Top 30 Most Common Azure Interview Questions You Should Prepare For
Written by
James Miller, Career Coach
Landing a role in cloud computing, especially one centered on Microsoft Azure, requires a solid understanding of its core services and concepts. Azure's widespread adoption means that employers are actively seeking candidates who can demonstrate practical knowledge and theoretical depth. Preparing for interview questions on Azure is a crucial step in showcasing your expertise and readiness for these opportunities. This guide covers 30 essential Azure interview questions, from fundamental concepts to specific services, designed to help you build confidence and articulate your skills effectively. Mastering these common interview questions on Azure will position you as a strong candidate in a competitive job market.
What Are Azure?
Microsoft Azure is a comprehensive cloud computing platform provided by Microsoft. It offers a vast array of services, including computing power, storage solutions, networking capabilities, databases, analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and Internet of Things (IoT) services. These services allow individuals and organizations to build, deploy, and manage applications and services through Microsoft's global network of data centers. Azure supports various programming languages, frameworks, and operating systems, making it a flexible platform for diverse workloads. Understanding the breadth and depth of these offerings is key when tackling interview questions on Azure.
Why Do Interviewers Ask Azure Interview Questions?
Interviewers ask interview questions on Azure to evaluate a candidate's fundamental understanding of cloud computing principles and their specific knowledge of the Azure platform. They want to gauge your familiarity with key services, your ability to apply these services to real-world problems, and your capacity to design and manage cloud solutions securely and efficiently. Questions often probe your experience with specific Azure tools and services, your troubleshooting skills, and how you approach common cloud challenges like cost optimization, security, and high availability. Demonstrating competence with typical interview questions on Azure shows you can contribute effectively to cloud-based projects.
Preview List
What is Microsoft Azure?
What are the different types of cloud services offered by Azure?
What is Azure Virtual Machine?
What is Azure Blob Storage?
What is Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)?
What are Azure Functions?
What is Azure Resource Manager (ARM)?
What is Azure DevOps?
What is Azure Active Directory?
What are Azure Availability Zones?
What is Azure App Service?
What is Azure Virtual Network?
What is Azure Load Balancer?
What is Azure Key Vault?
What is Azure Storage Account?
What is the difference between Azure SQL Database and SQL Server on Azure VM?
What is Azure Monitor?
What is Azure Cosmos DB?
What is Azure Service Bus?
What is Azure Policy?
What is Azure Functions vs. Azure Logic Apps?
What is Azure CDN?
What is Azure Data Lake?
What is Azure Backup?
What is Azure Site Recovery?
What is the difference between Azure Table Storage and Cosmos DB Table API?
What is Azure Bastion?
What is Azure Synapse Analytics?
What is Azure ExpressRoute?
What is Azure Marketplace?
1. What is Microsoft Azure?
Why you might get asked this:
This is a foundational question to check your basic understanding of what Azure is and its purpose in the cloud computing landscape.
How to answer:
Define Azure as Microsoft's cloud platform, mentioning its range of services for building, deploying, and managing applications globally.
Example answer:
Microsoft Azure is Microsoft's extensive cloud computing platform. It offers a broad suite of services across computing, storage, networking, databases, analytics, and more, enabling businesses to build, deploy, and manage applications and services via Microsoft-managed data centers.
2. What are the different types of cloud services offered by Azure?
Why you might get asked this:
This assesses your knowledge of fundamental cloud service models and how Azure categorizes its offerings.
How to answer:
Explain the three main categories: IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, briefly describing each and giving an Azure example.
Example answer:
Azure primarily offers IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) providing VMs and networking; PaaS (Platform as a Service) offering managed databases and web app services; and SaaS (Software as a Service) like Microsoft 365, delivering ready-to-use applications.
3. What is Azure Virtual Machine?
Why you might get asked this:
VMs are a core IaaS offering, so understanding them is essential for many roles involving interview questions on Azure.
How to answer:
Describe it as a virtualized computer in the cloud, highlighting its use for running operating systems and applications.
Example answer:
An Azure Virtual Machine is a scalable, on-demand computing resource that behaves like a physical computer but runs in Microsoft's data centers. It allows you to deploy and manage virtualized servers running Windows or Linux operating systems.
4. What is Azure Blob Storage?
Why you might get asked this:
Storage is a fundamental cloud service, and Blob Storage is key for unstructured data.
How to answer:
Explain it as an object storage solution for unstructured data, noting its use cases like images, video, and backups.
Example answer:
Azure Blob Storage is an object storage service designed for storing vast amounts of unstructured data, such as text or binary data. It's commonly used for serving web content, storing data for analysis, streaming media, and for backup and archiving.
5. What is Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)?
Why you might get asked this:
Kubernetes is popular for container orchestration, and AKS is Azure's managed offering.
How to answer:
Define AKS as a managed Kubernetes service that simplifies deploying, managing, and scaling containerized applications.
Example answer:
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is a managed service that simplifies the deployment, management, and scaling of containerized applications using Kubernetes. Azure handles the underlying infrastructure, making it easier to focus on your applications.
6. What are Azure Functions?
Why you might get asked this:
Serverless computing is a growing trend, and Azure Functions is Microsoft's primary offering.
How to answer:
Explain it as a serverless compute service allowing you to run event-triggered code without managing servers.
Example answer:
Azure Functions is a serverless computing service that lets you run small pieces of code ("functions") triggered by events, without needing to provision or manage infrastructure. You only pay for the compute time consumed.
7. What is Azure Resource Manager (ARM)?
Why you might get asked this:
ARM is central to managing Azure resources and infrastructure as code.
How to answer:
Describe ARM as the deployment and management service for Azure, facilitating grouping and consistent management of resources.
Example answer:
Azure Resource Manager is the deployment and management service for Azure. It allows you to manage, organize, and deploy resources as a group, enabling infrastructure as code through templates and consistent resource management across your solutions.
8. What is Azure DevOps?
Why you might get asked this:
DevOps practices are crucial, and Azure DevOps is Microsoft's integrated platform.
How to answer:
Explain it as a suite of services for the entire DevOps lifecycle, including CI/CD, repositories, and project management.
Example answer:
Azure DevOps is a set of services for the DevOps lifecycle, providing tools for planning, collaboration, code management (Repos), automated builds and releases (Pipelines), testing (Test Plans), and artifact management (Artifacts).
9. What is Azure Active Directory?
Why you might get asked this:
Identity and access management (IAM) is critical for cloud security.
How to answer:
Define Azure AD as Microsoft's cloud-based identity and access management service used for managing users and application access.
Example answer:
Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is Microsoft's cloud-based identity and access management service. It provides identity authentication and authorization for internal resources and external SaaS applications, enhancing security and streamlining access.
10. What are Azure Availability Zones?
Why you might get asked this:
This question assesses your understanding of high availability and disaster recovery concepts in Azure.
How to answer:
Describe them as fault-isolated physical locations within an Azure region designed to protect applications and data from failures.
Example answer:
Azure Availability Zones are unique physical locations within an Azure region. Each zone has independent power, cooling, and networking. They are designed to protect applications and data from localized failures, ensuring high availability for critical workloads.
11. What is Azure App Service?
Why you might get asked this:
App Service is a key PaaS offering for hosting web applications.
How to answer:
Explain it as a fully managed platform for building, deploying, and scaling web apps, APIs, and mobile backends.
Example answer:
Azure App Service is a fully managed Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering for hosting web applications, REST APIs, and mobile back ends. It supports multiple programming languages and simplifies deployment, scaling, and management.
12. What is Azure Virtual Network?
Why you might get asked this:
Networking is foundational to connecting resources in the cloud.
How to answer:
Describe it as a private network in the cloud, enabling resources to communicate securely with each other and on-premises networks.
Example answer:
Azure Virtual Network is a service that provides a private, isolated network in the cloud. It allows Azure resources to communicate securely with each other, with the internet, and with on-premises networks via connections like VPN or ExpressRoute.
13. What is Azure Load Balancer?
Why you might get asked this:
Load balancing is essential for distributing traffic and ensuring application availability.
How to answer:
Define it as a service that distributes incoming network traffic across multiple instances of a service to improve performance and availability.
Example answer:
Azure Load Balancer distributes incoming traffic across multiple virtual machines or instances within a set. It operates at the network layer (Layer 4) and is used to provide high availability and improved performance for applications.
14. What is Azure Key Vault?
Why you might get asked this:
Securely managing secrets, keys, and certificates is a critical cloud security practice.
How to answer:
Explain it as a service for securely storing and managing cryptographic keys, secrets (like passwords), and SSL/TLS certificates.
Example answer:
Azure Key Vault is a cloud service for securely storing and managing secrets, cryptographic keys, and digital certificates. It helps developers store sensitive information centrally, reducing the risk of accidental exposure.
15. What is Azure Storage Account?
Why you might get asked this:
Understanding how storage is organized in Azure is fundamental.
How to answer:
Describe it as a container that groups sets of Azure Storage data services like Blobs, Files, Queues, and Tables.
Example answer:
An Azure Storage Account provides a unique namespace in Azure for your storage data. It's a central container that offers different data services, including Blob storage for objects, File storage for shared files, Queue storage for messaging, and Table storage for NoSQL data.
16. What is the difference between Azure SQL Database and SQL Server on Azure VM?
Why you might get asked this:
This question tests your understanding of PaaS vs. IaaS database offerings.
How to answer:
Highlight that SQL Database is a managed PaaS service where Azure handles patching/backups, while SQL Server on VM is IaaS where you manage the OS and SQL Server instance.
Example answer:
Azure SQL Database is a PaaS offering, a fully managed relational database service where Microsoft handles maintenance. SQL Server on Azure VM is an IaaS solution, where you run a full SQL Server instance on a VM and are responsible for its management, patching, and backups.
17. What is Azure Monitor?
Why you might get asked this:
Monitoring is vital for maintaining application health and performance in the cloud.
How to answer:
Explain it as a comprehensive service for collecting, analyzing, and acting on telemetry data from Azure and on-premises environments.
Example answer:
Azure Monitor is a unified solution for collecting, analyzing, and acting on telemetry from your cloud and on-premises environments. It helps you understand how your applications and resources are performing and proactively identify issues.
18. What is Azure Cosmos DB?
Why you might get asked this:
Cosmos DB is a key global-scale, multi-model database offering.
How to answer:
Describe it as a globally distributed, multi-model database service with low-latency and high availability guarantees.
Example answer:
Azure Cosmos DB is Microsoft's globally distributed, multi-model database service. It supports various data models (document, key-value, graph) and offers guaranteed low latency, high availability, and elastic scalability worldwide.
19. What is Azure Service Bus?
Why you might get asked this:
Messaging services are essential for asynchronous communication between applications.
How to answer:
Explain it as a reliable messaging service for connecting applications and services, enabling asynchronous communication.
Example answer:
Azure Service Bus is a fully managed enterprise message broker service. It's used for decoupling applications and services, facilitating reliable asynchronous communication and integration between disparate systems using queues and topics.
20. What is Azure Policy?
Why you might get asked this:
Policy enforcement is key for compliance, governance, and consistent resource deployment.
How to answer:
Define it as a service for creating, assigning, and managing policies to enforce organizational rules and compliance standards across Azure resources.
Example answer:
Azure Policy is a service that allows you to define and enforce standards and compliance requirements across your Azure resources. You can create policies to control properties of resources, like allowed locations or required tags.
21. What is Azure Functions vs. Azure Logic Apps?
Why you might get asked this:
This differentiates two serverless integration tools.
How to answer:
Explain that Functions is for running code triggered by events, while Logic Apps is for orchestrating workflows connecting various services using a visual designer.
Example answer:
Azure Functions is a serverless compute service focused on running code snippets triggered by events (code-first). Azure Logic Apps is a serverless workflow service for automating tasks and integrating services through a visual designer (configuration-first).
22. What is Azure CDN?
Why you might get asked this:
Content delivery networks are important for performance and availability of web content.
How to answer:
Describe it as a global network of servers that caches content closer to users to deliver web assets faster and improve performance.
Example answer:
Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a distributed network of servers that delivers web content to users based on their geographic location. It caches content at points of presence (PoPs) worldwide, reducing latency and speeding up content delivery.
23. What is Azure Data Lake?
Why you might get asked this:
Big data storage and analytics are common use cases in cloud environments.
How to answer:
Explain it as a scalable repository that holds large amounts of data in its native format, optimized for big data analytics workloads.
Example answer:
Azure Data Lake is a highly scalable and secure data lake solution for high-performance big data analytics. It can store data of any size, format, and speed, enabling analytics without needing to transform data first.
24. What is Azure Backup?
Why you might get asked this:
Backup and recovery are fundamental aspects of data protection.
How to answer:
Define it as a cloud-based service for backing up data, applications, and workloads running in Azure or on-premises.
Example answer:
Azure Backup is a cost-effective, scalable backup solution in the cloud. It protects your data in Azure, on-premises, and in other clouds, providing reliable recovery options and centralized management.
25. What is Azure Site Recovery?
Why you might get asked this:
Business continuity and disaster recovery are critical concerns for cloud deployments.
How to answer:
Describe it as a service that orchestrates disaster recovery by replicating workloads to Azure or a secondary site.
Example answer:
Azure Site Recovery is a disaster recovery service that orchestrates replication, failover, and recovery of workloads to keep business apps running during outages. It supports replicating Azure VMs, on-premises VMs, and physical servers.
26. What is the difference between Azure Table Storage and Cosmos DB Table API?
Why you might get asked this:
This differentiates two NoSQL table options with different capabilities.
How to answer:
Explain that Table Storage is a basic key-value store, while Cosmos DB Table API offers enhanced features like global distribution and guaranteed throughput.
Example answer:
Azure Table Storage is a simple, low-cost key-value NoSQL store with limited throughput and single-region scope. Cosmos DB Table API offers a superset of Table Storage features, providing global distribution, elastic scale, guaranteed throughput, and lower latency.
27. What is Azure Bastion?
Why you might get asked this:
Secure access to VMs is important, and Bastion provides a secure alternative to public IPs.
How to answer:
Define it as a fully managed service providing secure and seamless RDP/SSH access to VMs directly through the Azure portal without public IP exposure.
Example answer:
Azure Bastion is a service that provides secure RDP and SSH connectivity to virtual machines in your Azure virtual network directly through the Azure portal. It eliminates the need for public IP addresses on your VMs, enhancing security.
28. What is Azure Synapse Analytics?
Why you might get asked this:
This covers modern data warehousing and analytics platforms in Azure.
How to answer:
Describe it as an analytics service that brings together big data and data warehousing, enabling insights from data at scale.
Example answer:
Azure Synapse Analytics is a comprehensive analytics service that unifies enterprise data warehousing and big data analytics. It allows you to query data using SQL, Apache Spark, or KQL and provides insights from all your data sources.
29. What is Azure ExpressRoute?
Why you might get asked this:
Private connectivity to the cloud is important for hybrid scenarios and performance-sensitive workloads.
How to answer:
Explain it as a private, dedicated connection from on-premises infrastructure to Azure, offering higher bandwidth and lower latency than internet VPNs.
Example answer:
Azure ExpressRoute provides a dedicated, private network connection between your on-premises infrastructure and Microsoft cloud services, including Azure. It offers increased reliability, faster speeds, and lower latency compared to typical internet connections.
30. What is Azure Marketplace?
Why you might get asked this:
Understanding how to deploy pre-built solutions and third-party software in Azure is useful.
How to answer:
Define it as an online store where users can find, purchase, and deploy applications and services from Microsoft and its partners.
Example answer:
Azure Marketplace is an online store offering thousands of IT software applications and services built by partners and Microsoft. You can find virtual machine images, SaaS applications, developer services, and more to deploy directly into your Azure environment.
Other Tips to Prepare for a Azure Interview
Beyond practicing these common interview questions on Azure, effective preparation involves hands-on experience. "The best way to understand cloud concepts is to build something," advises a cloud architect. Set up a free Azure account and experiment with deploying different services mentioned in these Azure interview questions. Practice explaining technical concepts clearly and concisely. Consider architectural diagrams for visual explanations. Research the company you're applying to and tailor your answers to their specific use cases of Azure services. Utilize resources like Microsoft Learn for certifications. For targeted practice answering interview questions on Azure, leverage tools like Verve AI Interview Copilot (https://vervecopilot.com). This AI-powered tool can simulate interviews and provide feedback on your responses to interview questions on Azure, helping you refine your delivery. "Practice makes perfect, especially with technical questions," notes a hiring manager. Make Verve AI Interview Copilot a part of your preparation strategy to confidently tackle those challenging interview questions on Azure.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1: How important is hands-on experience for Azure interview questions? A1: Very. Practical experience validates your knowledge and helps you provide specific examples when answering interview questions on Azure.
Q2: Should I get Azure certified? A2: Yes, certifications like Azure Fundamentals or Azure Administrator demonstrate a verified level of knowledge and are valuable for interviews.
Q3: How should I structure answers to technical interview questions on Azure? A3: Start with a clear definition, explain its purpose/use case, and ideally, give a brief example from your experience.
Q4: What if I don't know the answer to an Azure question? A4: Be honest. State you don't know but explain how you would find the answer or relate it to something similar you do know.
Q5: Are there common mistakes when answering Azure interview questions? A5: Giving overly technical jargon without context, not relating answers to business value, or not showcasing problem-solving skills.
