Microsoft Azure Interview Important Question

By: Gaurav Tevathiya

Question #1 : Talk about yourself or introduce yourself ?

Answer: We all know that its been asked so many times and our motive is cloud talk however this is our
first blog so have to mention from the beginning. Here you can talk about you work experience, your career
and anything you are confident with unless you see Interviewers are interested if you are going little off-
track then technology but nothing wrong talking about other stuff but be the better judge of situation.

Question #2 : What you do in your daily life as a cloud engineer or what you
actually do in Azure ?

Answer : This what i was talking about you can prepare this question like anything and you should
everyone asks this question and this is your opportunity where you mention most of thing that you are
comfortable with and explain is such a way that you know what you talking about, try to touch all the
services which shows your cloud knowledge.

Question #3 : Describe any issue or scenario that you recently faced and fixed
?

Answer : This is the 3rd and last question where you can actually through a very good impression & i have
seen this question quite often and i do ask my interview this helps me figure out about the interview a lot
hence i would suggest you need to prepare at least 5 scenario or situations where you got stuck and what
all troubleshooting steps you implemented to fix it. Usually what happens we do not face challenges
everyday & if its been a while or few days we forget hence you need to prepare this question because this
time ball is in your court. Also beware alot of questions may come with your explanation hence you should
know your topics well.

************* Lets get started with Azure related questions **************

Question #4 : What type of disks used by Azure VM ?

Answer : 3 types of disks used by Azure VM :- OS Disk, Data Disk & Temporary Storage.

Question #5 : Can you use the temporary storage or disk to store data ?
Answer : Its not recommended to use important data on temp storage or disk because you will risk loosing
data & that cant be recovered because this space is on the host machine and in case of VM re-sizing,
shutdown, updating host or hardware issue on host , your VM might move to different host..

Question #6 : Can you change the Drive letter of temporary Disk , if yes then
How?

Answer : Yes you can change the Drive letter of the temporary disk by moving the page file to C:drive
temporarily and then change the drive letter once done move the page file back to new Drive letter
assigned temporary disk.

Question #7 : Can i add the existing machine to Av-set if yes then how and if
no whats the work-around ?

Answer : No, you can not move the existing VM to the AV-Set however if it has been asked to move the
existing VM to Av-set then we need downtime for that & need to delete the VM and re-create the VM inside
AV-Set. If there are many machines then you can utilize powershell script available on powershell center.

Question #8 : Can you change the size of OS-Disk if yes then how ?

Answer : Yes you can increase the size of OS-Disk but not decrease and you need to deallocate the VM
for this means downtime required not much but yes it requires. Once VM is deallocated then you need to
go to the VM >> settings >> Disk >> Os-disk >> Configuration >> increase the size.

Question #9 : If you have stopped your Azure VM from inside a VM, would it
incur changes ?

Answer : Yes it would you should atopp from Azure portal and VM should be in De-allocated state if you
dont want additional charges.

Q 10 Explain the fault domain

that it is a logical working domain in which the underlying hardware is sharing a common power
source and switch network. This means that when VMs is created the Azure distributes the VM
across the fault domain that limits the potential impact of hardware failure, power interruption or
outages of the network.

Q11 Explain the Update domain

It is a logical group that undergoes maintenance by rebooting the system. The system automatically
distributes the created VMs across the updated domain that enables the user to run any one of the
applications while the Azure platform is undergoing maintenance. The update domain does not
work sequentially to the manual rebooting.

Q12 What is blob and how many types are there in Azure

Blobs – Blob stands for Binary large objects & Azure Blob storage is Microsoft's object storage
solution for the cloud. Blob storage is optimized for storing massive amounts of unstructured
data. We have 3 types of blobs

· Block blobs – this is made up of blocks of data that can be managed individually upto
4.7TB. It stores text and binary data.

· Append Blobs – this is also made up of block as block blob but are optimized for
append operations. This is ideal for scenarios such as logging data from virtual machines.

· Page Blobs – This is for random access files up to 8 TB in size. Page blobs store
virtual hard drive (VHD) files and serve as disks for Azure virtual machines
Q13 Difference between AV-Set and AV-Zone

Availability Sets Vs Availability Zones - Azure

Most important part is these 2 are separate features provided by Azure for HA & cant be used together.
You can either opt for Av-set or Av-zone, you can use both together.

Av-set is old feature as compare to Av-zone and available on all the regions but not Av-zone. If you want to
use Av-zone , first confirm availability in your region and second confirm are all the services supported,
may possible few services not zonal as of now but soon will be.

Below are the few difference and understanding of Av-set and Av-zone :-

Availability Set Availability Zone

It is unique physical locations within Azure

It is a logical grouping capability for VM's where regions & each Zone is made up of one or
VM's are placed between different fault and more data-centers equipped with
Update domains independent power, cooling and
networking

Update domain - 20 & Fault Domain - 3 1,2 & 3 - Av-Zone

Offers 99.95% SLA (2 or more VM) Offers 99.99% SLA

Protect from Hardware failures within Data

Protect from entire data center failure
Centers

Basic LB can work with Av-set Standard LB supports Av-Zone

Q14 How to reset the local admin password of VM

We can do that from Azure portal from the VM pane under Support and troubleshooting we have
Password reset Option.
Q15 How to reset the NIC

Reset network interface

For VMs deployed in Resource group model
1. Go to the Azure portal.

2. Select the affected Virtual Machine.

3. Select Networking and then select the network Interface of the VM.

4 Select IP configurations.
5 Select the IP.

6 If the Private IP assignment is not Static, change it to Static.

7 Change the IP address to another IP address that is available in the Subnet.

8 The virtual machine will restart to initialize the new NIC to the system.

9 Try to RDP to your machine. If successful, you can change the Private IP address
back to the original if you would like. Otherwise, you can keep it.

Q16 Why we re-deploy the VM & what it does.

If you have been facing difficulties troubleshooting Remote Desktop (RDP) connection or
application access to Windows-based Azure virtual machine (VM), redeploying the VM may
help. When you redeploy a VM, Azure will shut down the VM, move the VM to a new node
within the Azure infrastructure, and then power it back on, retaining all your configuration
options and associated resources. You will loose the data on temp disk.

We can Redeploy from Azure portal under support and troubleshooting.

Q17 What all you will do, if you are unable to RDP on Azure VM

1. Reset Remote Desktop configuration.

2. Check Network Security Group rules / Cloud Services endpoints.

3. Review VM console logs.

4. Reset the NIC for the VM.

5. Check the VM Resource Health.

 6. Reset your VM password.

7. Restart your VM.

8. Redeploy your VM.

Q18 How do you check if process server is actually pushing data ?

On process server >> under task manager >> performance tab >> resource monitor >> Network tab >>
Process and network Activity

Check cbengine.exe is actively sending a large volume of data.

Q 19 Can I change the target VM size or VM type before fail-over?

Yes, you can change the type or size of the VM at any time before failover. In
the portal, use the Compute and Network settings for the replicated VM.

Q 20 How to refresh config server from Azure portal

Navigate to the recovery vault >> under Manage >> Site recovery infrastructure >> Click configuration
server under VMware & physical machines >> select the configuration server and select the option
refresh config server.

Q21 How to check the Process server connection to Azure blob storage
On process server >> under task manager >> performance tab >> resource monitor >> Overview >>
select cbengine.exe >>

Under TCP connections, check whether there is connectivity from the process server to Azure storage.

Q22 If there Is no connectivity from the process server to Azure , what all
services we need to check ?
1. Verify that the following services are running:

o cxprocessserver

o InMage Scout VX Agent – Sentinel/Outpost

o Microsoft Azure Recovery Services Agent

o Microsoft Azure Site Recovery Service

o tmansvc
 2. Start or restart any service that isn't running.

3. Verify that the process server is connected and reachable

Q23 How to add cred in ovf template machine if you forgot to add cred

you can add credential from the configuration server , log in to the config server and launch
CSPSConfigtool.exe, click add

Q24 How to generate the passphrase

1. Sign in to your configuration server, and then open a command prompt window as an
administrator.

2. To change the directory to the bin folder, execute the command cd

%ProgramData%\ASR\home\svsystems\bin

3. To generate the passphrase file, execute genpassphrase.exe -v >

MobSvc.passphrase.

4. Your passphrase will be stored in the file located at

%ProgramData%\ASR\home\svsystems\bin\MobSvc.passphrase.

Q25 My version of the Mobility services agent or configuration server is

old, and my upgrade failed. What do I do?

Update can be seen in the portal and applied from there . Reboot not needed but
recommended.

Q26 What does the configuration server do?

The server coordinates communications between on-premises components and Azure, and manages data
replication.

Q27 What does process server do ?

Process server acts as a replication gateway

1. Receives replication data.

2. Optimizes the data with caching, compression, and encryption.

 3. Sends the data to Azure Storage. The process server also does a push install of the Mobility Service
on VMs and performs automatic discovery of on-premises VMware VMs.

Q28 Tell few pre-requisite of the Configuration server ?

 CPU -8
 RAM 16gb
 Free disk space 600gb for process server cache and additional 600gb for retention disk or fail-
back.
 OS – server 2012 R2 and 2016
 Static IP
 Ports 443 and 9443
 Internet access or no. of urls access
 MYSQL gets installed

Q29 Where can I download the Passphrase for config server ?

In the Recovery Services vault, select Configuration Servers in Site Recovery Infrastructure >
Manage. Then, in Servers, select Download registration key to download the vault credentials file.

Q30 Where can I download vault registration keys?

In the Recovery Services vault, select Configuration Servers in Site Recovery Infrastructure >
Manage. Then, in Servers, select Download registration key to download the vault credentials file.

Q31 Where can I find the Mobility service installers?

The installers are in the

%ProgramData%\ASR\home\svsystems\pushinstallsvc\repository folder on the
configuration server

Q32 Can I throttle bandwidth allotted for replication traffic?

Yes that can be done from Config server. On config server desktop we have Azure Backup shortcut
, we need to open it and go to the change properties from where we can enable the throttling.

Q33 What RBAC role is needed for AD sync configuration.

Global Admin
8 Difference between Managed disk and Unmanaged Disk ?

Managed Disks = are managed by Microsoft Azure and you don't need any storage account while created
new disk. Since the storage account is managed by Azure you do not have full control of the disks that are
being created.

Un-managed Disks = is something which requires you to create a storage account before you create any
new disk. Since, the storage account is created and owned by you, you have full control over all the data
that is present on your storage account. Additionally, you also need to take care of encryption, data
recovery plans etc.

Q34How to migrate the on-premises server to azure using site recovery ?

 Please follow the step by step setup below to migrate on-premises to azure .
 I always refer below azure documents as they are updated one.

 Step 1: Choose your protection goals

 Step 2: Set up the source environment
 Step 3: Set up the target environment
 Step 4: Set up replication settings
 Step 5: Capacity planning
 Step 6: Enable replication
 Step 7: Run a test failover
 Failover

Q35 How is Windows Active Directory and Azure Active

Directory different?

This one’s another regular question from the list of Azure interview questions.

Windows Active Directory Azure Active Directory

It is a directory service that facilitates Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is

working with interconnected, complex and Microsoft’s multi-tenant, cloud-based
 different network resources in a unified directory and identity management
manner service

Uses 5 layers to store data, store user

Uses 5 layers to store data, store user
details, issue and manage certifications,
details, issue and manage certifications, etc.
etc.

Works with an emphasis on on-premises

Emphasizes on web-based services that
units like applications, file services, printers,
use RESTful interfaces
etc.

Q36 What is the Azure Traffic Manager?

Azure Traffic Manager is a traffic load balancer that enables users to provide high availability
and responsiveness by distributing traffic in an optimal manner across global Azure regions.

 It provides multiple automatic failover options

 It helps reduce application downtime

 It enables the distribution of user traffic across multiple locations

 It enables users to know where customers are connecting from

Q37 Difference between LB, AG and TM