Section 1: Azure Basics
1. What is Microsoft Azure?
Answer: A cloud computing platform offering services like virtual machines, databases, AI, and storage.
2. What are the main cloud computing models?
Answer:
o IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service): Provides virtualized infrastructure.
o PaaS (Platform as a Service): Provides a development platform.
o SaaS (Software as a Service): Delivers software applications over the internet.
3. What are Azure Regions and Availability Zones?
Answer:
o Regions: Physical locations where Azure data centers are located.
o Availability Zones: Isolated locations within a region to ensure high availability.
4. What are the benefits of cloud computing?
Answer:
o Cost-efficiency
o Scalability
o Security
o Disaster recovery
Section 2: Core Azure Services
5. What is an Azure Virtual Machine (VM)?
Answer: A scalable, on-demand computing resource.
6. What is Azure App Service?
Answer: A PaaS offering to host web apps, RESTful APIs, and mobile backends.
7. What is Azure Blob Storage?
Answer: Object storage for unstructured data such as images and videos.
8. What is Azure SQL Database?
Answer: A managed relational database service.
Section 3: Azure Management and Governance
9. What is Azure Resource Manager (ARM)?
Answer: A management layer for deploying and managing Azure resources.
10. What are Resource Groups in Azure?
Answer: Containers to manage and organize Azure resources.
11. What is Azure Policy?
Answer: A governance tool to enforce rules and compliance on Azure resources.
12. What is Azure Cost Management?
Answer: A tool for analyzing and managing Azure costs and resource usage.
Section 4: Azure Networking
13. What is a Virtual Network (VNet)?
Answer: An isolated network to securely connect Azure resources.
14. What is an Azure Load Balancer?
Answer: A service to distribute network traffic across multiple resources.
15. What is Azure DNS?
Answer: A service to manage domain name system (DNS) records in Azure.
16. What is Azure VPN Gateway?
Answer: A service to connect on-premises networks securely to Azure.
Section 5: Security and Identity
17. What is Azure Active Directory (AAD)?
Answer: A cloud-based identity and access management service.
18. What is Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)?
Answer: A security feature requiring two or more verification methods.
19. What is Azure Key Vault?
Answer: A service for securely storing secrets, keys, and certificates.
20. What is Azure Security Center?
Answer: A tool for threat protection and security recommendations.
Section 6: Monitoring and Analytics
21. What is Azure Monitor?
Answer: A service to collect, analyze, and act on telemetry data from Azure resources.
22. What is Azure Log Analytics?
Answer: A tool to query and analyze log data in Azure Monitor.
23. What is Application Insights?
Answer: A service to monitor performance and detect issues in applications.
Section 7: AI, Machine Learning, and IoT
24. What is Azure Machine Learning?
Answer: A cloud service for building and deploying machine learning models.
25. What is Azure Cognitive Services?
Answer: Pre-built APIs for tasks like speech recognition and computer vision.
26. What is Azure IoT Hub?
Answer: A service for managing IoT devices and collecting their data.
Section 8: Azure DevOps
27. What is Azure DevOps?
Answer: A suite of tools for CI/CD, code repositories, and project management.
28. What is Azure Pipelines?
Answer: A tool for automating build and release workflows.
29. What is Azure Boards?
Answer: A project management tool for tracking work items and agile processes.
Section 9: Advanced Topics
30. What is Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)?
Answer: A managed container orchestration service.
31. What is Azure Functions?
Answer: A serverless compute service to run code on-demand.
32. What is Azure Logic Apps?
Answer: A service for building workflows and integrating apps and services.
33. What is Azure API Management?
Answer: A tool for managing APIs securely and efficiently.
Azure Fundamentals – Comprehensive Q&A
Section 1: Azure Basics (50 Questions)
1. What is Microsoft Azure?
Answer: Microsoft Azure is a cloud platform for building, deploying, and managing services and applications via Microsoft-managed data centers.
2. What are the three types of cloud computing models?
Answer:
o IaaS: Offers virtualized computing resources over the internet.
o PaaS: Provides a platform allowing developers to build applications without managing the underlying infrastructure.
o SaaS: Delivers software applications over the internet on a subscription basis.
3. What are the benefits of Azure over on-premises data centers?
Answer:
o Scalability
o High availability
o Cost-effectiveness
o Disaster recovery
4. What is a cloud deployment model?
Answer: Defines how cloud resources are deployed:
o Public Cloud
o Private Cloud
o Hybrid Cloud
5. What is Azure Free Tier?
Answer: A program allowing users to explore Azure services for free with limited usage for 12 months.
General Cloud Computing Concepts
1. What is the difference between public cloud and private cloud?
Answer:
o Public Cloud: Services are delivered over the internet and shared among multiple users.
o Private Cloud: Resources are used exclusively by a single organization.
2. What is a hybrid cloud?
Answer: A combination of public and private clouds, allowing data and applications to be shared between them.
3. What is elasticity in cloud computing?
Answer: The ability to scale resources up or down dynamically based on demand.
4. What is scalability in Azure?
Answer: The ability to increase or decrease resources manually or automatically to meet workload demands.
5. What is high availability in Azure?
Answer: Ensuring minimal downtime and reliable access to services through redundancy and failover.
6. What are the main categories of Azure services?
Answer:
o Compute
o Networking
o Storage
o Databases
o AI and Machine Learning
o DevOps
7. What is an Azure data center?
Answer: A physical facility that hosts Azure’s cloud computing infrastructure.
8. What is disaster recovery in Azure?
Answer: A strategy to recover services and data after a disruption using Azure Backup, Site Recovery, or replication.
Azure Account and Subscription
9. What is an Azure subscription?
Answer: A container for Azure resources, allowing billing and access management.
10. Can a single Azure account have multiple subscriptions?
Answer: Yes, an account can manage multiple subscriptions for different projects or cost centers.
11. What is a tenant in Azure?
Answer: A dedicated instance of Azure Active Directory associated with an organization.
12. What is the purpose of Azure credits?
Answer: Credits are prepaid amounts used to consume Azure services, often included in free trials or enterprise agreements.
13. What is the Azure Free Tier?
Answer: A program offering limited free services for 12 months and lifetime free access to select resources.
14. What are the different Azure support plans?
Answer:
o Basic (Free)
o Developer
o Standard
o Professional Direct
o Premier
15. How is billing calculated in Azure?
Answer: Based on resource usage (pay-as-you-go), reserved instances, or consumption rates.
Azure Regions and Availability Zones
16. What is an Azure Region?
Answer: A set of data centers in a specific geographic location.
17. What are paired regions in Azure?
Answer: Two regions within the same geography linked for disaster recovery and data replication.
18. What is the advantage of Availability Zones?
Answer: They provide fault tolerance by isolating resources in separate physical data centers within a region.
19. How does Azure ensure data residency?
Answer: Data residency is ensured by hosting data in specific regions to comply with regulatory requirements.
20. What is latency in the context of Azure regions?
Answer: The time it takes for data to travel between Azure data centers and end- users.
Cloud Cost Management in Azure
21. What tools are available for Azure cost management?
Answer: Azure Cost Management and Billing tools.
22. What is a Reserved Instance?
Answer: A pricing option to prepay for resources for 1 or 3 years, offering significant discounts.
23. What are the benefits of Azure Advisor?
Answer: Personalized recommendations for cost optimization, performance, security, and availability.
24. What is pay-as-you-go pricing?
Answer: A model where you pay only for the resources you consume.
25. What is the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator?
Answer: A tool to estimate cost savings by comparing on-premises infrastructure with Azure.
Security and Compliance
26. What is Azure Trust Center?
Answer: A resource for understanding Azure’s security, privacy, and compliance practices.
27. What are Compliance Certifications in Azure?
Answer: Industry standards Azure complies with, such as ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, etc.
28. How does Azure ensure data security?
Answer: Through encryption, access controls, and tools like Azure Security Center.
29. What is Azure Policy?
Answer: A service to enforce compliance and governance policies on resources.
30. What is shared responsibility in cloud computing?
Answer: The model where Azure secures infrastructure, and customers secure their data and apps.
Azure Portal and Tools
31. What is the Azure Portal?
Answer: A web-based interface for managing Azure resources.
32. What is Azure CLI?
Answer: A command-line tool for managing Azure resources.
33. What is Azure PowerShell?
Answer: A scripting tool to automate Azure resource management.
34. What is Azure Resource Manager (ARM)?
Answer: The deployment and management layer for Azure resources.
35. What is an Azure Resource?
Answer: Any manageable item in Azure, such as VMs, storage accounts, or databases.
36. What are ARM templates?
Answer: JSON files used for defining and deploying Azure resources. Virtualization and Compute Concepts
37. What is virtualization in Azure?
Answer: Technology that allows multiple virtual machines to run on a single physical machine.
38. What is serverless computing?
Answer: A model where Azure automatically manages the infrastructure, scaling, and server operations.
39. What is the difference between VMs and containers?
Answer:
o VMs virtualize hardware.
o Containers virtualize the OS for lightweight application deployment.
40. What are Azure Functions?
Answer: A serverless compute service for running event-driven code.
41. What is an Azure Batch?
Answer: A service to run large-scale parallel and high-performance computing jobs.
Azure Usage Scenarios
42. Who are the typical users of Azure?
Answer: Developers, IT admins, businesses, and organizations of all sizes.
43. What industries benefit from Azure?
Answer: Healthcare, finance, retail, gaming, education, and government.
44. What is the Azure Marketplace?
Answer: A platform for third-party solutions and applications available for Azure users.
45. What is the purpose of Dev/Test pricing?
Answer: Special pricing for development and testing environments.
46. What is the importance of backup and restore in Azure?
Answer: To ensure data availability and recoverability during failures.
Miscellaneous Concepts
47. What is an Azure SLA?
Answer: A Service Level Agreement that defines guaranteed uptime and performance.
48. What is fault tolerance in Azure?
Answer: The ability of a system to continue functioning in case of hardware or software failures.
49. How does Azure support multi-cloud environments?
Answer: Through tools like Azure Arc to manage resources across multiple clouds.
50. What is Azure Cognitive Services?
Answer: Prebuilt AI APIs for tasks like language understanding, speech recognition, and vision analysis.
General Cloud Computing Concepts
1. What is a cloud service provider?
Answer: A company that offers cloud-based services, such as Microsoft Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud.
2. What is infrastructure as a service (IaaS)?
Answer: A cloud model providing virtualized computing resources over the internet, such as virtual machines and storage.
3. What is platform as a service (PaaS)?
Answer: A model that offers development tools and frameworks for building, deploying, and managing applications.
4. What is software as a service (SaaS)?
Answer: A model delivering software applications over the internet, typically on a subscription basis.
5. What is Azure Resource Manager (ARM)?
Answer: A framework for deploying, managing, and organizing Azure resources.
6. What are the core characteristics of cloud computing?
Answer:
o On-demand self-service
o Broad network access
o Resource pooling
o Scalability
o Measured service
7. What is the main difference between elasticity and scalability?
Answer:
o Scalability: Ability to handle increased workload by adding resources.
o Elasticity: Ability to scale resources up or down dynamically based on demand.
8. What is Azure Governance?
Answer: Policies and practices for managing and monitoring Azure resources effectively.
9. What is a cloud consumption model?
Answer: A pay-as-you-go billing approach where you pay only for the resources you consume.
10. What are Azure Availability Sets?
Answer: A feature to ensure VM availability by spreading them across fault and update domains.
Azure Identity and Access
11. What is Azure Identity Protection?
Answer: A tool in Azure AD to detect and remediate identity-related risks.
12. What is Conditional Access in Azure AD?
Answer: A policy-based system to control user access based on conditions like location or device.
13. What is an Azure AD Tenant?
Answer: A dedicated Azure AD instance associated with an organization.
14. What are Managed Identities in Azure?
Answer: Identities automatically managed by Azure for use with Azure services.
15. What is Just-In-Time (JIT) VM Access?
Answer: A feature to reduce exposure to attacks by allowing access to VMs only when needed.
Azure Pricing and Costs
16. What are pricing tiers in Azure?
Answer: Different levels of resource offerings (e.g., Basic, Standard, Premium) based on performance and cost.
17. What are Azure Reserved Instances?
Answer: Prepaid virtual machines for a fixed duration (1 or 3 years) offering significant discounts.
18. What is the Azure Hybrid Benefit?
Answer: A program allowing you to use existing licenses for cost savings on Azure.
19. How does Azure handle unused resources?
Answer: You are billed for all active resources; it’s essential to stop or delete unused ones to save costs.
20. What are Spot VMs?
Answer: Discounted virtual machines for workloads that can handle interruptions.
Azure Compute and Virtual Machines
21. What are the types of Azure Virtual Machines?
Answer:
o General-purpose
o Compute-optimized
o Memory-optimized
o GPU-optimized
o Storage-optimized
22. What is Azure VM Scale Sets?
Answer: A feature to automatically deploy and manage a group of VMs based on demand.
23. What is the difference between Availability Sets and Scale Sets?
Answer:
o Availability Sets: Protect against hardware failures.
o Scale Sets: Automatically scale the number of VMs based on demand.
24. What is a Managed Disk in Azure?
Answer: A disk whose management, scalability, and durability are handled by Azure.
25. What is Azure Dedicated Host?
Answer: A physical server dedicated to your organization’s workload.
Networking Basics in Azure
26. What is a Network Security Group (NSG)?
Answer: A rule-based firewall to control inbound and outbound traffic to Azure resources.
27. What is a Public IP Address in Azure?
Answer: An IP address assigned to Azure resources, accessible over the internet.
28. What is Azure Front Door?
Answer: A service for global load balancing and fast content delivery.
29. What is the purpose of a Virtual Network Gateway?
Answer: To securely connect on-premises networks to Azure.
30. What is the difference between Azure DNS and Azure Private DNS?
Answer:
o Azure DNS: Resolves domain names for public-facing services.
o Azure Private DNS: Resolves names within private networks.
Azure Storage and Databases
31. What are the types of Azure Storage?
Answer:
o Blob Storage (unstructured data)
o File Storage (shared files)
o Queue Storage (message queuing)
o Table Storage (NoSQL)
32. What is Azure Blob Storage?
Answer: A service to store unstructured data like documents, images, and videos.
33. What is the difference between Hot and Cool Blob Storage?
Answer:
o Hot Storage: Frequently accessed data.
o Cool Storage: Infrequently accessed data, lower costs.
34. What is Azure Data Lake?
Answer: A scalable data storage service for big data analytics.
35. What is Azure SQL Managed Instance?
Answer: A fully managed database service offering near-complete SQL Server compatibility.
Monitoring and Governance
36. What is Azure Activity Log?
Answer: A log tracking all subscription-level events in Azure.
37. What is Azure Advisor?
Answer: A tool providing personalized recommendations for Azure resources.
38. What is the purpose of Azure Blueprints?
Answer: To define and implement standards and governance for resource deployment.
39. What is Azure Policy Initiative?
Answer: A collection of policies grouped together for centralized compliance.
40. What is the purpose of Resource Locks?
Answer: To prevent accidental modification or deletion of Azure resources.
Azure Tools and Interfaces
41. What is Azure Cloud Shell?
Answer: A browser-based command-line tool for managing Azure resources using Bash or PowerShell.
42. What is Azure Marketplace?
Answer: A digital store offering pre-built solutions and services compatible with Azure.
43. What are Tags in Azure?
Answer: Metadata used to organize resources for better management.
44. What is an Azure Resource Group?
Answer: A container for logically grouping related Azure resources.
45. What are the REST APIs in Azure?
Answer: APIs for managing Azure services programmatically.
Miscellaneous Concepts
46. What is Azure Lighthouse?
Answer: A service for managing multiple Azure tenants and subscriptions from one portal.
47. What is the Azure Well-Architected Framework?
Answer: A set of best practices for designing and implementing Azure solutions.
48. What is Azure Stack?
Answer: A hybrid cloud platform for running Azure services in on-premises environments.
49. What is Azure Cognitive Search?
Answer: A search-as-a-service solution for building powerful search experiences.
50. What is Azure Resource Health?
Answer: A service providing information on the health and availability of Azure resources.