11May

A Complete Guide to Ansible Interview Questions

May 11, 2022 admin

Ansible is a term familiar to Python experts. The scalable software tool is extremely efficient in deploying applications as well as performing configuration management simultaneously. As an exceptional IT automation tool, Ansible is a preferable option for every IT professional in terms of cloud provisioning and cross-platform computing support. Moreover, being an open-source platform, Ansible doesn’t demand agent software to get deployed. Therefore, the task of Ansible deployment is quite easy and convenient. Usually, Ansible demands accurate commands to complete every operation.

Anyway, you may find it difficult to handle Ansible interview questions as an IT professional. Considering the utility of Ansible as an IT automation software, this user base of Ansible is widespread across the world. Therefore, you need to be savvy about Ansible and the questions related to it so that you increase your employability in the IT sector. If you’re joining an IT company as a python expert, you’re bound to possess innate expertise in using Ansible to escalate your credibility.

In this article, we will discuss the most significant Ansible interview questions. However, you are supposed to know about the functions of Ansible. On top of that, you need to get adequate information about how Ansible functions. As you become familiar with the functional procedure of the platform, you won’t find Ansible interview questions difficult anymore. So, let’s jump to the next segment of the article.

How Ansible Works

Generally, two types of computing systems exist in an IT company. A computing system with control nodes generally runs the Ansible software. On the other hand, multiple computing systems with managed modes also exist in the same server. While the computing system with control nodes runs the Ansible software, the managed systems get managed and monitored by the controller system.

Usually, the Ansible software accomplishes tasks by connecting all the nodes in a specific server or network. In simple words, Ansible functions as a connector between the control nodes and managed nodes in a network server. As the software becomes able to connect all the nodes present in a server or network, it sends modules named Ansible modules to complete prompted tasks. Once the dedicated task gets completed, Ansible removes the Ansible modules from the connected nodes.

However, you’re supposed to ensure that the control nodes of a specific network have login access to the managed nodes in the network. That’s what is necessary to make the most out of the Ansible network. SSH keys are friendly options to make that possible without issues.

Ansible Interview Questions You Must Know

This segment will discuss the top Ansible interview questions that IT professionals need to face during their interviews in IT companies.

What do you understand about CI/CD?

CI (Continuous Integration) helps you keep a track of the progression of the deployment or development process you’re trying to accomplish. With the help of CI, it’s possible to pace up the development or deployment of an application through Ansible.

In the CD (Continuous Delivery) process, the codes created by you get placed into a certain repository and you can generate productive outcomes with the codes.

What is Ansible Galaxy?

Ansible Galaxy is a dedicated repository that comes with the Ansible software. The repository is easily shareable among Ansible users. Alongside, you can drop Ansible Galaxy into playbooks for execution purposes. The repository also supports sharing vivid types of packages.

What is a YAML file?

YAML files are special files that come with specific sets of rules and restrictions. Generally, YAML files get utilized for playbooks due to the better readability of these text formats. Ansible finds it difficult to decode conventional text formats and that’s why YAML files come to use.

What do you Understand about Ansible tasks?

Ansible tasks are the unit functions performed by the Ansible software. Ideally, Ansible tasks simply configuration policies by breaking them down into smaller code blocks. After that, those blocks make it possible to automate certain tasks.

What are Callback plugins in Ansible?

Almost every IT guy is familiar with the functions of cmd programs. Whatever output you can view on your computer screen through the cmd terminal is controlled by callback plugins.

What do you mean by Ansible vault?

Ansible encrypts confidential details like passwords or other crucial information in the Ansible vault. The information stored in the Ansible vault doesn’t remain in plaintext formats. Ansible encrypts such information for better protection.

How can you Make Content Reusable or Redistributable?

You can utilize Ansible roles to make content reusable or redistributable effortlessly. Ansible roles function as abstractions that organize playbooks in the Ansible software.

What are Handlers in the Ansible software?

Usually, handlers in Ansible seem to be identical to regular tasks. But the difference between handlers and regular tasks is that handlers run only if the task contains a notify directive.

In which languages is Ansible written?

Conventionally, Ansible is written in Python. Anyway, Ansible can be written in PowerShell too.

What are the Server Requirements to Get Ansible running?

If you want to run the Ansible software on a device, you need to have a version of Linux installed in that system. Alongside, the system must be equipped with Python 2.6 and higher versions.

These are the top trivial questions associated with Ansible that most IT employees have to face during job interviews.

Conclusion

Ansible is a reliable platform and that’s what makes IT firms go for this open-source automation platform. If you aren’t savvy about the functions and operational features of Ansible, you may not get the opportunity at top IT companies. If you’re preparing for the interview round in an IT company, keeping the above-mentioned questions in mind is necessary. You need to memorize the functional processes and features of the platform to make your interview successful. There are thousands of other questions related to Ansible. So, apart from the questions mentioned above, you need to go through more trivial questions related to Ansible.

25Mar

DevOps Interview Questions

March 25, 2022 admin

Today DevOps is considered to be the latest buzzword in the market due to immense benefits offered and how it has changed the SDLC process. Unlike the traditional software development approach like Agile, DevOps majorly focuses on the collaboration of the development and the operational teams. As it has been widely adopted by many organizations in the last few years, it has led to the rise in the demand for DevOps engineers for managing and improving the software development process.

If you are looking for DevOps engineer roles then you need to understand its concept, required skills, resources, and various points so you can excel in implementing the DevOps approach. In this article, we will be highlighting the most frequently asked DevOps questions that are suitable for interviews.

Introduction to DevOps.

DevOps is a software development methodology that is considered as the combination of development and operations. It is an extension of the Agile methodology with its focus on bringing together various teams together for developing the product. It emphasizes team collaboration for improving the productivity and performance of the team members. This approach helps in automating the various processes of software development for delivering an efficient and high-quality product. It allows the team to deliver the product faster and resolve the issues at the early stage by getting feedback from customers.

How is DevOps different from Agile Methodology?

Agile is the conventional approach that was used for all software development. It focuses on the iterative, incremental, and rapid software releases along with getting feedback from the customers on each iteration. It helps in bridging the gap between the customer and the developer.

While you can say that DevOps is an advanced version of Agile, its main focus is on increasing communication with the team for better productivity. Various teams come together for continuous development, testing, deployment, and monitoring of the SDLC pipeline. The main objective of DevOps is to set equal responsibilities for the development and the operational team to eliminate the conflict between them so they can work for the improvement of the product.

Explain different Phases of DevOps.

DevOps has various phases as explained below.

Plan- first step is to set up a plan for what type of application needs to be developed and to create a rough picture of how the development will take place.
Code- at this phase, the development team works on code as per the client’s requirement.
Build- at this phase, various codes are integrated to create an application.
Test- it is considered to be the crucial stage where we look for possible bottlenecks and try to eliminate them and rework some parts if required.
Integrate- at this phase, we merge the codes from various developers in the team to merge functionalities.
Deploy- now, the code is ready to be deployed on the desired environment.
Operate- In this phase post deployment, developers can make changes as per the changing demand.
Monitor- at this stage, teams monitor the performance of the application and make the required changes to make it more efficient.

Mention the Benefits of DevOps

We have mentioned some of the benefits of DevOps.

It ensures faster software deployment.
It helps in stabilizing the work environment.
This methodology will improve the quality of the product.
It allows automating various tasks of the software development lifecycle to eliminate manual work.
It helps in promoting agility within your business.
It reduces the failure and production cost for every business.
It helps in frequent releases with new features, fixes, and updates.
It focuses on team collaboration for better productivity.
It results in customer satisfaction by providing a high-quality product.

Explain the difference between continuous delivery and continuous deployment?

Continuous Delivery	Continuous Deployment
It focuses on the code to be safely deployed to the production environment.	It ensures that each change will pass the automated tests to be deployed to production automatically.
It makes sure that the business applications and services will function as expected.	It helps in making the software development and the release process faster.
It helps in delivering every change to a production-like environment via rigorous automated testing.	There is no need for approval from a developer for making changes.

Explain the role of Continuous Management in DevOps.

Below are some roles of continuous management in DevOps.

Disaster recovery- with the help of continuous management, you will be able to recover your assets during any disaster. It allows you to roll back the changes if it breaks down the application and go back to the state before the change.
Uptime and Site reliability- with continuous management, you will be able to manage the downtime and site reliability. It makes sure that there is minimum downtime due to deployment errors.
Easier scaling- with the help of configuration management, you can evaluate the state of your services. It also allows you to scale them as per the changing request / demand without any failure.

Explain the Role of Continuous Monitoring.

DevOps supports continuous monitoring which helps in detecting, identifying, and reporting any error in the entire infrastructure. It helps in ensuring that all the services and applications are running efficiently on the servers. Itl monitors the status of the server. It also conducts continuous auditing of the system to make the required changes.

Explain Continuous Integration in DevOps.

Continuous Integration is a DevOps practice that allows the developers to integrate their code into a shared repository. All integration is verified using the automated build process for easy error detection in their codes. Having a repository allows the developers to check their code and work on the features assigned to them. After working on the code, they are pushed to the remote shared repository which is handled by effective version control tools like Git. The CI server monitors the changes and pulls them as soon as it detects them. After pulling the changes, the CI server will trigger the code build for running tests. The results of the tests are sent to teams so that they can rework in case of failure.

Explain Continuous Testing in DevOps.

DevOps supports continuous testing that allows the teams to run automated test cases to get immediate feedback on the product quality and for validating the business risks that are associated with the automated code builds. This phase enables the team to test each build continuously to give instant feedback to the developer team so that these changes will not reach the later stages of development. This leads to the efficient development and testing process to create a high-quality product.

Explain the Benefits of Automation testing.

Test automation helps in improving the overall efficiency and quality of the software. You can use specific tools for effectively executing automated test cases and then comparing actual and expected results. Thus, test automation ensures software proficiency without any manual intervention. Below we have mentioned the benefits of the automation testing process.

It helps in getting faster feedback to make any required changes to the code. Then the change is tested using automated test cases.
It helps in saving the time spent by the team in repeatedly validating the new features.
It helps in improving the team communication so they can work closely with the development and deployment of the test cases.

How to Automate Testing in DevOps?

In DevOps, developers commit all the changes made in the source code to a shared repository. Then Continuous Integration tools like Jenkins pushes the changed code from this shared repository and deploy it for Continuous Testing using tools like Selenium. It allows testing every code change continuously.

What are the Principles of DevOps?

You must understand the basic principles of DevOps before implementing them within your organization. Below we have mentioned some DevOps principles for better understanding.

It focuses on team collaboration for improving the productivity and performance of various teams.
It sets the same responsibilities for various teams so they can focus towards the development and improvement of the product by eliminating the chance of blame game.
It focuses on minimizing the cost of failure as it ensures continuous development, testing, and management.
It focuses on automating every task and process within the organization for effective working.
It works mainly for the improvement of the product.

Version control system- DevOps interview questions

Explain Version Control.

It is a system that helps in recording the changes to files or code so that you can refer to a specific version in the future. It has a central shared repository that is used by the teammates for committing desired changes to the file. Version control helps the team to revert the entire project to its previous stage before the change was implemented. It allows you to compare the changes over time. Using version control, you will be able to know who made the last changes and what impact they had on the system.

Explain the Benefits of Version Control.

Below are some benefits that you will get using the Version control.

Version control system (VCS) allows the team to work and make changes to any file at any time. Later, you can merge all the changes in a single version.
Every version is efficiently stored at the VCS and you can request any of the stored versions and you can implement that version to your system instantly.
While saving any version, you can provide a name describing what change has been made to it. So that any developer can refer to it to see the desired changes.

What are the Branching Strategies in VCS?

You can use any of the below-mentioned branching strategies in VCS.

Feature branching- this type of branching will keep all the changes related to a specific feature inside a branch. Once the feature is completely validated and tested then it is merged to the main branch.
Task branching- this type of branching allows implementing each task in its branch along with the task key. You can look for the task key to see which code implemented which task.
Release branching- as soon as the develop branch gets all the required features to be released, then you can create a clone of that branch to form a release branch. You are not allied to add new features after this point.

What is Git?

Git is one of the majorly used Distributed Version Control systems (DVCS). It allows the team to track changes made to a file and then revert to any specific changes.
It is usually preferred over other Version Control Systems (VCS) like SVN as Git does not rely on a central server to keep all the versions of a project’s files. Instead, every developer creates “clones” of a repository with “Local repository” and keeps the complete history of the project on the local system that can be referred to when there is a server outage. For complete recovery, you can access your teammate’s local Git repository.
It comes with a central cloud repository where developers can commit the required changes and share it with other developers where all collaborators are making changes “Remote repository”.

Containerization-DevOps questions

Explain Docker.

Docker is an open-source project that allows you to create containers and container-based applications. It was designed for Linux systems but now can also be used on Windows and Mac systems. Docker enables you to create independent applications that do not rely on the underlying infrastructure. Docker allows you to manage the infrastructure as you manage your applications. It eliminates the delay between writing code and running it in the production environment.

Explain Docker Architecture.

Docker is based on the client-server architecture.
Docker Client is a service that will run a command which gets translated using the REST API and then sent to the Docker Daemon (server).
Docker Daemon receives the request and communicates with the operating system for building the Docker images and running Docker containers.
A Docker image specifies a template holding various instructions for creating containers.
Docker container is an executable package that consists of an application along with its dependencies bundled together.
Docker registry is a service that will help in hosting and distributing Docker images among users.

Explain the Benefits of Docker.

Below are various benefits of Docker.

It provides a consistent and isolated environment for running applications or containerized applications independently without relying on the underlying infrastructure. You can deploy your applications anywhere.
It helps in faster deployments as you can run containerized applications independently. As these applications are bundled with their dependencies so they will not take time to look for the dependencies elsewhere.
It helps in easy maintenance as each container is isolated from the other, allowing teams to troubleshoot easily with quick fixes.

Name Docker tools for CI/CD.

Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) (10)

Jenkins
Circle CI
CodeShip
GitLab CI
Shippable
CodeFresh
Travis CI
Buddy
Drone
Wrecker

Name Docker tools for Continuous monitoring

Sumologic
Retrace
Datadog
New Relic
cAdvisor
Pagerduty

Why is Docker so popular?

Docker works faster and more reliably than a Virtual machine.
Docker is portable due to the consistency of the host environment irrespective of the underlying OS.
Docker works on Containerized applications that can be efficiently scaled up or scaled down with changing business requirements.
Using the Container concept, the complex application can be easily broken down into modular microservices.
Docker ensures a faster way for deploying applications without focusing on the deployed platform.
Docker comes with seamless integration with the DevOps development and deployment cycle.

What are the Key elements of Continuous Testing tools?

Key elements of Continuous Testing are:

Risk Assessment: It helps in conducting risk mitigation tasks, technical debt, quality assessment, and test coverage optimization for ensuring that the build is ready to move to the next stage.
Policy Analysis: It ensures all processes adhere to the organization’s evolving business and compliance demands.
Requirements Traceability: It ensures that all the desired requirements are met without any rework. An object assessment identifies if any requirements are at risk, working as expected or not, or require further validation.
Advanced Analysis: It uses automation for static code analysis, changes impact analysis and scope assessment for eliminating defects in the first place
Test Optimization: It ensures tests provide accurate results.

Explain the usage of the Docker file.

Using Dockerfile, you will be able to create Docker images using the build command.
With a Docker image, you will be able to run the code for creating the Docker containers.
Once a Docker image is built, it will get uploaded to a Docker registry.
From the Docker registry, anybody can download the Docker image and build a new container whenever required.

Difference between Docker image and Docker container.

Docker Images	Docker Container
Docker images can be used as a template of Docker containers	Containers are considered to be runtime instances of a Docker image
Any user can create an image using a Dockerfile	You can create Containers using Docker images
You can find an image in the Docker repository or a Docker hub	You can find the container in the Docker daemon
The Docker image layer is a read-only filesystem	Every Docker container layer is a read-write filesystem

Creating a Docker Container.

A user can either create a new Docker image or can pull an existing Docker image (like Apache) from Docker Hub (official Docker repository).

Now, you can use Docker for creating a new Container Apache using the existing Docker image. At the same time, the container layer of the read-write filesystem will also get created on top of the image layer. You can run the below-mentioned commands.

Command for creating a Docker container: Docker run -t –i Apache
The command for listing down all the running containers: Docker ps

Difference between Registry and Repository.

Registry	Repository
A Docker registry is available as an open-source server-side service that is usually used for hosting and distributing Docker images.	It is a collection of several versions of Docker images
Users will be able to distinguish between Docker images with their tag names that are available in the registry.	It is stored in a Docker registry
Docker comes with its default registry known as Docker Hub.	There are two types of repositories: public and private

What are Common Myths about DevOps?

There are various myths being talked about DevOps.

According to some, DevOps replaces Agile. It is not true as DevOps is an extension of Agile, combining all the features of Agile with team collaboration.
The implementation of DevOps may vary depending on the project requirements. Although it is partly true, it is recommended to follow standard procedure so there will be no issues when you move your project from one company to another.
The assumption that DevOps is only about automation is not entirely correct. DevOps is a methodology that incorporates various practices such as collaboration, CI/CD, and continuous testing, which need to be understood before implementation.
Automating software development could solve all problems, but this is not feasible over the long term. In the absence of human intervention, the errors of one stage will create bottlenecks for the next stage if they are not corrected early on.
You can use DevOps to manage not only complex business requirements but also large and complex infrastructures with the correct DevOps implementation.

Mention Challenges of DevOps.

Below are some challenges that you might face using the DevOps approach.

You may face compatibility issues if you are working on legacy systems and creating an application in them.
For implementing the DevOps approach, we need skilled and experienced people that can effortlessly maintain the standards. But there are very few people who are cross-skilled and suitable for a DevOps engineer.
Though you will get various tools for implementing DevOps, choosing the right one is critical that meets all the business requirements.

Explain the Role of AWS in DevOps.

AWS has the following role in DevOps:

Flexible services – it helps in providing ready-to-use, flexible services without installing or setting up the software.
Built for scale – it allows you to manage a single or scale to thousands of instances.
Automation – it helps in automating various tasks and processes, allowing developers to focus on innovation.
Secure – AWS offers Identity and Access Management (IAM) for setting user permissions and policies.
Large partner ecosystem – AWS comes with a support for the large ecosystem of partners that can be easily integrated with other AWS services.

Explain “Infrastructure as Code” related to Configuration management.

Writing code for managing configuration, deployment, and automatic provisioning.
It allows you to manage the data centers with machine-readable definition files, instead of physical hardware configuration.
It makes sure that all your servers and other components of the infrastructure are provisioned consistently and effortlessly.
It allows you to administer the cloud computing environments, also known as infrastructure as a service (IaaS).

Mention Prerequisites for Implementing DevOps.

You should maintain the below-mentioned prerequisites.

You should have at least one Version Control Software
Ensure effective communication among various team members
Ensures tools for implementing automated testing
You should have the right tools for automated deployment.

Mention Network Monitoring tools for DevOps.

Some of the most commonly used network monitoring tools are:

Splunk
Icinga 2
Wireshark
Nagios
OpenNMS

Name Important KPIs of DevOps.

Below are the three most important KPIs of DevOps.

Mean time to failure recovery
Frequency of the Deployment
Percentage of failed deployments
Application usage, performance, and traffic
Automated Test Case Pass Percentage.
Application Availability
Change volume requests
Customer tickets

Explain CBD in DevOps.

CBD stands for component-based development, a unique approach to creating a product. With this approach, developers can reuse the existing well-defined, tested components of the code and save time and effort by not having to create the application from scratch.

Explain Post Mortem meetings in DevOps.

Post mortems are meetings held by various team members to discuss if anything goes wrong or fails during the implementation of the DevOps approach. This meeting will primarily focus on finding a solution to avoid similar failures in the future and understanding the cause of those failures.

Explain the Container.

Containers can be defined as packaged applications that bundle their dependencies together in a single file. The containers that fall into this category can run on any platform, regardless of the underlying operating system. They share the same kernel with other containers that run on the same platform. Docker is one of the most commonly used containerized platforms allowing you to create, manage, and run containerized applications on any platform.

Explain Docker Hub.

Docker hub is the cloud-based registry service that links you to the repository where you will be able to build images, test them, store the pushed images (manually), and links you to the Docker cloud for deploying the images to the host. It is a centralized resource for container image discovery, distribution.

Name some DevOps popular tools.

Git: Version Control System tool
Jenkins: Continuous Integration tool
Selenium: Continuous Testing tool
Puppet, Chef, Ansible: Configuration Management and Deployment tools
Nagios: Continuous Monitoring tool
Docker: Containerization tool

Mention success factors for Continuous Integration.

It helps in maintaining a code repository
It allows you to automate the build
It helps in making the build self-testing
It allows the team members to commit to the baseline every day
It ensures to keep the build fast
It helps in making it efficient to get the latest deliverables
It helps in automating the deployment

Explain the benefits of Containerization over Virtualization.

Below are some advantages of containerization versus virtualization:

Containers offer real-time provisioning and scalability while the VMs provide comparatively slow provisioning.
Containers are lightweight as compared to the VMs
VMs comes with a limited performance as compared to containers
Containers show better utilization of the resources as compared to VMs

How to start and stop Docker Containers?

For stopping the Docker container run the below command: docker stop <container ID>
For restarting the Docker container run the below command: docker restart <container ID>

Mention platforms where you can run Docker.

Here, we have mentioned Linux and Cloud platforms as they are widely used.

Linux

Ubuntu 12.04, 13.04 et al
Fedora 19/20+
RHEL 6.5+
CentOS 6+
Gentoo
ArchLinux
OpenSUSE 12.3+
CRUX 3.0+

Cloud:

Amazon EC2
Google Compute Engine
Microsoft Azure
Rackspace

Explain Resilience Testing.

It is a software testing process that tests applications to see how they behave under uncontrolled circumstances. In addition, it ensures that the data and functionality of the application remain intact under those conditions.

Explain the DevOps approach for Creating a Project.

You can use the following DevOps approach for creating a project.

Stage 1: Plan: Analyze the existing processes to identify areas that could be improved, as well as blind spots, and create a roadmap for implementation.
Stage 2: Proof of Concept (PoC): create a proof of concept to assess the complexity of the project. Once the PoC has been approved, you can begin implementing the project.
Stage 3: Follow DevOps: Once the project is ready for implementation, you can start using DevOps phases like version control, continuous integration, continuous testing, continuous deployment, continuous delivery, and continuous monitoring.

Explain Pair Programming.

This type of programming allows two programmers to work on the same project, design, code by following the rules of extreme programming. Among the two programmers, one is the driver and the other is the observer that will monitor the progress of the project continuously and identify the potential failures of the project.

How does Nagios help in the Continuous Monitoring of Systems?

Nagios helps in monitoring the server and how well they are utilized and addresses any failure. It helps in verifying the status of the servers and services. It allows you to inspect the infrastructure’s health. It makes sure that all the applications are working properly and ensure the webs servers are reachable.

Explain Active and Passive checks in Nagios.

Nagios allows the monitoring of hosts and services in two ways.

Actively

It initiates the active checks as a result of the Nagios process
It schedules the active checks regularly

Passively

It initiates the passive checks and performs through external applications/processes
It submits the result of the passive checks to Nagios for processing

Explain Nagios Network Analyzer.

It provides you with an in-depth look at all network traffic sources and security threats.
You will get a central view of our network traffic and bandwidth data.
It allows system admins to gather high-level information on network health.
It ensures that the outages are resolved before they impact the critical business processes.

Explain virtualization in Nagios.

It helps in monitoring metrics on various platforms. It ensures quick detection of failures. You can even monitor the metrics like CPU, memory usages, VM status, and many more.

Conclusion

DevOps has undoubtedly changed the way software development is done and how it is done. It emphasizes team collaboration to improve the system’s productivity and performance. It can be integrated with the latest technology such as Docker, containers, microservices architecture, cloud platforms, and more. Implementing DevOps in your organization will lead to quick success.

We have mentioned some of the interview questions that you can prepare for a better understanding of DevOps and its tools.

25Mar

Microsoft Azure Interview Questions

March 25, 2022 admin

After the introduction of cloud computing, many companies have started using this technology for storing, retrieving, and processing data over the Internet. It helps in enhancing the scalability, flexibility, availability of the data along with the reduced cost. Various companies offer resources for doing this, known as cloud service providers.

Among various options, we are considering and discussing Azure that was launched by Microsoft on 01 February 2010. By now Microsoft Azure has become one of the leading cloud service providers supporting more than 80 percent of the companies for hosting their applications and resources. Due to its increasing benefits, there is a great demand for Azure employees in the market. Thus here we are mentioning various Azure interview-related questions for a better understanding of Azure’s concept.

1. Explain cloud computing.

The term cloud computing refers to the usage of the computing resources on the Internet for storing, managing, and processing data. But instead of using and maintaining our servers, we use the server space provided by third parties like Microsoft, AWS, etc. on paying a certain amount as per the resource usage. Cloud computing improves the execution speed, flexibility, and availability of the data. It ensures high fault tolerance by distributing data to various servers on the same network.

2. Explain various cloud deployment models.

There are three models of cloud deployment.

Public cloud: In this model, the cloud providers publicly owned the cloud infrastructure that shares the server resources between various applications.

Private cloud: It is a dedicated cloud model privately owned by a specific organization and gets private services. The services are being hosted on the dedicated server provided by the cloud provider.

Hybrid cloud: It is a combination of both public and private cloud models. It is used in a scenario where you want to use the on-premise servers for data processing but using the public cloud features for hosting applications.

3. What is Azure?

Azure Cloud Service is an example of a platform as a service (PaaS) specially designed for supporting those applications that have a demand for high scalability, reliability, and availability while maintaining the reduced cost of operations. These are hosted on virtual machines (VMs) and Azure allows developers to have more control over them by letting them use the right software and enabling them to control remotely.

Azure cloud services are efficient for deploying multi-tier web-based applications by creating an instance of cloud service. You can also define multiple roles such as web roles, worker roles, etc. for carrying out the distributed processing.

4. Explain role instances in Azure.

A role instance can be considered as a virtual machine that runs the code of the application using running role configurations. There can be several instances for a role in the cloud service config files.

5. What type of cloud service roles are offered by Azure?

Cloud service roles consist of a set of application and configuration files. Azure offers two kinds of roles:

Web role: This role offers a dedicated web server that belongs to IIS (Internet Information Services) for automatic deployment and hosting of front-end websites.

Worker role: These roles host the applications within them to run asynchronously for a longer time and do not depend on the user interactions and do not use IIS. They are perfect to perform background processes. The applications can run in a standalone manner.

6. Explain different services offered by the cloud.

The cloud offers three different services.

IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service): In this, the cloud provider will provide you with raw hardware as a service. For example, you can get a server that can be configured as per your choice i.e. Azure VM.

PaaS (Platform as a Service): The cloud provider will offer you a platform for publishing without access to the underlying OS. For example, web apps in Azure.

SaaS (Software as a Service): The cloud provider will offer you software without the need to purchase it.

7. What is the scalability of cloud computing?

As per the Azure cloud, scaling is of two types — vertical and horizontal.

Vertical scaling: It ensures the scaling of the configurations of the machine. For example, scaling RAM size from 4GB to 32GB.

Horizontal scaling: It ensures the scaling of the physical aspect. For example, adding several machines to the cloud without impacting the performance.

8. Mention the advantages of cloud computing.

The advantages of using cloud computing are:

Cloud computing ensures data security by implementing various security measures in place like two-factor authentication and more.

It helps in reducing the cost of operation, hardware, resource, and services as the cloud service provider will charge on a pay-per-use basis, where you have to pay only for those services that you are using.

It allows various users to have complete control over the data that they have hosted on a particular cloud.

It ensures that your business will get flexible IT infrastructure where they will be able to scale their services and resources with growing business requirements.

It ensures to create a backup of your data on several machines over the network and prevent data loss during a disaster.

It ensures extensive scalability for the products to enhance the impact on the customers.

It helps in reducing the carbon footprint by making everything accessible via the Internet and not maintaining any physical location to work.

9. Why is Azure Diagnostic API required?

Azure Diagnostics API helps us in gathering the diagnostic data like performance monitoring, system event logs, etc. of all the applications running on Azure.

To ensure verbose monitoring of the data, Azure Diagnostics has to be enabled for the cloud service roles.

The diagnostics data is beneficial for building visual chart representations for efficient monitoring and generating performance metric alerts.

10. Explain Azure resource manager.

The Azure resource manager is a service in Azure that ensures the management and deployment of the applications in Azure. It offers a management layer allowing the developers to create, modify, or delete the resources from the Azure subscription account.

11. Explain Azure Redis cache.

Azure provides an open-source, in-memory Redis cache system and maintains it.

It helps in improving the performance of the web applications by getting data from the backend database and then storing it into the Redis cache for the first request and then accessing the data from the Redis cache for further requests.

Azure Redis Cache ensures a powerful and secure caching mechanism by using the Azure cloud.

12. Explain Azure virtual machine scale sets.

These are the Azure computation resources that help in deploying and managing the sets of identical VMs.

These scale sets are configured and designed for supporting the autoscaling of the applications without pre-provisioning the VMs.

They help in creating large-scale applications holding big data and containerized workloads more efficiently.

13. Steps to take when drive failure occurs.

You can follow the below-mentioned steps:

Make sure that the drive is not mounted for the proper functioning of the Azure storage functions.

Make sure to replace the drive for remounting and formatting the drive.

14. What is the Azure storage key?

Azure storage key is used to authenticate the access for the Azure storage service to access data.

There are two types of storage keys used by Azure:

Primary Access Key

Secondary Access Key

The secondary access key is used to avoid downtime of the website or application.

15. Explain CSPack in Azure.

It is a command-line tool that generates the service package files. The tool prepares the application for deployment in Microsoft Azure or computer emulator.

Every cloud service type project has the .cscfg file which is the cloud service configuration file generated using the CSPack tool and is primarily used to store the following:

The number of role instances for the deployment of each role in the project.

The certificate’s thumbprint.

User-defined configuration and settings.

16. How to execute code in Azure without a server?

You can use the Azure Functions service to execute the code without a server.

Also, you can use the Serverless Azure Functions to simplify complex orchestration and challenging resolutions.

17. What is Azure Blob Storage?

Microsoft offers an object storage solution for the cloud known as Azure Blob Storage. Blob is a short name for “Binary Large Object” that is used to store large and unstructured data in terms of text or binary format. It is a perfect solution for including documents/images/audio/video/text directly to the browser.

The data that is stored in Blob Storage can be accessed from anywhere in the world. You can attach the Blob to user accounts by grouping them into containers.

18. What are the components of the Azure Blob Storage?

Azure Blob Storage has three components:

Storage Account: You can register for the Blob Storage Account using Microsoft Azure.

Container: Container is used for grouping an unlimited number of Blobs. Make sure to use a lower case for naming the container.

Blob: A Blob is a Binary Large Object like a file or document of any type and size.

Azure supports three types of Blobs.

Block Blobs: These are used for text and binary files that can support up to 195GB, i.e. up to 50k blocks of up to 4MB each.

Append Blobs: These are used for appending operations like logging data in log files.

Page Blobs: These are used for frequent read/write operations.

19. Explain Azure scheduler.

Azure Scheduler helps in invoking certain trigger events or activities in the background like calling HTTP/S endpoints or to add a message scheduled on the queue.

Using Azure Scheduler, you will be able to execute the jobs present in the cloud call services available within and outside of the Azure on-demand that runs on a regular schedule or to schedule it for a future specified date.

20. Mention storage services provided by Azure apart from the Blob.

Azure offers four types of storage services — Blob Service, Table Storage, Queue Storage, and File Storage Services.

Azure Table Storage: It allows the user to deploy their applications with semi-structured data along with a NoSQL-based key-value store. It is used for applications following a flexible schema of data. It focuses on enterprise-level data that is represented in terms of Entities grouped under tables.

Azure Queue Storage: It offers a message queue system to handle a large workload. It eliminates the failure of the individual components of applications. You can use its message queue monitoring feature to ensure that the user demands are met.

Azure File Storage: It provides features for sharing files that are accessible using SMB (Server Message Block) Protocol. It improves the performance and capabilities of on-premise applications.

21. Explain the Dead-letter queue.

Messages will be transferred to the Dead-letter queue if it comes across the following situation:

When the message delivery count has exceeded that is in a queue.

When the message’s expiry date has crossed and that message is left in a queue.

When there is an evaluation exception set by default and the subscription has been enabled with a dead letter filter.

22. Explain Azure table storage.

Azure Table storage is a database that helps in storing NoSQL data. It allows you to store structured, schemaless data with the help of a key/attribute design. You can also use it for structured but non-relational data.

You can also use Azure Table storage via the Azure Cosmos DB Table API.

23. Mention benefits of Traffic Manager in Windows Azure.

The Traffic Manager helps in controlling the distribution of the user for deploying the cloud service. Below are the benefits of the Traffic Manager:

It makes the applications available worldwide using automated traffic control machinery.

The traffic managing service helps in providing high performance by making the loading of pages faster.

There is no wastage of time in upgrading the existing system. The system keeps on running in the background as the system takes time for up-gradation.

Using the Azure portal, you can make configuration easier.

24. Mention the challenges of using Microsoft Azure.

Some of the challenges that you might face while using Microsoft Azure are:

You might not be able to use the Azure cloud if you are not connected to the Internet.

It is a web-based application that requires a large bandwidth for downloading large documents.

You might feel that web-based applications are somehow slower than accessing the same application on a desktop.

25. Reasons for a client application to be disconnected from the cache.

There can be two major possible reasons for disconnection:

Client-side reasons:

Redeployment of application.

The application might have been scaled.

Change in client-side networking layer.

Transient errors that occurred in the client or the network between the client and the server.

Bandwidth threshold limits have been crossed.

Server-side causes:

The Azure Redis Cache service undergoes a failover from the primary to the secondary node.

Due to the patching or maintenance of the server instance where the cache was deployed.

26. Difference between Azure scale sets and availability sets.

Criteria	Azure Scale Sets	Azure Availability Sets
Definition	Defined as the group of identically configured VMs spread across multiple fault domains.	Defined as the group of discretely configured VMs spread across various fault domains.
Default Domain	It has 5 fault domains and update domains by default.	It has 3 fault domains and 5 update domains.
Workload Type	You can use it with unpredictable workloads requiring the feature of auto scalability.	You can use it with the predictable workload requirements.
Configuration Style	VMs are configured and created in the same way using the same image.	VMs are created by using different images and configurations.
VM Count	You can increase or decrease the number of VMs according to the demand or the pre-defined schedule.	You can add a VM to an availability set only at the time of the creation of the set.
Distribution style	You can distribute the VM scale sets across multiple data centers or within a single data center.	The VMs are distributed in a data center automatically.

27. Difference between the Azure Table Storage and Azure SQL Service.

Table Storage Service	Azure SQL Table
It is a NoSQL type of storage available on Azure.	It is the relational storage structure available on Azure.
It stores the data in a key-value format that is referred to as Entity.	It stores the data in rows and columns combination in the SQL table.
It does not enforce the data schema for storage.	It enforces the data schema to store data and if there is a schema violation, then it will show an error.
There is no relationship between tables.	Foreign keys are used to define the relationships between tables.
For each entity, the partition and row key combinations are considered unique.	The user uses the primary or unique keys to ensure uniqueness.
It helps in storing log information or diagnostics data.	You can use it for transaction-based applications.

28. Difference between Azure Storage Queue and Azure Service Bus Queue.

Azure Storage Queue	Azure Service Bus Queue
It does not guarantee the FIFO (First In First Out) ordering.	It guarantees the FIFO order for the messages using sessions.
It does not support sessions.	It supports messaging-level sessions.
It comes with the support for the “At Least Once delivery” model.	This supports “At least once”, “At most once” and “Exactly once” delivery models for the messages.
It is not able to detect duplicate messages automatically.	It helps in detecting duplicate messages automatically.
It does not show support for dead lettering.	It comes with the support for dead lettering.
It supports the message of size 64KB.	It supports the message of size 256KB.
It comes with the support for one-to-one delivery of messages.	It comes with the support for both one-to-one and one-to-many deliveries of messages.
It does not support the transaction.	It supports the transaction.
It comes with the support for only batch receive.	It comes with supports for both batch send and batch receive of messages.
The receiving messages show non-blocking behavior.	The message behavior can be either blocking or non-blocking according to the configuration.

29. Explain the Availability Set.

Availability Set is a logical grouping of VMs allowing Azure cloud to understand how the application ensures availability and redundancy.

Azure assigns each VM two types of domains in the availability set.

Fault Domain: It is the grouping of VMs sharing a common power source and network switch. The VMs in the availability sets are separated across up to 3 fault domains by default, helping the applications to be available by eliminating the impacts of network outages, power interruptions, and certain hardware failures.

Update Domain: It is the grouping of VMs and the underlying hardware that can be rebooted simultaneously. You can reboot only one update domain at a time, however, the order of reboot does not proceed sequentially. Before you start the maintenance of another update domain, the previously rebooted domain is provided with a recovery time of 30 minutes, ensuring that the domain is up.

Azure ensures flexibility by configuring up to 3 fault domains and 20 update domains for an availability set.

30. What feature of Azure do you use for stopping the issue of high load on the application with no man support on the flow?

You can stop this issue using VM Scale sets by defining proper configuration and conditions to provision a new VM when the application’s load increases.

Azure VM Scale Sets allows the developer to create and manage a group of load-balanced VMs. The scale sets need to be configured so that the count of VMs can automatically increase or decrease depending on the application demand.

Scale Sets ensure the high availability of the applications and allows the developers to manage, update, and configure large VMs centrally.

Azure scale sets are capable of supporting up to 1,000 VMs. If you create and upload the custom VM images, then the limit is 600 VMs.

31. Why is Azure’s active directory used?

Azure Active Directory is an Identity and Access Management system that helps in providing access to your employees for using specific products and services in your network. For example, Salesforce.com, Twitter, etc. Azure AD comes with in-built support for applications in its gallery which can be added directly.

32. Explain Azure service fabric.

Azure Service Fabric is a distributed systems platform that helps in packaging, deploying, and managing scalable microservices. Service Fabric offers solutions for the significant challenges in developing and managing cloud applications. It helps developers and administrators in avoiding complex infrastructure problems and focusing mainly on implementing complex, scalable, reliable, and demanding workloads. Service Fabric is a next-generation middleware platform that allows you to build and manage these enterprise-class, tier-1, cloud-scalable applications.

33. Explain stateless and stateful microservices for Service Fabric.

Service Fabric allows you to build applications that consist of microservices.

Stateless microservices (for example protocol gateways, web proxies), do not maintain a mutable state outside a request and its response from the service. The worker role of the Azure Cloud Services is an example of a stateless service.

Stateful microservices (eg. user accounts, databases, shopping carts, and queues) maintain a mutable, authoritative state outside the request and its response. Nowadays the Internet-scale applications come as a combination of both stateless and stateful microservices.

34. Can you add an existing VM to an availability set?

No, you cannot add an existing VM to an availability set. For adding a VM to a specific availability set, you need to create a VM in that set. There is no proven and experimented way for adding a VM to the availability set after it has been created.

35. Explain the break-fix issue.

Technical problems are considered as the break-fix issue. It is an industrial term that refers to the work done while supporting a technology when it fails while working normally and requires manual support work from the IT team for restoring the working of the technology.

36. How does a Character Analytics API work?

The character Analytics API does not provide the work characterization as good or bad. It uses the advanced feature that helps in mediating the processing of natural language.

37. What should be done in case of service failure?

You can perform the following steps in case of service failure.

Make sure that the objects services are stopped enabling the object services to withstand the occurred failure.

To complete the pending work you can make the system object storage remain functional by making the machine get back online again. After the machine has been started, the online replication will get activated instantly with the missing updated files.

If you are not able to replace the drive then remove the drive and let the system stay not mounted.

38. Explain csrun.

Csrun is a command-line tool that helps in deploying the packaged application to the Windows Azure compute emulator and managing the running services.

39. Explain the concept of the table in Windows Azure.

The tables in Windows Azure are used for storing information.

Tables help in storing structured data.

You can have zero to n number of tables in the storage account.

Each element has an essential key and its properties as a key-value pair.

40. Explain the use of Lookup transformation.

It is used to perform the lookups by combining the required data in the input columns along with the column present in the reference dataset. The reference table can be a new table, existing table, view, or use the SQL query for creating a reference table accordingly.

41. Do scale sets support data disks?

Yes, scale sets can define the attached data disk configurations that can be easily applied to all the virtual machines available in that set. Also, you can use the below-mentioned options for storing the data:

OS drives.

Temp drive but is not supported by Azure.

Azure data drive like Azure Blob, Azure tables.

External data drive like a remote database.

42. Can you get a public DNS or IP address for the Azure Internal Load Balancer?

No, Azure internal load balancers only support the private IP address. It does not allow you to assign external or public IP addresses and DNS names.

43. What would happen when the maximum failed attempts are reached during the process of Azure ID Authentication?

In that case, the account will get locked and the locking method will depend on the protocol that analyzes the provided password and IP address that is trying to log in.

44. Can you log in to a Linux Virtual Machine without using a password?

Yes, it is possible. For this, you need to use the key vault mapping to the desired Admin VM. It allows you to enter into another VM without entering the password for it.

45. Explain NSG (Network Security Group).

NSG stands for the Network Security Group that consists of Access Control List rules that help in either allowing or denying the network traffic to the subnet or the NICs (Network Interface Card) that is connected to the subnet or both. If you connect an NSG to a subnet then the rules are being applied to all the VMs in that subnet.

46. Explain Azure SLA.

The Azure SLA is a contract that ensures that if there are more than two role instances of a role deployed on Azure, access to that cloud service is guaranteed for at least 99.95% of the time.

It also ensures that if the role instance process is not running, then such processes are detected and required action will be taken 99.9% of the time.

If the mentioned points in the contract are not satisfied, then Azure has to provide a percentage of monthly fees to us according to the pricing model of the respective Azure services.

47. How can we use the on-premises application with Azure?

Azure AD provides an easy and secure way for connecting to the web-based applications that you choose. You will be able to access these applications in the same manner as you access your SaaS applications in Azure AD. There is no need for a VPN to make the changes to your network infrastructure.

48. Explain VNet.

It is considered to be a representation of your network in the cloud. It helps in logically isolating the instances that have been launched in the cloud from other resources of yours.

49. What are the scale limits for customers using the managed disks?

Using the managed disks will eliminate the limits that are being associated with the storage accounts. However, for a single subscription, the limit on the managed disks is 2000 by default.

50. Mention various power states of a Virtual Machine.

Below are various power states of a Virtual Machine.

Starting specifies that the VM has been started.
Running VM is in the running phase.
Stopping specifies that the VM is being stopped.
Stopped specifies that the VM is stopped.
Deallocating specifies that the VM is being deallocated.
Deallocated specifies that the VM is completely removed from the hypervisor but still available in the control plane.

Conclusion

So these were some of the most commonly asked Microsoft Azure interview questions that can help you crack Azure interviews. Once you learn the basic concepts and how to troubleshoot the issues then you can go for certification for better job opportunities. Also, it will increase your chances to get selected. So start learning and sharpen your skills.