Azure Big Data Analytics Interview Questions and Answers

Azure Big Data Analytics Solution Interview Questions and Answers

Q1 : What is Azure Diagnostics?
A : Azure Diagnostics is the API that enables you to collect diagnostic data from applications running in Azure. Azure Diagnostics must be enabled for cloud service roles in order for verbose monitoring to be turned on.

Q2 : What is Azure Service Level Agreement (SLA)?
A : The Azure Compute SLA guarantees that, when you deploy two or more role instances for every role, access to your cloud service will be maintained at least 99.95 percent of the time. Also, detection and corrective action will be initiated 99.9 percent of the time when a role instance’s process is not running.

Q3 : What is a cloud service role?
A : A cloud service role is comprised of application files and a configuration. A cloud service can have two types of roles.

Q4 : What is a cloud service component?
A : Three components are required in order to deploy an application as a cloud service in Azure:

Q5 : What is a service configuration file?
A : The cloud service configuration file (.cscfg) provides configuration settings for the cloud service and individual roles, including the number of role instances.

Q6 : How many types of deployment models are used in cloud?
A : There are 4 types of deployment models used in cloud:

    1. Public cloud
    2. Private cloud
    3. Community cloud
    4. Hybrid cloud

Q7 : What is the difference between Windows Azure Platform and Windows Azure?
A : The former is Microsoft’s PaaS offering including Windows Azure, SQL Azure, and AppFabric; while the latter is part of the offering and the Microsoft’s cloud OS.

Q8 : What is the difference between Public Cloud and Private Cloud?
A : Public cloud is used as a service via Internet by the users, whereas a private cloud, as the name conveys is deployed within certain boundaries like firewall settings and is completely managed and monitored by the users working on it in an organization.

Q9 : What are instance sizes of Azure?
A : Windows Azure will handle the load balancing for all of the instances that are created. The VM sizes are as follows:
Compute Instance Size CPU Memory Instance Storage I/O Performance
Extra Small 1.0 GHz 768 MB 20 GB Low
Small 1.6 GHz 1.75 GB 225 GB Moderate
Medium 2 x 1.6 GHz 3.5 GB 490 GB High
Large 4 x 1.6 GHz 7 GB 1,000 GB High
Extra large 8 x 1.6 GHz 14 GB 2,040 GB High

Q10 : What are the options to manage session state in Windows Azure?     
A : 

  • Windows Azure Caching
  • SQL Azure
  • Azure Table

Q11 : What is Windows Azure compute emulator?
A : The compute emulator is a local emulator of Windows Azure that you can use to build and test your application before deploying it to Windows Azure.

Q12 : What is Cloud Computing?
A : Cloud computing is the use of computing resources (hardware and software) that are delivered
as a service over a network (typically the Internet).

Q13 : What is minimal vs. verbose monitoring?
A : Minimal monitoring, which is configured by default for a cloud service, uses performance counters gathered from the host operating systems for role instances (virtual machines). Verbose monitoring gathers additional metrics based on performance data within the role instances to enable closer analysis of issues that occur during application processing. For more information.

Q14 : What are the roles available in Windows Azure?
A : All three roles (web, worker, VM) are essentially Windows Server 2008. Web and Worker roles are nearly identical: With Web and Worker roles, the OS and related patches are taken care for you; you build your app’s components without having to manage a VM.

Q15 : What is the Windows Azure Platform?
A : A collective name of Microsoft’s Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering which provides a programming platform, a deployment vehicle, and a runtime environment of cloud computing hosted in Microsoft data centers.

Q16 : What are the three main components of Windows Azure Platform?
A :

  1. Compute
  2. Storage
  3. AppFabric

Q17 : What is a cloud service deployment?
A : A cloud service deployment is an instance of a cloud service deployed to the Azure staging or production environment. You can maintain deployments in both staging and production.

Q18 : What is csrun?
A : It is a command-line tool that deploys a packaged application to the Windows Azure compute emulator and manages the running service.

Q19 : What is Blob?
A : BLOB stands for Binary Large Object. Blob is a file of any type and size.
The Azure Blob Storage offers two types of blobs –

  1. Block Blob
  2. Page Blob

URL format: Blobs are addressable using the following URL format:

Q20 : What is DeadLetter queue?
A :

  1. Messages are placed on the dead-letter sub-queue by the messaging system in the following scenarios.
  2. When a message expires and dead-lettering for expired messages is set to true in a queue or subscription.
  3. When the max delivery count for a message is exceeded on a queue or subscription.
  4. When a filter evaluation exception occurs in a subscription and dead-lettering is enabled on filter evaluation exceptions.

Q21 : What is cspack?
A : It is a command-line tool that generates a service package file (.cspkg) and prepares an application for deployment, either to Windows Azure or to the compute emulator.

Q22 : How many instances of a Role should be deployed to satisfy Azure SLA (service level agreement)? And what’s the benefit of Azure SLA?
A : TWO. And if we do so, the role would have external connectivity at least 99.95% of the time.

Q23 : What is a service definition file?
A : The cloud service definition file (.csdef) defines the service model, including the number of roles.

Q24 : What is fabric?
A : In the Windows Azure cloud fabric is nothing but a combination of many virtualized instances which run the client application.

Q25 : How to programmatically scale out Azure Worker Role instances?
A : Using AutoScaling Application Block