It is understood that during preparation for the cloud engineer or Azure administrator, or DevOps role, one of the basics to know is the types of Azure interview questions asked in an interview. The article presents a set of 25 Microsoft Azure interview questions with exact answers in an attempt to assure you of going in for your next interview confidently.

The Need for Microsoft Azure Skills

Microsoft Azure is among the largest cloud platforms that organizations prefer for application hosting, secure management of data, and running services. With a rush of jobs in the cloud domain, the interviewers will expect you to know not just the theory but also how to apply Azure services in real-time. By preparing answers to these commonly asked questions, you certainly will feel more confident and will impress interviewers even more.

25 Microsoft Azure Interview Questions with Explanatory Answers

Basic/Foundation Questions

1. What is Microsoft Azure?

Answer: Azure is a Cloud Computing platform by Microsoft. It provides services for computing power, storage, database, networking, analytics, and AI. Hosting of websites, running of applications, and storing of data using Azure does not worry about the physical servers.

2. What are IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS?

• IaaS- Infrastructure as a Service provides virtual machines, storage, and networks. You manage the OS and apps. Example: Azure Virtual Machines.

• PaaS- Platform as a Service provides a platform for deploying applications without having to manage infrastructure. Example: Azure App Service.

• SaaS- Software as a Service, fully formed software off the shelf, ready to be used over the cloud. Example: Office 365.

3. What is the definition of public, private clouds, and hybrid clouds?

• Public Cloud: Internet delivery services (e.g., Azure, AWS).

• Private Cloud: Dedicated infrastructure for one organization.

• Hybrid Cloud: A combination of both public and private clouds. An example can be utilizing Azure for some workloads while having on-premises servers for others. 

4. What is an Azure Resource Group?

Answer: A resource group is a container that holds related Azure resources, including VMs, databases, and networks. Resource groups let you manage, monitor, and control access to these Azure resources. 

5. What is Azure Resource Manager (ARM)? 

Answer: ARM is the management layer for Azure that enables you to deploy, manage, and organize resources by means of templates and policies. ARM ensures consistency in deployment and access control.

6. Difference between Availability Sets and Availability Zones?

• Availability Set: Protect VMs from single-point failures across the datacenters.

• Availability Zone: Protect VMs by spreading them across multiple datacenters that are separated physically within a region. 

7. What is Azure Virtual Network (VNet)?

Answer: Private networking in Azure, whereby one can define subnets, route traffic, and connect to an on-premises network using VPN or ExpressRoute.

8. What's Azure Blob Storage?

Answer: Azure Blob Storage is used to store unstructured data, including images, videos, and backups. It comes in the following types:

• Block Blob: Used to store large amounts of text and binary data.

• Page Blob: Used for random read/write access.

• Append Blob: Optimized for appending data such as logs. 

9. What is Azure Active Directory (Azure AD)?

Answer: Azure Active Directory is a cloud-based service that manages identities and access. Azure AD manages user identities, authentication, and SSO for cloud applications.

10. What is the ARM Template?

Answer: ARM Template stands for Azure Resource Manager Template, which consists of a JSON file that declaratively specifies Azure resources. Its main use would be for automated deployments and to ensure uniformity in resource provisioning.

Intermediate Questions

11. Distinction Between Azure Load Balancer and Azure Application Gateway?

Answer: 

• Load Balancer: Operates at Layer 4 (TCP/UDP). This distributes network traffic among VMs.

• Application Gateway: This operates at Layer 7 (HTTP/HTTPS). SSL termination, WAF, and URL-based routing are supported.

12. What Are the Advantages of Managed Disks?

Answer: Managed Disks give an easy storage management level to Azure because they abstract the storage account through and availability, scaling, and replication are handled by Azure.

13. What is Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)? 

Answer: AKS is a managed Kubernetes service that allows the user to easily deploy, scale, and manage applications, while the control plane for Kubernetes is controlled by Azure.

14. Explain Azure Functions Vs Logic Apps?

Answer: Azure Functions: An event-driven serverless offering based on code. 

Logic Apps: A code-less visual integration workflow powered by connectors. 

15. What Is Azure Monitor And Application Insights?

Answer: Azure Monitor is supposed to collect metrics and logs from all Azure resources, while Application Insights is meant for performance and diagnostics at the application level. 

16. What Is Azure Policy? 

Answer: Azure Policy provides rules that ensure resource conformity within the organization or regulatory standards.

17. What is Azure Key Vault? 

Answer: Azure Key Vault securely stores secrets, encryption keys, and certificates. Service is integrated into applications for keeping credentials private. 

18. What Is Azure Service Bus? 

• Answer: Azure Service Bus is a messaging service between applications. 

• Queue: Point-to-point message delivery. 

• Topic/Subscription: Publish/subscribe model for multiple recipients. 

19. How To Design Cost-Effective, Scalable Applications In Azure? 

Answer: Use autoscaling and serverless services, right-sized resources, and monitoring to minimize cost; reserved instances can also be used for predictable workloads. 

20. How To Integrate On-premises AD With Azure AD? 

Answer: You use Azure AD Connect to synchronize the on-premises Active Directory with Azure AD, enabling hybrid identity management.

Advanced questions

21. What is an Azure Blueprint?

Blueprints-templated solutions for setting up and deploying environments that consume and adhere to requirements, policies, and templates for resource assignment and resources.

22. What is Azure's disaster recovery strategy?

Use Azure Site Recovery to create solid VM storage replication with geo-redundancy, availability zones, and availability features for high availability and disaster recovery.

23. What is Azure DevOps?

Azure DevOps consists of a collection of tools for CI/CD pipelines, code repositories, test management, and project tracking, which integrate with Azure for automation in deployment.

24. Define the Shared Responsibility Model.

With Azure security, Microsoft looks after maintaining the cloud infrastructure, while the users are responsible for their data, identities, apps, and configurations.

25. Design a highly available, multi-region web app in Azure.

Global load balancing with Traffic Manager or Front Door, deploying VMs or App Services to multiple regions, Availability Zones, geo-redundant database replication, monitoring and autoscaling, and governance policy compliance.

How Network Kings Can Help You Prepare

For doing hands-on practice and obtaining structured training for Azure interviews, Network Kings is an outstanding source.

• Courses offered: Azure, AWS, networking, cybersecurity, DevOps, CCNA, CCNP.

• Live sessions & labs: Get to practice real-time scenarios on Azure under the guidance of industry experts.

• Job-oriented training: Courses are job-centric by design, with a focus on cloud projects; certifications are included, and interview preparation is in the picture.

• Flexible learning: Learn at your pace with recorded sessions, assignments, and mentorship support.

Network Kings builds a complete, structured roadmap to prepare for interviews, certifications, or real-world Azure applications. Practicing questions like these 25, along with labs and mentorship, can significantly increase one's chances of success.

Conclusion

Microsoft Azure interview questions evaluate a person's knowledge and experience regarding the subject and ability to solve problems. This only requires answering the 25 questions above to gain confidence talking about Azure services, architecture, security, and cloud solutions. 

However, theory alone is not sufficient; it must be supplemented with practice. Platforms like Network Kings fill the chasm between theory and practice via labs, real-world projects, and expert guidance. 

Combining these 25 questions with practical learning could lead you towards making lasting impressions on interviewers, clearing certification exams, and landing that dream job in cloud computing. Therefore, start preparing, practice consistently, and explore platforms like Network Kings to sharpen your skills. Today marks the beginning of your Azure career journey through preparation.