Microsoft Azure is the second-largest public cloud and the natural choice for many organizations that already use Microsoft 365 and Windows Server. These Azure interview questions and answers cover the services and concepts interviewers ask about most, from compute and storage to identity, networking and governance.
Core concepts
1. How is Azure organised?
Resources sit in a hierarchy: management groups > subscriptions > resource groups > resources. Policies and access set at a higher level are inherited below.
2. What is Azure Resource Manager (ARM)?
ARM is the deployment and management layer for Azure. Every portal action, CLI command or template deployment goes through it. You can describe infrastructure as code with ARM templates, Bicep or Terraform.
3. Regions vs availability zones?
A region is a geographic area, such as Central India (Pune) or South India (Chennai). Availability zones are separate data centres within a region. Spreading resources across zones protects against a single data-centre failure.
4. What is Microsoft Entra ID?
Microsoft Entra ID, formerly Azure Active Directory, is Azure’s cloud identity service. It handles sign-in, single sign-on, MFA, Conditional Access and identities for applications.
Compute
5. Compare the main compute options.
| Service | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Virtual Machines | Full control of the operating system |
| Virtual Machine Scale Sets | Many identical VMs that scale automatically |
| App Service | Managed hosting for web apps and APIs |
| Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) | Managed Kubernetes clusters |
| Azure Container Apps | Serverless containers and microservices |
| Azure Functions | Event-driven serverless code |
6. What happened to Azure Cloud Services (classic)?
Microsoft retired Cloud Services (classic) on 31 August 2024. Workloads should run on Cloud Services (extended support), App Service, VM Scale Sets or containers instead.
Storage
7. Which storage services does Azure offer?
- Blob Storage: object storage for files, backups and data lakes.
- Azure Files: managed SMB and NFS file shares.
- Managed Disks: block storage for VMs.
- Queue and Table Storage: simple messaging and NoSQL storage.
8. What are the Blob access tiers?
Hot, cool, cold and archive. Each step down lowers storage cost but raises access cost and, for archive, adds retrieval delay.
9. Explain the redundancy options.
LRS keeps copies in one data centre, ZRS across zones, GRS in a paired region, and GZRS combines zone and geo redundancy.
Networking
10. What is a virtual network (VNet)?
A VNet is your private network in Azure, divided into subnets. VNet peering connects VNets, and VPN Gateway or ExpressRoute connects on-premises networks.
11. NSG vs Azure Firewall?
A network security group filters traffic to subnets or network interfaces with simple allow and deny rules. Azure Firewall is a managed, stateful firewall with central policies, threat intelligence and application rules.
12. Which load balancers exist?
Azure Load Balancer (layer 4), Application Gateway (layer 7 with an optional WAF) and Azure Front Door (global layer 7 with CDN features).
Security, monitoring and governance
13. How do you manage secrets?
Store them in Azure Key Vault, and let applications access it with managed identities, so no credentials live in code.
14. Azure RBAC vs Azure Policy?
RBAC controls who can do what. Azure Policy controls what resources can look like, for example blocking public IP addresses or requiring tags.
15. Which monitoring and security tools would you use?
Azure Monitor and Log Analytics for metrics and logs, Microsoft Defender for Cloud for posture management and threat protection, and Microsoft Sentinel as a cloud SIEM.
16. How do you control costs?
Use Cost Management budgets and alerts, reservations or savings plans, autoscaling, right-sizing and shutting down unused resources.
For a comparison with other clouds, see our AWS and Google Cloud interview questions.
Keep preparing
Practise each answer out loud, and run the commands in a lab rather than memorising them. Interviewers often ask follow-up questions, so make sure you understand why each answer is true.
Sources
Preparing for an interview? Browse more questions in our interview preparation hub. For businesses, we also offer security services such as VAPT, server hardening and ISO 27001 readiness.
