Explore topic-wise InterviewSolutions in Current Affairs.

• Azure Blob storage is the object storage solution provided by MICROSOFT for the cloud. Blob stands for “Binary Large Object”. Blob-based storage is used to store massive unstructured data in terms of text or binary format. It is ideal for serving documents/images/audio/video/text directly to browser.
• The data stored in the blob storage is accessible from anywhere in the world. The blobs are TIED to user accounts by grouping them into containers. The Azure Blob Service has 3 components:
  • Storage Account: This can be a GENERAL Storage Account or Blob Storage Account registered in Microsoft Azure.
  • Container: Container is used for grouping blobs. We can store an unlimited number of blobs in a container. The name of the container should start in lowercase.
  • Blob: A blob is a Binary Large Object like a file or document of any type and size. There are 3 kinds of Blobs SUPPORTED by Azure:
    • Block blobs: These are intended for text and binary files and can support up to 195GB, i.e up to 50k blocks of up to 4MB each.
    • Append blobs: These are used for APPENDING operations like logging data in log files.
    • Page blobs: These are meant for frequent read/write operations.

No! As the name itself SAYS, Azure INTERNAL Load Balancer SUPPORTS only PRIVATE IP addresses, and hence the assignment of a public IP address or DNS name is not possible.

In case of maximum FAILED attempts, the AZURE account would GET locked and the method of LOCKING is dependent on the protocol that analyzes the entered password and the IP addresses of the login requests.

The main difference  between Azure Scale Sets and Availability Sets are given below:

Yes, it is possible by making USE of the Key Vault MAPPING to any ADMIN VM, we can log in to another VM WITHOUT the NEED for a password.

AZURE provides a service called Azure File System which is used as a COMMON repository system for sharing the data across the Virtual Machines configured by making use of PROTOCOLS like SMB, FTPS, NFS, etc.

• Azure Functions service can be used for executing the code without a server.
• Serverless Azure Functions are used for simplifying complex orchestration and challenging resolutions. They are meant for being stateless and short-lived.
• They HELP to connect with other services without the need for hard coding of the integrations thereby making the DEVELOPMENT process faster.
• It helps the developer to write and concentrate on the business logic code thereby saving time and effort.
• They ALSO PROVIDE the FEATURES of monitoring and analyzing code performance by means of Azure Application Insights that help in identifying bottlenecks and failure points across the components of the application.

It is a command-line tool that is used for generating service package files. The tool also helps in preparing the application for deployment in Microsoft AZURE or compute emulator.

Every project of CLOUD service TYPE has the .cscfg file which is basically the cloud service configuration file that is generated by means of cspack tool and is primarily used to store:

• The NUMBER of role instances for the deployment of each role in the project.
• The THUMBPRINT of the certificates.
• User-defined configuration and settings.

• AZURE storage key is used for authentication for validating access for the azure storage service to control access of data based on the project requirements.
• 2 types of storage KEYS are GIVEN for the authentication purpose -
  • Primary Access Key
  • Secondary Access Key
• The main purpose of the secondary access key is for avoiding DOWNTIME of the website or application.

Yes, it is possible and is done by means of the Transient Fault Handling Block. There can be multiple causes of transient failures while using the CLOUD environment:

• Due to the presence of more load balancers, we can see that the APPLICATION to database connections fail periodically.
• While using multi-tenant services, the calls get slower and eventually time out because other applications are using resources to HIT the same resource heavily.
• The last cause can be we ourselves as the user trying to hit the resource very frequently which causes the service to deliberately deny the connection to us to support other tenants in the architecture.

Instead of showing errors to the user periodically, the application can recognize the errors that are transient and automatically try to perform the same operation again typically after some seconds with the hope of ESTABLISHING the connection. By making use of the Transient Fault Handling Application Block mechanism, we can generate the retry INTERVALS and make the application perform retries. In the majority of the cases, the error would be resolved on the second try and hence the user need not be made aware of these errors unnecessarily.

Following is the sample code that can be used for the retry policy. Here, if the connection is not successful, then the action is retried based on the retry policy defined. There are 3 retry strategies - Fixed Interval, Incremental Interval, Exponential Backoff Strategy.

The following steps NEED to be performed when the drive FAILURE occurs:

• To MAKE SURE that the Azure Storage functions WITHOUT fail, we need to ensure that the drive is not mounted.
• Replace the drive so that the drive gets remounted and formatted.

Azure provides two deployment environments, they are:

• Staging Environment: This environment is used for validating the CHANGES of our application before MAKING them live into the main environment.
  • Here, the application is identified by MEANS of GUID (GLOBALLY Unique Identifier) of Azure which has the URL as: GUID.cloudapp.net
• Production Environment: This is the main environment where our application goes live and can be accessed by the target audience which can be accessed by means of DNS friendly URL: appName.cloudapp.net

• Availability Set is nothing but a logical grouping of VMs (Virtual Machines) that allows Azure cloud to understand how the application was developed for providing availability and redundancy.
• Each VM in the availability set is assigned 2 KINDS of domains by Azure:
  • Fault Domain: These define the grouping of VMs that would SHARE a common power source and common network switch. The VMs within availability sets are separated across up to 3 fault domains by default. This separation of VMs in fault domains helps our applications to be available by reducing impacts of network outages, power interruptions, and certain hardware failures.
  • Update Domain: These indicate the grouping of VMs and underlying hardware which are eligible to be rebooted at the same time. Only one update domain can be rebooted at a time, however, the ORDER of reboot does not proceed in a sequential manner. Before the maintenance of another update domain, the previously rebooted domain is given a recovery time of 30 minutes to ENSURE that the domain is up.
• Azure provides flexibility to configure up to 3 fault domains and 20 update domains for an availability set.

• These are the Azure computation resources that can be used to deploy and manage sets of IDENTICAL VIRTUAL Machines (VMs).
• These scale sets are configured in the same manner and are DESIGNED to support the autoscaling of the applications without the need for pre-provisioning of the VMs.
• They help to build large-scale applications TARGETING big data and containerized workloads in an easier manner.

• It is an open-source, in-memory Redis cache system provided and maintained by Azure.
• It helps the web applications to improve the performance by fetching data from the BACKEND database and STORING it into the Redis cache for the first request and then fetching data from the Redis cache for all subsequent requests.
• Azure Redis Cache provides powerful and secure caching MECHANISMS by making USE of the Azure cloud.