- What is Azure?
Ans:- Azure is the cloud computing platform provide by Microsoft, offering wide range of services for building, deploying and managing application and infrastructure.
- What is Cloud Computing?
Ans:- A cloud computing is the delivery of computing services like servers, storage, database, networking, software and AI over the networking (called as cloud) insted of using physical hardware or local server.
- What are the cloud computing service models? explain the differences
Ans:- The three primary cloud computing service models are Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). These models represent different layers of the cloud computing stack and define the division of responsibility between you (the customer) and the cloud provider.
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
IaaS provides on-demand access to fundamental computing resources like virtual machines, physical servers, storage, and networking over the internet.
- Platform as a Service (PaaS)
PaaS offers a cloud-based environment equipped with everything needed to build, test, deploy, and manage applications.
- Software as a Service (SaaS)
SaaS delivers a fully functional, ready-to-use software application hosted entirely by the vendor and accessed via a web browser or mobile app.
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
- What is Hybrid Cloud?
Ans:- A hybrid cloud is a computing environment that combines a private cloud (or on-premises data center) with a public cloud (like AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud), allowing data and applications to be shared between them using VPN or ExpressRout.
- What is a resource in Azure and how it is different from Azure service
Ans:- In Microsoft Azure, an Azure resource is any manageable item (instanc of a service) that you create and deploy within your cloud environment. For example, when you create a virtual machine, database, or storage account, each one is an Azure resource.
- What is resource group?
Ans:- A resource group is a logical container that holds related azure resources. It allows you to manage, organize and control resources efficiently.
- What is Virtual Machine? When would you use it in project?
Ans:- A virtual machine is a cloud base virtual server (software-based simulation of a physical computer) that its own operating system and allows user to run application.
You might use a VM when you need a complete isolated server environment, particularly for traditional server deployments, different operating systems, legacy applications, or infrastructure that requires OS-level control.
- What VM Scale Sets? When will you use them in your project?
Ans:- The Azure virtual machine scale set let you ceate and manage group of identical load balanced VMs. The number of VMs in thegroup can be increased and descrease on demand.
- What is Azure App Service and how it different from VM
Ans:- The primary difference lies in the level of control and management. A VM gives you full infrastructure control (IaaS), while App Service eliminates infrastructure management so you can focus entirely on code (PaaS).
- How do you deploy a .NET application to Azure app service?
Ans:- To deploy a .NET application to Azure App Service, you have several methods depending on your workflow. The fastest and most common methods are using GitHub Actions (automated), Visual Studio (manual) and Command Line using Azure CLI(manual).
- What are the different options to deploy a .NET Web API on Azure
Ans:- When hosting a .NET Web API on Azure, you can choose from several cloud computing models depending on the level of control, scalability, and cost efficiency your project requires
- Azure App Service
- Azure Functions
- Azure Container Apps (ACA)
- Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
- Azure Virtual Machines
- Why did you choose Azure App Service instead of AKS or Azure VM?
Ans:- Azure App Service is generally chosen over AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service) and Azure VMs because it strikes the perfect balance between speed of delivery, low maintenance, and built-in production features for a standard .NET Web API.
- What is a WebJob inside the Azure App Service?
An Azure WebJob is a built-in feature of Azure App Service that allows you to run background tasks, scripts, or programs within the same environment and instance as your main web application. It serves as a way to handle resource-heavy or long-running processes completely outside of your standard web request/response cycle, without requiring separate or costly infrastructure.
- What are the Types of WebJobs
- Continuous
Starts immediately when the WebJob is deployed and runs in a continuous loop. This is ideal for tasks like constantly polling a storage queue or processing data streams.
- Triggered
Runs only when manually started or on a specific schedule using a CRON expression. This is ideal for routine maintenance, like daily file cleanups or hourly report generation.
- Continuous
- What is a CRON expression.
A CRON expression is a compact string of text used to define a recurring schedule for automated tasks. It acts as a time-based scheduling language for operating systems (like Linux), cloud platforms, and DevOps software to run background routines—such as database backups, automated emails, or system cleanups—without human intervention.
- What is Azure Functions and when would you use it?
Ans:- Azure Functions is a serverless, event-driven compute service provided by Microsoft Azure. It allows you to run small blocks of code (called "functions") in the cloud without having to provision, manage, or pay for dedicated virtual machines or infrastructure.
- How do you secure Azure Functions using Azure AD and JWT?
Ans:- To secure an Azure Function using Azure Active Directory (now Microsoft Entra ID) and JWT (JSON Web Tokens), you have two primary architectural approaches.
The first approach is Built-in App Service Authentication (Easy Auth), where Azure handles the JWT validation at the infrastructure level before the request even touches your code. The second approach is Manual JWT Validation in Code, which gives you fine-grained control over scopes, roles, and custom claims within your .NET Function.
- How do you implement Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) in Azure Functions?
To implement Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) in Azure Functions for a .NET application, you map custom application roles created in Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD) to user identities. When a user requests a resource, your code inspects the incoming JWT claims to check if the user possesses the required role before granting access.
- How do you handle JWT token expiration and refresh tokens in Azure?
- What are Durable Functions and when should they be used?
Durable Functions are an extension of Azure Functions that are used to build stateful and long-running workflows. They help us coordinate multiple functions while automatically maintaining the workflow state, handling retries, checkpoints, and failures.
For example, suppose we have an order-processing workflow: first validate the order, then process payment, reserve inventory, and finally ship the order. With Durable Functions, an orchestrator can coordinate these steps and remember which steps have completed.
I would use Durable Functions when I have a multi-step or long-running process, especially when I need reliable retries, waiting for external events, parallel processing, or human approval. For a simple HTTP-triggered function or a small independent task, I would normally use a regular Azure Function instead.
- Why not just use normal Azure Functions?
A normal Azure Function is good for executing an individual piece of work. But when I need to coordinate multiple steps and maintain state between them, managing that state and failure handling manually can become complicated. Durable Functions provide orchestration, state persistence, retries, timers, and recovery as part of the framework, which makes those workflows much easier to implement reliably.
- How do you monitor Azure Functions and receive alerts when they fail
Azure Functions are primarily monitored using Azure Monitor Application Insights, which automatically collects logs, performance metrics, and application errors. By coupling Application Insights with Azure Monitor Alerts, you can instantly notify your team via email, SMS, or Slack whenever a function fails.
To receive notifications when failures occur, you need to configure an Alert Rule combined with an Action Group in the Azure Portal
- What is Azure Storage Account and what are its different storage types
An Azure Storage Account is a Microsoft cloud service that provides a secure, scalable, and highly available space to store your data. It acts as a single container that groups together all of your data objects, giving them a unique namespace accessible from anywhere in the world via HTTP or HTTPS.
It is designed to handle massive volumes of data, automatically manage hardware failures, and scale up seamlessly as your application storage needs grow.
- What are The Core Storage Types supported by Azure Storage
Inside an Azure Storage Account, you can choose from four distinct types of data storage, each optimized for different workloads:
- Azure Blobs (Object Storage): Optimized for storing massive amounts of unstructured data. This includes text or binary data like images, videos, audio, log files, backups, and documents. It is ideal for serving files directly to a browser or streaming media.
- Azure Files (Managed File Shares): Offers fully managed cloud file shares that you can access using standard network protocols like SMB (Server Message Block) or NFS. It allows you to lift-and-shift legacy on-premises file shares to the cloud without changing how your applications access data.
- Azure Queues (Messaging Storage): A messaging store used to send and process large volumes of messages asynchronously between different application components. It is commonly used to decouple components in microservices and serverless architectures (like Azure Functions).
- Azure Tables (NoSQL Storage): A key-attribute NoSQL datastore used for rapid development and fast access to massive quantities of structured, non-relational data. It is highly cost-effective for storing metadata, user logs, and web application state.
- How do you secure an Azure Storage Account from unauthorized access?
I secure an Azure Storage Account using defense in depth. I prefer Microsoft Entra ID with RBAC and managed identities instead of account keys, apply least privilege, restrict network access using firewalls, VNets and private endpoints, disable public blob access, use short-lived SAS tokens when required, enable encryption and HTTPS, and monitor access through Azure Monitor and diagnostic logs. For data protection, I also enable blob soft delete, versioning, and immutability where appropriate.
Summary
Preparing for an Azure interview? This comprehensive guide covers the most commonly asked Microsoft Azure interview questions and answers, from basic cloud concepts to advanced and scenario-based topics. Whether you’re a fresher or an experienced cloud professional, this article will help you strengthen your Azure knowledge, understand real-world scenarios, and prepare confidently for your next Azure interview.
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