Microsoft Azure Interview Questions India 2026: Services, AKS, DevOps, and Certifications

Azure fundamentals:

1. Azure compute services: - Azure Virtual Machines (VMs): IaaS; full control over the OS; used for legacy applications and specialised workloads. VM Scale Sets: auto-scaling group of identical VMs. - Azure App Service: PaaS for web applications and APIs; auto-scaling; deployment slots (staging/production swap); supports .NET, Java, Node.js, Python, PHP. - Azure Functions: serverless compute; event-triggered; pay per execution; supports Consumption (scale to zero) and Premium plans. - Azure Container Apps: serverless containers; built on Kubernetes (KEDA for event-driven autoscaling); simpler than AKS for most containerised workloads. - Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS): managed Kubernetes; Microsoft manages the control plane; you manage the node pools.

2. Azure storage services: - Azure Blob Storage: object storage for unstructured data (images, videos, documents, backups). Tiers: Hot (frequent access), Cool (infrequent access, lower cost), Archive (rarely accessed, lowest cost but hours to retrieve). - Azure Files: managed SMB file shares; can be mounted on Windows, Linux, and macOS VMs. - Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 (ADLS Gen2): Blob Storage with a hierarchical namespace and Hadoop-compatible API; used for big data analytics. - Azure Queue Storage: simple message queue (FIFO); lighter than Service Bus.

3. Azure networking: - Virtual Network (VNet): the fundamental network isolation unit in Azure. Resources in a VNet communicate privately. - Network Security Group (NSG): stateful firewall rules at the subnet or NIC level. - Azure Load Balancer: Layer 4 (TCP/UDP) load balancing within a region. - Azure Application Gateway: Layer 7 (HTTP/HTTPS) load balancing with WAF (Web Application Firewall), SSL termination, and URL-based routing. - Azure Front Door: global Layer 7 load balancer + CDN + WAF; routes traffic to the nearest healthy backend worldwide.

Azure services:

1. Azure Active Directory (Entra ID): Azure AD (now called Microsoft Entra ID) is Azure's identity platform. Key concepts: Tenant (an organisation's Azure AD instance), Users and Groups, Service Principal (an identity for an application), Managed Identity (an identity for an Azure resource, like a VM or Function; no credentials to manage), App Registrations (register an application to use Azure AD for OAuth/OIDC). RBAC (Role-Based Access Control): assign built-in or custom roles to users, groups, or managed identities at different scopes (subscription, resource group, resource).

2. Azure database services: - Azure SQL Database: fully managed SQL Server (PaaS); auto-patching, auto-backups; serverless tier (scale to zero). - Azure Database for PostgreSQL / MySQL: managed PostgreSQL and MySQL. - Azure Cosmos DB: globally distributed, multi-model database; supports SQL API, MongoDB API, Cassandra API; guaranteed 99.999% availability; useful for globally distributed, low-latency applications. - Azure Cache for Redis: managed Redis; read-through, write-through, and lazy loading cache patterns.

3. Azure messaging services: - Azure Service Bus: enterprise messaging; queues and topics (pub/sub); supports transactions, dead-letter queues, scheduled messages; guaranteed ordering within a session. Use for: business workflows, microservices integration. - Azure Event Hubs: high-throughput event ingestion (Kafka-compatible API); designed for telemetry and log streaming. Use for: IoT data, application log ingestion, event streaming. - Azure Event Grid: event routing service; publishes events from Azure services (blob created, VM deleted) to subscribers (Azure Functions, Logic Apps, webhooks). Use for: reacting to Azure resource events.

Azure Kubernetes and DevOps:

1. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS): AKS is Azure's managed Kubernetes service. Microsoft manages the Kubernetes control plane (API server, etcd, scheduler); you pay only for the worker node VMs. Key AKS features: node pools (multiple node pools with different VM sizes and OS; system node pools and user node pools), cluster autoscaler (automatically adds/removes nodes based on demand), Azure CNI (advanced networking; each pod gets a VNet IP), AAD integration (Azure AD for Kubernetes RBAC), Azure Monitor for containers (pod and node metrics; container logs).

2. Azure DevOps: Azure DevOps is Microsoft's DevOps platform. Five components: Azure Boards (agile planning; backlog, sprint boards, work items), Azure Repos (Git hosting; equivalent to GitHub), Azure Pipelines (CI/CD; YAML pipelines that build, test, and deploy; equivalent to GitHub Actions), Azure Test Plans (test case management), Azure Artifacts (package registry for npm, NuGet, Maven, pip).

3. Azure Pipelines YAML: Azure Pipelines are defined in YAML (azure-pipelines.yml at the repo root). Key concepts: trigger (branch/path triggers), stages (CI stage: build and test; CD stage: deploy to dev, staging, prod), jobs (a stage contains jobs; jobs run on agents), steps (tasks within a job: script steps, pre-built tasks like DotNetCoreCLI, AzureWebApp). Pipeline templates: reusable YAML templates for common stages.

4. Infrastructure as Code on Azure: ARM Templates: Azure's native JSON-based IaC. Complex and verbose; being superseded by Bicep. Bicep: domain-specific language that compiles to ARM Templates; more readable and concise. Terraform with AzureRM Provider: cross-cloud IaC; preferred when teams also manage AWS or GCP infrastructure. Azure Blueprint: governance-level IaC for deploying entire environments (subscriptions, resource groups, policies, RBAC assignments) consistently.

Azure certification and interview strategy:

1. Azure certification path: - AZ-900 (Azure Fundamentals): non-technical; introduces cloud concepts and Azure services; useful for business analysts, PMs, and cloud newcomers. 2-4 weeks preparation. Most widely held Azure certification in India. - AZ-104 (Azure Administrator): for engineers who provision and manage Azure infrastructure (VMs, VNets, storage, identity). 8-12 weeks preparation. The most important certification for cloud engineers in Indian IT services. - AZ-204 (Azure Developer): for engineers who build applications on Azure (Functions, App Service, containers, Azure SQL). 8-12 weeks preparation. - AZ-305 (Azure Solutions Architect Expert): the highest-level Azure certification; requires passing AZ-104 first. Validates enterprise-scale solution design. - AZ-400 (Azure DevOps Engineer Expert): for CI/CD and DevOps on Azure; requires AZ-104 or AZ-204 first.

2. Common Azure interview questions for Indian companies: (1) What is the difference between Azure App Service and Azure Functions? App Service: always-running web server; best for web apps and REST APIs that handle continuous traffic. Functions: event-triggered; scale to zero; best for infrequent, sporadic workloads. (2) What is a VNet and why is it important? A VNet is Azure's network isolation boundary. Resources in a VNet communicate privately without going through the internet. NSGs control inbound/outbound traffic. (3) What is the difference between Azure Service Bus and Azure Event Hubs? Service Bus: enterprise messaging; exactly-once delivery; ordered processing; dead-letter queue. Event Hubs: high-throughput event ingestion; Kafka-compatible; replay from offset; no dead-letter queue. (4) What is a Managed Identity and why is it preferred over service principal secrets? Managed Identity is an identity for an Azure resource (VM, Function, AKS pod) that Azure manages; no credentials to store or rotate. Service Principal requires storing a client secret (rotation risk).