually help you add more value to the enterprise.
A recent update from Microsoft Azure is next-gen trustworthy artificial intelligence (AI) via a confidential cloud. Microsoft has partnered with Nvidia to build confidential cloud computing environments to make AI more secure and privacy-conscious. It extends the power of encryption to geographical processing units (GPUs), an industry first.
