Azure Developer Questions and Answers
Azure Developer Questions and Answers
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Release History
• Initial Release 1.0.0 - 5th Sep 2019
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About Dot Net Tricks
Dot Net Tricks is founded by Shailendra Chauhan (Microsoft MVP), on Jan 2010. Dot Net Tricks came into existence
in the form of a blog post over various technologies including .NET, C#, SQL Server, ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC,
JavaScript, Angular, Node.js and Visual Studio, etc.
The company which is currently registered by a name of Dot Net Tricks Innovation Pvt. Ltd. came into the shape
in 2015. Dot Net Tricks website has an average footfall on the tune of 300k+ per month. The site has become a
cornerstone when it comes to getting skilled-up on .NET technologies and we want to gain the same level of trust
in other technologies. This is what we are striving for.
We have a very large number of trainees who have received training from our platforms and immediately got
placement in some of the reputed firms testifying our claims of providing quality training. The website offers you
a variety of free study material in the form of articles.
• .NET Development
• Front-end Development
• Cloud
• DevOps
• Programming Languages
• Database - SQL and NoSQL
• Mobile Development
• ML/AI and many more...
Each Pro member will get access to our full-featured learning platform with advanced tools, which is required to
learn new skills and advance his/her career.
Start your journey today to learn coding. Because learning to code is the first step and forward to advance your
career. The detail about Dot Net Tricks Pro can be found here: https://www.dotnettricks.com/pro-membership
For a beginner who needs regular guidance, we have a fully packed Master Courses. They are almost equal to
semester courses taught in engineering colleges when it comes to length, breadth of content delivery, the only
difference instead of 5-6 months, they take approx. 6 weeks of live classes.
Corporate Training
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Dot Net Tricks having a pool of mentors who help the corporate to enhance their employment skills as per
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changing the technology landscape. Dot Net Tricks offers customized training programs for new hires and
experienced employees through online and classroom mode. As a trusted and resourceful training partner, Dot
Net Tricks helps the corporate to achieve success with its industry-leading instructional design and customer
training initiatives.
Apart from these, we also provide on-demand boot camps and personalized project consultation.
• .NET Development
• Front-end Development
• Cloud
• DevOps
• Programming Languages
• Database - SQL and NoSQL
• Mobile Development
• ML/AI and many more….
Technical Recruiting
We provide full technical staffing service which suits our client needs. Our technical recruiters search across the
world to find highly skilled professionals that will fit our clients need. If you are looking for a job change, do share
your resume at [email protected]. Dot Net Tricks will help you to find your dream job in MNCs.
Join us today, learn to code, prepare yourself for interviews, and get hired!
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Dedication
This book is dedicated to my mentor Tushar Singhal who taught me programming with ease and made
me a programmer. I would like to say thanks to all my family members, friends, students or followers of
my articles at www.dotnettricks.com to encourage me to write this book.
-Shailendra Chauhan
My friends and Mentors deserve to have their name on the cover as much as I do for all their support
made this possible. I would like to say thanks to all my family members, friends, to you and to readers or
followers of my articles to encourage me to write this book.
-Jean Paul
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Introduction
Are you preparing yourself for Azure Developer interview? you are at right place. In this book, you will get the
most asked interview questions with their answers. This book will tell you exactly what you’ll be asked, and how
to answer them. So, get ready to crack your Azure Developer interview.
Shailendra Chauhan is a technical consultant, corporate trainer and Microsoft MVP having more than 10 years. Of
development. He provides training and consultation over an array of technologies like Cloud, .NET, Angular, React,
Node and Mobile Apps development.
Jean Paul is .NET and Cloud Architect working on Microsoft Technologies for the past 12 years. He is very much
passionate about programming and his core skills are Azure, SharePoint, ASP.NET MVC & C#.
This book is best suited for beginners and professionals. It is intended for anyone who is looking to make a career
in Azure as a Developer. This book covers the mainly following topics along with their case studies.
• Cloud Computing
• Microsoft Azure Cloud Platform
• Azure Virtual Machines
• Azure Storage Services
• Azure App Services
• Azure API Management
• Azure SQL Azure
• Azure Cosmos DB
• Azure Search and Redis Cache
• Azure Active Directory
• Azure Backup and Insights
• Cloud Design Patterns
This book is not only for interview preparation, but it also helps you to prepare yourself for AZ-203: Microsoft
Azure Developer Associate Certification exam. This book helps you to get an in-depth knowledge of Azure
development concepts with a simple and elegant way.
He has changed many lives from his writings and unique training programs. He
has a number of most sought-after books to his name which have helped job
aspirants in cracking tough interviews with ease.
Moreover, and to his credit, he has delivered 1000+ training sessions to professionals worldwide in Microsoft
.NET technologies and other technologies including JavaScript, AngularJS, Node.js, React and NoSQL Databases.
In addition, he provides Instructor-led online training, hands-on workshop and corporate training programs.
Shailendra has a strong combination of technical skills and solution development for complex application
architecture with proven leadership and motivational skills have elevated him to a world-renowned status,
placing him at the top of the list of most sought-after trainers.
“I always keep up with new technologies and learning new skills to deliver the best to my students,” says
Shailendra Chauhan, he goes on to acknowledge that the betterment of his followers and enabling his students to
realize their goals are his prime objective and a great source of motivation and satisfaction.
Shailendra Chauhan - “Follow me and you too will have the key that opens the door to success”
In the academic side, he holds a BS in Computer Science & MBA. In the certification
side he holds MCPD & MCTS spanning from .Net Fundamentals to SQL Server. He had
been honored with Microsoft MVP award 4 years consecutively.
Being a passionate programmer & technical writer, he had written more than 5 books targeting SharePoint &
Design Patterns. Most of the free time he will be doing technical activities like researching solutions, writing
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articles, resolving forum problems etc. He believes quality & satisfaction goes hand in hand. You can find some of
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• [email protected]
• [email protected]
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You can follow us on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus or subscribe to RSS feed.
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Table of Contents
Azure Developer Interview Questions and Answers ...................................................... 1
Release History ...................................................................................................................................................1
About Dot Net Tricks ..........................................................................................................................................2
Dot Net Tricks Courses .......................................................................................................................................2
Dot Net Tricks Pro...............................................................................................................................................2
Dot Net Tricks Live Training ................................................................................................................................3
Dot Net Tricks eBooks ........................................................................................................................................4
Technical Recruiting ...........................................................................................................................................4
Dedication...........................................................................................................................................................5
Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................6
About the Authors ..............................................................................................................................................7
How to Contact Us ..............................................................................................................................................8
spanning to other regions. Which Plan of API Management Service would you recommend? ......................... 50
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Azure SQL Azure ............................................................................................................ 51
Q1. What is SQL Azure?.................................................................................................................................. 51
Q2. What are Azure SQL Database Models? .................................................................................................. 51
Q3. How security is ensured in SQL Azure? ................................................................................................... 52
Q4. What are the different service tiers available for the single database? ................................................. 52
Q5. What is the size limit for each service tier in a single database? ............................................................ 52
Q6. What tiers elastic database pools support? ............................................................................................ 52
Q7. What is DTU? ........................................................................................................................................... 52
Q8. How to choose between DTU and vCore?............................................................................................... 52
Q9. What are the tools used to work with SQL Azure? ................................................................................. 53
Q10. How do you Backup an SQL Azure database? ......................................................................................... 53
Q11. How to migrate your on-premise or local database to SQL Azure? ........................................................ 53
Q12. How data is protected in SQL Azure? ...................................................................................................... 53
Q13. How to scale SQL Azure database? ......................................................................................................... 53
Q14. Can you switch a database from vCore-based purchasing model to a DTU-based purchasing model? . 54
Q15. What is Federation in SQL Azure? ........................................................................................................... 54
Q16. What is Azure Data Lake? ........................................................................................................................ 54
Q17. What is Azure HDInsight? ........................................................................................................................ 54
Q18. What are the Advantages of Data Lake Store? ....................................................................................... 54
Q19. What is the Difference between Data Warehouse & Data Lake Store?.................................................. 55
Q20. Case Study: A Logistics company with 10 Data Centers worldwide approached you on Upgrading their
System, Increase the Performance & Reduce Operations Costs. What is your Solution Approach? ................. 55
References ..................................................................................................................... 70
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Cloud Computing
Q1. What is Cloud Computing?
Ans. Cloud computing is a way to deliver computing as a service rather than a product. It is completely based
on the Internet. Cloud computing provides on-demand hardware (like Server), storage, application hosting and
other services. In this way, it reduces the need for having your local servers or personal devices to configure and
manage your services and applications.
1. Scalability and Elasticity - Scalability allows you to handle the increasing workload by increasing the
number of resources or its capacity-on-demand or based upon the usage of the resources.
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Elasticity allows you to use or free, a resource capacity dynamically. It is measured based upon the speed
as the resources are requested on-demand and the usage of the resources.
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2. Maintenance - Maintenance of a cloud computing application is easier, as it does not require to be
installed on each user’s machine. Also, the applications which are deployed or running on the cloud, you
don’t need to install on each system. Everyone can access it using the internet.
3. Reliability - Your deployed application or database multiple copies are maintained by the cloud vendors,
which makes well-designed cloud computing suitable for business continuity and disaster recovery.
4. Cost - Cloud vendors always charge only for the usages and used storage. If a resource is not in use, you
don’t need to pay extra cost for any unused resource.
5. Security – All the created resources are secured by each cloud vendors. Even they are certified from
various certification authorities which ensure your privacy and data security.
The end-user uses the services provided by the cloud. The business management user takes care of the data and
the services provided by the cloud. The cloud service provider is responsible for the maintenance of the IT assets
of the cloud.
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Q6. Who are the main Cloud vendors or providers in the market?
Ans. Amazon Cloud Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), VMWare, IBM Cloud,
Alibaba etc. are the major Cloud vendors in the market which are providing the
Q7. What are the reasons you should choose Azure instead of AWS?
Ans. There are the following reasons you should choose Azure over AWS:
• Azure is growing faster than AWS from last 4 years 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019.
• Azure provides more integrated support for .Net related applications.
• Azure provides a better ROI to existing Microsoft clients.
• Azure aligns with Microsoft .Net technologies, open sources and other widely used technologies.
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Introducing Microsoft Azure
Q1. What is Microsoft Azure?
Ans. Microsoft Azure is an open and flexible cloud platform that serves as the development, data storing,
service hosting and service management environment. Microsoft Azure provides developers with on-demand
compute and storage to host, scale, and manage web applications on the internet through Microsoft data centers.
Microsoft Azure helps you to build and manage enterprise-level web, mobile, IoT apps faster using your existing
skills and technologies you know.
Note: Private Cloud is required in case the Customer needs to ensure that the sensitive data is not going outside
their infrastructure boundaries.
1. IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) - IaaS is an infrastructure provided by the cloud service vendor to create,
run and manage VMs that run on the vendor’s infrastructure. Depending on the vendor, you can create a
VM running Windows or Ubuntu or Linux and install anything you want on it. In IaaS, you don’t have
control over the hardware or virtualization software, but you have control over the creation, running and
management of VMs. So unlike PaaS, you are completely responsible for it.
For Example, Microsoft Azure provides the ability to set up virtual networks, load balancers, storage and
many other services that run on its infrastructure.
2. PaaS (Platform as a Service) - PaaS is a platform provided by the cloud service vendor, where you can
deploy your existing application. This makes the developers free from the infrastructure management
and allows them to focus on development rather than environment.
For Example, Web Apps and Cloud Services offered by Microsoft Azure can be used to deploy your app
without knowing the nuts and bolts of hosting environment.
3. SaaS (Software as a Service) - SaaS is software that is centrally hosted and managed for the end customer.
So that all customers can access it. Even, it can be scaled out from one instance to multiple instances to
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provide the best performance in all locations. SaaS is usually provided by a monthly or annual subscription.
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For Example, Microsoft Office 365, Dropbox, WordPress and Amazon Kindle etc.
Q5. What are Microsoft Azure role-based certification exams or paths?
Ans. Microsoft announced new roles based Azure certification paths for Administrators, Developers, Solutions
Architects and DevOps Engineer who are working with Microsoft Azure Cloud platform. These new certification
paths have been introduced based on technical roles and working, rather than covering the broad range of
Microsoft Azure features and services to each of them.
The new role-based certifications will help you to be aligned with your technical role and skills. Earn a role-based
Azure certification and make a bright career in Microsoft Azure as a Developer, Administrator, Solutions Architect
or DevOps Engineer.
• Azure Portal
• PowerShell
• Azure CLI
All these three options use REST API endpoints to communicate with the Azure Resource Manager to manage
(create, update and delete) the resources.
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Image Source: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/cloud-adoption/governance/resource-
consistency/azure-resource-access
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Azure Virtual Machine
Q1. What is Azure Virtual Machine?
Ans. Azure Virtual Machines are on-demand computing resources or virtual machines offering of Microsoft
Azure. We can typically use a VM as a service when required and shut down the system when not in use. The
Azure Virtual Machines are listed under Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) category in Azure.
With Azure Virtual Machines we get more control over the environment to customize the development
environment or hosting. In fact, the concept behind the Azure Virtual Machine is the same that runs the entire
cloud platform – Virtualization.
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Q3. Explain Azure VM architecture?
Ans. An Azure VM architecture contains the following components:
• Resource Group – A resource group a logical container for all related resources based on the lifetime of
resources. This also helps to provide access to users for a particular set of resources attached to the same
resource group.
• Virtual machine - This can be created in Azure by the portal, PowerShell or Azure CLI from the list of
published images or by a custom image VHD file uploaded into Azure Blob.
• Temporary disk -The VM also has a temporary disk stored on a physical drive on the host machine. It is
not persisted during reboot events.
• Virtual network – VMs can be deployed in a separate Virtual network (VNet) that can be divided into
multiple subnets to support different layers of application architecture. Each Subnet should be associated
with different Network Security Group (NSG) with defined inbound and outbound rules which takes care
of allowing or denying web traffic.
• Network Interface – The Network Interface (NIC) allows the VM to be configured for the Virtual Network.
• Public IP – A public IP address is by default added with a VM. This is used to communicate with VM from
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1. General purpose – Sizes: Av2, B, Dv2, Dv3, DSv2, Dsv3 These sizes of Azure VMs are generally used for small
or medium traffic web servers and can be used as a development or test environment. It has a balanced CPU
to memory ratio.
2. Compute optimized - Sizes: F, Fs, FSv2 This category is optimized for running heavy background workloads.
This size group is suitable for medium traffic web server and has high CPU to memory ratio.
3. Memory Optimized – Sizes: Ev3, ESv3, G, M, GS These VMs have High memory to CPU ratio and
recommended for relational databases and in memory analytics.
4. Storage Optimized – Size: Ls This VM category is suitable for large databases like No SQL and Big Data
storage. It has high throughput and IO operations.
5. GPU optimized -Sizes: NV, NC, NCv2, NCv3 GPU optimized VM sizes are specialized virtual machines available
for high-density graphical rendering work or video editing. These sizes are designed for compute-intensive,
graphics-intensive, and visualization workloads.
6. High Performance – Size H This is the highest power category VM with the highest throughput and network
interfaces.
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By default, Azure deploys the virtual machines in an availability set in 3 Fault domains and 5 update domains. We
can configure it to use up to 20 update domains. It is recommended to have different availability sets for web
servers and API servers.
• Step2: Create VM using as, basic nsg with RDP, http ports and without public IP
• Step5: Add Inbound NAT rules in Load Balancer for VM’s RDP connection
You need to define load balancer rules for specific ports and protocols that are mapped to your VMs to control
the flow of traffic.
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Q12. What is Azure Traffic Manager?
Ans. Azure Traffic Manager is a DNS based Load Balancer which distributes the traffic to different servers
across the globe to provide high availability and responsiveness.
Azure Traffic Manager also optimizes the performance by checking the health of the servers & distributing the
load to the closest server or low traffic server.
Note: Traffic manager profile & endpoints need to be configured to use this feature.
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Your applications and data across Availability Zones get replicated by Zone-redundant services, to protect them
from a single point of failure. Because of this particular feature, Azure boasts of industry best 99.99% uptime for
VMs that have two or more instances deployed across two or more Availability Zones in the same Azure region.
(There is no additional price for VMs launched in Availability Zone).
• Central US
• France Central
• East US 2
• West Europe
• Southeast Asia
• Linux VMs
• Windows VMs
• VM Scale Sets
• Managed Disks
• Load Balancer
• Public IPs
• Zone-redundant storage
• SQL DB
• Event Hubs
• Service Bus
• VPN Gateway
• ExpressRoute
For Scale-out operation of VM, we can add another similar configuration VM instance and add a load balancer to
distribute the incoming HTTP requests. This kind of scaling is well supported with Virtual machine Scale Sets.
For Scale-In, VM instances are removed. It is easy to manage VMs with Scale sets as VMs can be created on-
demand or scheduled time from a central configuration. A load balancer will automatically be created and
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integrated. This also takes care of deploying multiple VMs across Availability sets.
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Q17. What is vertical scaling in VMs?
Ans. In vertical scaling, the size of the VM is changed. Scale-up for VMs is to upgrade the size of VM to a higher
level. This will require a reboot of the system and that will have an outage. Similarly, scale down of VM instance
is to downgrade the size of VM.
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1. Go to the Public IP resource in Azure Portal and click on the Configuration section.
2. Provide the DNS name and browse the link on the browser. It displays the deployed application.
3. Now, we can add a custom domain to this VM by following the next steps.
4. Go to the DNS Provider website and enter the DNS records section.
5. Add an entry of type CNAME with values as obtained at step 2.
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6. The web application deployed on Azure VM is now available on the custom domain.
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Azure Storage Services
Q1. What is Azure Storage?
Ans. Azure Storage is Microsoft’s storage solution for data persistence scenarios. Azure Storage offers highly
durable, available and scalable as compared to traditional data storage solution.
In Azure storage, you have to pay only for what you use and it is exposed via easy and open REST APIs. It’s
having support for rich Client Libraries and Tools.
• Blobs - Used for storing massive amounts of unstructured and large data.
• Queues - Used for storing messages used for communication between application components.
• Files - Used for storing files and sharing it among the VMs as shared disk storage.
• Disks - Used for creating virtual machine disks for high I/O and random read-write operations.
• Tables - Used for storing structured data in NoSQL format. Suitable for small size database.
Ans. Storage Account is a Unique Namespace which contains all the Azure Storage Objects like a blob, files,
queues, tables, disks etc.
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Each storage service within the account has a unique address for accessibility.
Example: http://mystorageaccount.blob.core.windows.net/
You can create Storage Account using the Azure Portal as shown below.
General-purpose v2 account: It supports the latest Azure Storage features and includes all of the functionality of
general-purpose v1 and Blob storage accounts. It delivers the lowest prices for Azure Storage per gigabyte (GB).
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General-purpose v1 account: It provides access to all Azure Storage services, but does not have the latest
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• Blob Storage allows storing Massive amounts of unstructured data such as text or Binary. It is ideal for
storing images, files, streaming video & audios.
• It is also used as CDN, backup storage etc.
• Blob can be accessed through HTTP or HTTPS and SDKs.
• Azure also provides Premium Blob Storage allowing storing in Hot, Cool & Archive storage based on the
frequency of accessibility.
• Queue Storage allows storing of a large number of messages. Queues are helpful in building decoupled
application components which require asynchronous communication.
• Queue supports each message up to 64KB in size with a maximum of 200TB storage. The queue can be
accessed through HTTP or HTTPS and SDKs.
• File Storage allows fully managed File Shares in the Cloud for data sharing among the VMs or machines.
• The Files can be accessed with REST and Server Message Block (SMB) protocols.
• File storage can be upto 1TB in size.
• Storage Queue is part of Azure Storage infrastructure, Service Bus Queue is part of Azure Service Fabric
infrastructure.
• Storage Queue provides simple REST get/put/peek interface. Service Bus Queue provides advanced
Publish/Subscribe interfaces.
• Storage Queue can support more than 80GB queue size. Service Bus Queue have limitation of 80GB.
• Storage Queue does not guarantee FIFO order, but Service Bus Queue follow it.
• Storage Queue does not allow batches processing over messages. Service Bus Queue supports it.
o Protect data against zone failures (e.g. fire burning down a facility)
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Q15. How can you store sensitive data like connection strings & passwords in
Azure?
Ans. Azure Key Vault Storage is best suitable for storing Sensitive Data. Key Vault provides Encryption of
Sensitive Data using HSM (Hardware Security Module) physical devices.
A developer can have Separate Keys for Staging & Production slots of the application thereby Securing the
Sensitive Keys.
You can create Key Vault using Azure Portal > All Resources > Key Vault
Q16. Case Study: You are working on an application which requires storage
of magazine PDF Files. What storage type would you recommend?
Ans. Azure Blob Storage would be useful for this scenario.
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Q17. Case Study: You are working on Decoupling a Backend from the UI. The
purpose is to Individually Upgraded Backend without losing UI
Requests. What is the recommended Azure approach?
Ans. Azure Storage Queue can be used to store the UI requests. In this way, the Synchronous communication
can be converted to Asynchronous.
All UI requests will be stored in the Queue while the Backend is upgrading. Once the Backend is ready it will
Peek the Queue and Process the Requests.
Q18. Case Study: You are working on an Application which restricts special
characters in a Filename. The characters can be changed by support
Team and should not be hard-coded in the application. What would be
the recommended solution?
Ans. Azure Key Vault would be the recommended solution.
Create a Configuration Property & Load the Value from the Azure Key Vault. This enables us to change the
values without hard-coding into the application.
Q19. Case Study: You are working on Migrating an SQL Server Database of
100TB to SQL Azure. Online Data Transfer induces High Charges &
Time. What is the Optimal Approach for this?
Ans. Azure Import/Export Service is the best option which allows Disk Shipping of On-premise data. The SSD
Drives can be collected from Microsoft, Copy the Data through USB & Ship the Disks back to Microsoft.
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Azure App Services
Q1. What are Azure App Services?
Ans. Azure App Services is the part of PaaS offering from Microsoft Azure. These are used to Quickly build,
deploy, and scale enterprise-grade web, mobile, and API apps running on any platform. Behind the scenes VMs
are used but they are abstracted.
These support manual scaling and auto-scaling. It having support for Java, Node.js, PHP, Python, .NET and Ruby.
Q2. What are the different types of applications provided by App Services in
Azure?
Ans. Azure App Service supports the following types of applications.
• Web Apps
• Mobile Apps
• API Apps
• Logic Apps
Q3. What are the different ways to host web sites in Azure?
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Ans. Azure supports multiple ways to Host like App Service (PaaS), Virtual Machine (IaaS) and Service Fabric.
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• App Service is the best option for Most of the web sites. It allows quick deployment, scalability,
management & also cost-effective.
• A Virtual Machine is an option if your existing Web Sites requires Custom Configurations in IIS Level,
Cannot Fit into App Service etc.
• Service Fabric is an option if you are writing a Microservice application which requires Massive Scaling,
Stateful Services etc.
• In horizontal scaling, identical VMs of the desired size will be created or removed as per your need
• Autoscaling is supported by standard and premium based on matrices (response time, memory, cpu,
data uses etc.)
For example, automatically finding negative tweets about your company and sending notifications to a Slack
channel. In this way, Logic apps are used to automate business processes and workflow.
A logic app can be created using twitter connector to find the tweets containing hashtag #dnt and can be informed
about this one to the desired person as given below:
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Q12. What is Web Job?
Ans. A web job simplifies the background tasks. It is used to run a block of code on a schedule, manually or
from a trigger like Timer trigger, Queue trigger. It always runs inside an App service plan.
You should use Web Jobs if you want to share code or settings between the Web Job and your web app.
Basically, we can think of it to be a cab aggregator or even food delivery startups which provide us with a platform
to book a cab or order food but the actual service will be provided by a third-party vendor. On a similar note, we
put our logic on a serverless computing module which can connect to different third-party services to do the job.
Q15. What are the Advantages of Hosting in Functions vs. App Service
Hosting?
Ans. Azure Functions under Consumption Plan will only Charge for the Usage Time with Automatic Scaling to
meet demand.
Hence Functions Costs less than App Service if properly chosen for Occasionally used scenarios.
To resolve this issue, we moved on to segregate the modules into different services and with this, we also get the
facility of using different technology stack for different microservice and we can deploy each of the microservice
independently.
Now the number of microservices increased and the challenge came to host different instances of microservice
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up in multiple servers in order to keep the application running. Serverless computing helps us mitigate such issues
by using Azure Functions as we have only functions that take care of different modules interact with third-party
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services like cognitive services or Sigle sign-on services, Graph and chart image services etc.
Q21. What Pricing model Azure Function support?
Ans. Azure Functions can be hosted with two different kinds of pricing
• Consumption plan - It provides all necessary resources to the function app dynamically and will charge
only when the function runs.
• App Service plan - If there is already an app service plan you are using for other app services like Web
app, API app etc., the same hosting plan can be used here with no extra cost and will be charged only for
the number of times the function app executes.
• Lack of Troubleshooting ways - It’s difficult to identify an issue in production since there is no way to
debug a function. Azure provides app insights feature by default with Azure function to help analyze the
logs.
• Third-Party API Trust - Since Serverless computing heavily relies on third-party services and we need to
trust the response and security of these services.
• Vendor Locking - Outbound requests may also be expected to return quickly which can further be
processed. Any lock state in third party services will cause delay and unexpected behaviour.
• Over Complex Architecture - Too many functions in an application may also result in a very complex
architecture which will be difficult to manage.
• Latency - Initial booting time and latency over network caused because of hoping from one function to
other increases latencies and may impact the SLAs.
Q26. Case Study: You are working on a Mobile App for Android & iOS which
requires Data to be stored locally in the Mobile whenever the User is
working remote location without an internet connection. What are the
recommended solutions in Azure?
Ans. Azure Mobile App Service along with Xamarin would be the recommended approach.
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Azure API Management
Q1. What is API Management Service?
Ans. Azure API Management Service allows Developers to Host, Publish & Monetize APIs. It provides a
Secured, Scalable, Broadcasting service for the APIs.
You can create API Management Service through Azure Portal > All Services > API Management.
Q2. What are the Different Plans available for API Management?
Ans. The current plans available are Developer, Basic, Standard, Premium & Consumption. Developer Tier is
only for Development & Testing. The other plans are for Production usage.
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Q3. What is API Gateway?
Ans. API Gateway acts as a Reverse Proxy between the Client and API Services. API Gateway is an
Architecture Pattern which decouples the client and services, provides a single endpoint to the client, monitor
new service endpoints etc.
API Gateway also performs cross-cutting tasks like authentication, SSL termination, rate limiting, IP whitelisting,
firewall enforcement, response compression, response caching etc.
API Management Service with Standard Plan is required to support the 1GB Caching requirement. It also
supports Single Region of East US.
In future, the Plan can be upgraded to Premium when the Caching expansion Or New Region support needed.
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Azure SQL Azure
Q1. What is SQL Azure?
Ans. SQL Azure is Cloud-hosting of Microsoft SQL Server with some limitations in features. SQL Azure offers
advantages like Quick Provisioning, Automatic Scalability, High Availability etc.
• Standalone Database - An isolated and self-contained database service that has database scoped
functionalities. It is designed for modern cloud-based applications, software-as-a-service solutions, and
microservices that use singe database to store data.
• Managed Instance - A full SQL Server Instance with instance-level functionalities (SQL Agent, Broker, .NET
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hosting). Designed for easy migration of most of the on-premises databases to Azure cloud.
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Q3. How security is ensured in SQL Azure?
Ans. Data in Transit is protected through SSL & Firewall.
Q4. What are the different service tiers available for the single database?
Ans. SQL Azure provides the following 3 Service Tiers:
• Basic
• Standard
• Premium
Service Tier determines the Uptime SLA, Database Size Limit, Disaster Recovery & Performance factors. Higher
the Tier, Higher the Performance is.
Q5. What is the size limit for each service tier in a single database?
Ans. Basic Tier has a Limitation of 2GB.
• Basic
• Standard
• Premium
• You can migrate between DTU-based and vCore-based model though portal online.
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Q9. What are the tools used to work with SQL Azure?
Ans. Azure Resource Manager Tool for Creation & Configuration.
SQL Azure MW Tool for Migrating databases from On-Premise to AQL Azure.
We can manually Restore data using the Azure Portal. We can automated Restore data using PowerShell Script
or Database Copy command.
• Allows you to move your schema, data, and uncontained objects from your source server to your target
server.
• Discover issues that can affect an upgrade to on-premises SQL Server like breaking changes, behaviour
changes and deprecated features
Basic, Standard & Premium databases are protected from accidental data corruption, deletion & disaster
Note: YARN expansion is Yet Another Resource Negotiator. HDFC expansion is Hadoop Distributed File System
HDInsight saves the cost of hardware & expensive software setting up process.
Once the Migration costs are break-even over a few months, the Operations Costs will also reduce drastically.
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Azure Cosmos DB
Q1. What is Azure Cosmos DB?
Ans. Azure Cosmos DB is a Planet-scale, Globally Distributed Database provided by Azure. It is Schema-
agnostic and hence considered a NoSQL database.
Cosmos DB supports a wide range of APIs including SQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, Graph, Table etc.
Cosmos DB is used in Social Media applications as it offers Non-structured data storage allowing Social Graphs to
be created from User-generated data, Elastic Scalability which allows easier scaling.
Cosmos DB is also highly used in Schema-Variant Apps where each New Version can be released without
worrying about schema changes.
Cosmos database engine is capable of efficiently translating and projecting the data models onto the ARS based
data model.
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Natively accessible from dynamically typed programming languages and can be exposed as-is using JSON or
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other similar representations. Natively supporting popular database APIs for data access & query.
Image Source: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/a-technical-overview-of-azure-cosmos-db/
Q10. Case Study: There is a multiplayer game and it needs 1-millisecond fast
storage & easy scaling up during weekends. The administrator needs
reporting for the new player registration, active status, played games
and data transformation etc. What will be your database design
approach for this game?
Ans. Here a Hybrid Approach is recommended:
• Cosmos DB provides better speed & easier scalability than SQL Azure. Hence Cosmos DB can be used to
accomplish the first requirement
• SQL Azure can be used for storing the new player registrations & status management. Here a fixed
schema can be used, transformations can be applied & SSRS reports will be viewed
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Azure Search and Redis
Cache
Q1. What is Azure Search?
Ans. Azure Search is a Search-as-a-Solution hosted & managed by Azure. Azure Search allows Developers to
build Search Experience over multiple sources of contents in web, mobile & enterprise applications queryable
with a REST API interface.
Azure Search itself takes care of Index creation, Service availability, Scaling and Service updates.
• Admin keys - Grant full rights to all operations. This includes managing the service, creating and deleting
indexes, and data sources
• Query keys - Grant read-only access to indexes and documents, and should be used by applications that
issue search requests
Q9. What are Tiers available for Azure Cache for Redis?
Ans. Basic, Standard & Premium tiers are available for Azure Cache.
• Azure Cache for Redis can be configured to run every midnight after the SQL Job completion. In this way,
the Cache Creation process is required to run only once a day.
• Premium Plan is required to support the 5GB database size.
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Azure Active Directory
Q1. What is Azure Active Directory?
Ans. Azure Active Directory (AAD) is a Cloud-based Identity and Access Management System provided by
Microsoft Azure.
AAD provides Access Control to Apps and Resources, Allows Single-Sign-On (SSO) to the Apps, Provides Libraries
to integrate token-based client applications.
ADAL provides different editions for supporting languages like C#, JavaScript, Angular Python etc.
Q3. What is the difference between Windows Server AD and Azure AD?
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Ans. There are the following differences between Windows Server AD and Azure AD:
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• AD is a poor choice for multi-platform environments.
• AD has issues controlling Linux-based user accounts.
• AD struggles significantly when connecting to cloud-based servers and applications.
• Azure AD maintains central directory service for its cloud servers and applications such as Office 365.
• Azure AD has Multi-factor authentication.
• Azure AD is easy to scale for Internet-based application.
Q4. What are the Steps to Register an Angular App with ADAL?
Ans. Following are the steps:
Q6. What are the Developer Tools to work with ADAL & Tokens?
Ans. Swagger is one popular web tool which generates the API Endpoint documentation, validation and
Allows invoking it.
Postman is another popular desktop tool for Testing the APIs using Tokens.
1. Free
2. Basic
3. Premium P1
4. Premium P2
• WS Federation
• SAML-P 2.0
• OAuth 2.0
• OpenID Connect
Q10. Case Study: You are working on a Campus Automation project with 1
Million Users. The requirement is to have Single-Sign-On, Multi-Factor
Authentication, Self-service Password Reset, Self-service Group etc.
Which Edition would you recommend?
Ans. Azure Free edition only supports up to 500000 users. Hence Basic Edition is required at a minimum.
Single-Sign-On is supported by all editions. But, Multi-Factor Authentication, Self-Service Password Reset, Self-
service Group features requires Azure Active Directory P1 edition.
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Azure Backup and Insights
Q1. How to take Backup & Restore data in Azure?
Ans. Azure provides a service named Azure Backup for the purpose of Backup & Restore of Data, VM etc.
Azure Backup is an alternative for On-Premise backup solutions.
• Backup Agent
• Backup Server
• Multiple Data Center Regions and Geo-Replication ensure that our data is protected in case of Outage
in a particular region.
• Azure Site Recovery provides Simple Replication of VMs between regions.
• Azure Traffic Manager automatically redirects traffic whenever a single region failure occurs.
• Automatic Data Replication is performed on SQL Azure & Storage
information on Request, Response Time, Failures, Exceptions, User Count, Diagnostics, Performance Counters
etc.
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Q6. How is Application Insights enabled?
Ans. It is first enabled in the Azure Portal. Then an Instrumentation Package is installed to the Application
which will send Telemetry data for Monitoring.
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Cloud Design Patterns
Q1. What are Cloud Design Patterns?
Ans. Cloud Design Patterns are design solutions that address the common problems associated with Cloud-
based systems.
Q3. What is the difference between Retry & Circuit Breaker pattern?
Ans. Retry pattern repeats the request after a small delay. Applicable for temporary failure scenarios.
Example, retry after 3 seconds, then 3 seconds and so.
Circuit Breaker pattern repeats the request after a variable amount of delay. Applicable for unusual failure
scenarios. Example, retry after 3 seconds, 30 seconds and so.
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References
This book has been written by referring to the following sites:
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