Azure Cloud Interview Prep Guide

🟢 Easy (Basics)

1. What is Microsoft Azure?
Azure is a cloud computing platform by Microsoft. It offers IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS solutions across compute, storage, networking, AI, and DevOps.
2. What are the main service models in Azure?
3. Difference between Azure Regions and Availability Zones?
Region = geographical area. Availability Zone = separate data centers within a region.
4. What is Azure Resource Group?
A logical container that holds resources like VMs, storage, and databases.
5. Explain Azure Subscription.
A billing container that groups resources/services. Often separate subscriptions for Dev, Test, Prod.
6. What is Azure Virtual Network (VNet)?
Equivalent of a traditional network in the cloud. Enables communication between resources.
7. What is Azure Blob Storage?
Object storage for unstructured data. Storage tiers: Hot, Cool, Archive.
8. What are ARM Templates?
JSON files that define infrastructure declaratively. Similar to Terraform but Azure-native.
9. What is Azure Active Directory (AAD)?
Identity and access management (IAM) service. Supports SSO, RBAC, and MFA.
10. What is Azure App Service?
PaaS for hosting web apps, REST APIs, and mobile backends.

🟡 Medium (Hands-on)

1. Azure Load Balancer vs Application Gateway?
Load Balancer works at Layer 4. Application Gateway works at Layer 7 with WAF, SSL termination, URL routing.
2. What is Azure Key Vault?
Stores secrets, API keys, certificates securely. Integrates with Azure services.
3. Explain Azure Functions.
Serverless compute service triggered by events. Pay-per-execution model.
4. Azure Table Storage vs Azure SQL Database?
Table Storage = NoSQL key-value. SQL Database = managed relational DB.
5. What are Azure Managed Identities?
Identities managed by Azure for apps to securely access other services without credentials in code.
6. Explain Azure Monitor & Log Analytics.
Azure Monitor collects telemetry. Log Analytics allows querying logs with KQL.
7. What is Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS)?
Automatically scales VM instances based on demand.
8. What is Azure Traffic Manager?
DNS-based load balancer that distributes traffic across regions. Routing: Priority, Performance, Weighted.
9. Azure Availability Sets vs Availability Zones?
Availability Set = within one datacenter. Availability Zone = physically separate locations.
10. What is Azure Site Recovery (ASR)?
Disaster recovery service to replicate workloads across regions with automated failover.

🔴 Hard (Advanced)

1. How does Azure handle Identity & Access Management?
RBAC with fine-grained roles, Azure AD federation, conditional access policies.
2. Explain Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).
Managed Kubernetes service that handles control plane, upgrades, scaling, monitoring.
3. What is Azure ExpressRoute?
Private connection between on-premises and Azure. More secure and reliable than VPN.
4. Azure Security Center vs Azure Defender?
Security Center = security posture management. Defender = threat protection.
5. Explain Azure Policy.
Service to enforce governance. Example: restrict VM SKUs or enforce specific storage types.
6. What is Azure Service Bus?
Messaging service for decoupled apps. Supports queues and pub-sub topics.
7. Explain Azure Data Lake vs Data Lakehouse.
Data Lake = large-scale storage. Lakehouse = combines lake + warehouse (with Synapse/Databricks).
8. How do you secure an Azure VNet?
Use NSGs, Azure Firewall, Private Endpoints for security.
9. Explain Azure Blue-Green Deployment.
Two environments (Blue & Green). Traffic switched using Load Balancer or Traffic Manager for zero downtime.
10. Real-world multi-region app deployment?
Use Traffic Manager or Front Door for routing, deploy app across regions with VMSS/AKS, GRS for storage, Key Vault for secrets, automate with Terraform/ARM templates.