Basic Concepts and Services

1. What is Microsoft Azure?
   • Answer: Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and service offered by Microsoft that provides a range of cloud services including computing power, storage, and databases, enabling users to build, deploy, and manage applications through Microsoft-managed data centers.
2. What is Azure Virtual Machines (VMs)?
   • Answer: Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) provide scalable, on-demand computing resources in the cloud. Users can create, manage, and configure VMs to run applications and workloads.
3. What is Azure Blob Storage?
   • Answer: Azure Blob Storage is a service for storing large amounts of unstructured data, such as text or binary data. It is used for storing files, images, backups, and other data types.
4. What is Azure SQL Database?
   • Answer: Azure SQL Database is a fully managed relational database service based on SQL Server. It provides high availability, scalability, and automatic backups.
5. What is Azure App Service?
   • Answer: Azure App Service is a fully managed platform for building, deploying, and scaling web applications and APIs. It supports multiple programming languages and frameworks.
6. What is Azure Active Directory (AD)?
   • Answer: Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is a cloud-based identity and access management service that provides authentication, authorization, and single sign-on (SSO) for applications and services.
7. What is Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)?
   • Answer: Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is a managed Kubernetes service that simplifies deploying, managing, and scaling containerized applications using Kubernetes.
8. What is Azure Functions?
   • Answer: Azure Functions is a serverless compute service that allows you to run code in response to events without provisioning or managing infrastructure. It automatically scales based on demand.
9. What is Azure Virtual Network (VNet)?
   • Answer: Azure Virtual Network (VNet) provides a private network in the Azure cloud where you can deploy and manage Azure resources securely. It allows for IP address management, routing, and network isolation.
10. What is Azure Resource Manager (ARM)?
    • Answer: Azure Resource Manager (ARM) is the deployment and management service for Azure resources. It provides a management layer that enables you to create, update, and delete resources in your Azure account.

Networking and Security

11. What is an Azure Virtual Network (VNet) peering?
    • Answer: Azure VNet peering connects two virtual networks in the same region or different regions, enabling resources in different VNets to communicate with each other as if they were in the same network.
12. What is an Azure Network Security Group (NSG)?
    • Answer: An Azure Network Security Group (NSG) is used to control inbound and outbound network traffic to Azure resources within a virtual network. It contains rules that allow or deny traffic based on source and destination IP addresses, ports, and protocols.
13. What is Azure Firewall?
    • Answer: Azure Firewall is a managed, cloud-based network security service that protects your Azure Virtual Network resources by filtering and controlling network traffic with built-in threat intelligence and rules.
14. What is Azure DDoS Protection?
    • Answer: Azure DDoS Protection provides defense against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, protecting Azure applications and services from malicious traffic and ensuring high availability.
15. How does Azure handle identity and access management?
    • Answer: Azure handles identity and access management through Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), which provides user authentication, role-based access control (RBAC), and integration with on-premises Active Directory.

Storage and Databases

16. What is Azure Cosmos DB?
    • Answer: Azure Cosmos DB is a globally distributed, multi-model database service that offers high availability, low latency, and elastic scalability. It supports multiple data models including key-value, document, graph, and column-family.
17. What is Azure Table Storage?
    • Answer: Azure Table Storage is a NoSQL data store that provides high-performance, scalable storage for large amounts of structured data. It is used for scenarios requiring flexible schema and fast access.
18. What is Azure Data Factory?
    • Answer: Azure Data Factory is a cloud-based data integration service that allows you to create, schedule, and orchestrate data workflows for data movement and transformation.
19. What is Azure Synapse Analytics?
    • Answer: Azure Synapse Analytics is an integrated analytics service that combines big data and data warehousing capabilities, allowing users to analyze large amounts of data using both serverless and provisioned resources.
20. How does Azure Backup work?
    • Answer: Azure Backup is a service that provides cloud-based backup and recovery for Azure resources and on-premises data. It supports scheduled backups, recovery points, and long-term retention.

Compute and Serverless

21. What is Azure DevOps?
    • Answer: Azure DevOps is a set of cloud-based collaboration tools for software development and deployment. It includes features like version control, build automation, release management, and project tracking.
22. What is Azure Logic Apps?
    • Answer: Azure Logic Apps is a serverless workflow automation service that enables you to automate tasks and business processes through workflows using a visual designer and integration with various services.
23. What is Azure Container Instances (ACI)?
    • Answer: Azure Container Instances (ACI) provides a way to run containers on-demand without managing virtual machines or Kubernetes clusters. It allows for rapid deployment and scaling of containerized applications.
24. What is Azure Site Recovery?
    • Answer: Azure Site Recovery is a disaster recovery service that replicates and fails over virtual machines and physical servers to Azure, ensuring business continuity in case of outages or disasters.
25. How do you implement scaling in Azure?
    • Answer: Implement scaling in Azure using Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets for VMs, or configure autoscaling for App Service Plans, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), or Azure Functions based on metrics and schedules.

Monitoring and Management

26. What is Azure Monitor?
    • Answer: Azure Monitor is a service that provides comprehensive monitoring and management of Azure resources and applications. It includes capabilities for collecting and analyzing metrics, logs, and diagnostics data.
27. What is Azure Application Insights?
    • Answer: Azure Application Insights is an application performance management (APM) service that provides monitoring and diagnostics for web applications, helping you detect and diagnose performance issues and errors.
28. What is Azure Resource Manager (ARM) Templates?
    • Answer: ARM Templates are JSON files used to define and deploy Azure resources. They enable infrastructure as code (IaC) by describing the configuration and dependencies of resources in a repeatable and automated manner.
29. What is Azure Policy?
    • Answer: Azure Policy is a service that helps you enforce organizational standards and assess compliance across your Azure resources. It allows you to define policies for resource configuration, management, and governance.
30. What is Azure Blueprints?
    • Answer: Azure Blueprints is a service that allows you to define and deploy a set of Azure resources, policies, and configurations in a consistent and repeatable manner, aligning with organizational standards and compliance requirements.

Networking and Load Balancing

31. What is Azure Traffic Manager?
    • Answer: Azure Traffic Manager is a DNS-based global traffic distribution service that routes incoming traffic to the nearest or most responsive endpoint based on traffic routing policies.
32. What is Azure Front Door?
    • Answer: Azure Front Door is a global, scalable entry point for delivering high-performance and secure applications. It provides features like global load balancing, SSL termination, and application acceleration.
33. What is Azure Load Balancer?
    • Answer: Azure Load Balancer distributes incoming network traffic across multiple Azure Virtual Machines or instances to ensure high availability and reliability.
34. What is an Azure VPN Gateway?
    • Answer: Azure VPN Gateway connects an Azure Virtual Network to on-premises networks through a secure VPN connection, enabling secure communication between Azure and on-premises resources.
35. What is Azure Bastion?
    • Answer: Azure Bastion is a fully managed service that provides secure and seamless RDP and SSH connectivity to virtual machines within a virtual network without exposing them to the public internet.

Advanced Topics

36. What is Azure Service Fabric?
    • Answer: Azure Service Fabric is a distributed systems platform for building, deploying, and managing microservices and container-based applications at scale. It handles complex lifecycle management and stateful services.
37. What is Azure Cognitive Services?
    • Answer: Azure Cognitive Services is a collection of APIs and SDKs that provide artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities such as computer vision, natural language processing, and speech recognition.
38. What is Azure Machine Learning?
    • Answer: Azure Machine Learning is a cloud-based service that provides tools and capabilities for building, training, and deploying machine learning models and workflows.
39. What is Azure Databricks?
    • Answer: Azure Databricks is an Apache Spark-based analytics platform optimized for the Azure cloud. It provides collaborative workspaces for data engineering, data science, and machine learning.
40. What is Azure Key Vault?
    • Answer: Azure Key Vault is a service that securely stores and manages sensitive information such as secrets, encryption keys, and certificates used by cloud applications and services.

Deployment and Automation

41. What is Azure Resource Manager (ARM) used for?
    • Answer: Azure Resource Manager (ARM) is used for managing and deploying Azure resources. It provides a unified management layer that enables users to create, update, and delete resources using templates and APIs.
42. What is Azure DevTest Labs?
    • Answer: Azure DevTest Labs is a service that provides environments for developing and testing applications. It helps manage costs and resources by enabling quick provisioning of environments and automating cleanup.
43. What is Azure Automation?
    • Answer: Azure Automation is a cloud-based automation service that helps automate repetitive tasks and processes using runbooks, configuration management, and update management for Azure and on-premises resources.
44. What is Azure Container Registry (ACR)?
    • Answer: Azure Container Registry (ACR) is a private Docker container registry that stores and manages container images used for deploying applications to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) or Azure Container Instances (ACI).
45. How do you deploy applications using Azure Pipelines?
    • Answer: Use Azure Pipelines to create CI/CD pipelines that automate the build, test, and deployment processes for applications. Define pipeline steps, integrate with source control, and deploy to various environments.

Cost Management and Optimization

46. What is Azure Cost Management?
    • Answer: Azure Cost Management provides tools and features for monitoring, analyzing, and optimizing cloud spending. It includes cost analysis, budgeting, and recommendations for cost savings.
47. What is Azure Reserved Instances (RI)?
    • Answer: Azure Reserved Instances (RI) provide discounted pricing on virtual machines in exchange for a one- or three-year commitment, helping to reduce costs compared to pay-as-you-go pricing.
48. How do you optimize Azure costs?
    • Answer: Optimize Azure costs by using Azure Cost Management tools to analyze spending, implementing Reserved Instances, rightsizing resources, and leveraging cost-saving features such as auto-scaling and spot instances.
49. What is Azure Advisor?
    • Answer: Azure Advisor is a personalized recommendation service that provides best practices and actionable insights to optimize your Azure resources, including cost savings, performance improvements, and security enhancements.
50. What is the Azure Free Tier?
    • Answer: The Azure Free Tier provides limited access to various Azure services at no cost for a specific period (usually 12 months) or with ongoing free usage limits. It allows new users to explore and try Azure services for free.

These questions and answers cover a broad range of Azure topics, from fundamental services and security to advanced management and cost optimization. They should provide a solid foundation for an Azure-related interview.