Interview Q&A- Cloud Solutions Architect, Cloud Engineer, DevOps

What are the benefits, advantages of cloud computing?

- Scalability - Agility - High Availability - Pay as you go - Moving from Capex to Opex - Fault Tolerance - High Response Time - High Bandwidth - Low Latency Deep dive: Scalability It can be termed as an ability of the application to handle growing amount of work without degrading the performance. Basically system can grow without limits based on demand. Scalability is of 2 types - 1. Vertical or Scale Up - In this type of scaling configuration we increase the capacity of the existing hardware or machine. For example, if you are having a desktop of 4GB RAM and tomorrow you increase the RAM of your machine to 16GB then this is nothing but the vertical scaling. 2. Horizontal or Scale Out - In this type of scaling configuration we increase the count of machines without increasing the capacity. For example, if you have a server of 8GB RAM and tomorrow you put another server of same RAM and so on. When you do horizontal scaling essentially you increase the computing power in parallel so you get better performance. This is horizontal scaling. Agility The system is easy to evolve as business changes. This defines a degree to which your application can be evolved/ changed/ modified depending on the business or requirement changes. High Availability Basically this defines how much your application is available for its end users. Customers or users will always expect zero downtime of the application. High availability means your application can withstand below common types of downtime scenarios - - Hardware failures - Application updates - Configuration changes - OS update restarts - Heavy load restarts Microsoft Azure Interview Questions Page. 6 Pay as you go This is the most lucrative benefit of cloud. With cloud you pay only for what you use. If you are not in the need of resources, you can free them/ de-allocate them and you are not charged for it. The billing is absolutely "per minute" billing giving you more saving on cost. Moving from Capex to Opex This stands for moving from "Capital Expenditure to Operational Expenditure". Companies today don't wish to invest on hardware as hardware is changing at rapid pace. Therefore, instead of investing on hardware cost which may become obsolete after certain time span they are more interested and willing to pay operational cost on monthly, yearly basis. This is nothing but the Capex to Opex. As Microsoft Azure being "Pay as you go" model it becomes easy to move from Capex to Opex. Fault Tolerance It is the ability of the system to continue operating in full capacity and fully functional in the event of failure of some of its components. This simply means, if I have a web application and interacting with database then if the database is not accessible/down still my web application will be available for users. This means your application is fault tolerant.

What is IaaS, PaaS and SaaS?

1. IaaS - Infrastructure as a Service - a set of infrastructure level capabilities such as an operating system, network connectivity, etc. that are delivered as pay for use services and can be used to Host applications. Example, Azure VM, VNET. 2. PaaS - Platform as a Service - is about abstracting developers from the underlying infrastructure to enable applications to quickly be composed. This is specifically for developers who are willing to Build applications without worrying about management of hosting environment at all. Example, Azure Cloud services, Azure Web Apps, Storage, SQL Azure Database and so on. 3. SaaS - Software as a Service - applications that are delivered using a service delivery model where organizations can simply Consume and use the application. Typically, an organization would pay for the use of the application or the application could be monetized through ad revenue. Example, Office 365, Gmail, Saleforce.com, SharePoint online, CRM online and so on.

From your point of view, what are the relevant responsibilities of an AWS Solution Architect?

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What is TFS build system in Azure?

A Build is the solution of an output. In Azure projects, you get the record with a .cspkg extension that implies a Cloud Service Package is utilized for the deploymment of your cloud administrations. Build Servers - In general terms a build server goes about as the machine where you put your deployment packages. To utilize Team Foundation Build, you should have no less than one build machine. This machine can be a physical machine or a virtual machine. Build Controllers - Manufacture Controllers are the component in the build system that accepts the build requests from any task inside the group project. Each build controller is dedicated to a solitary team project collection. So there is a balanced relationship between a team project and a build controller. Build Agents - Build Agents are components in the build system that accomplishes more processor-concentrated work.

What do you comprehend about Hybrid Cloud?

A Hybrid cloud is a blend of internal and external cloud services, a mix of a private cloud joined with the utilization of public cloud services. This kind of cloud is most appropriate when you need to keep the classified information at your vicinity (private cloud) and consume alternate services from a public cloud.

What is Cmdlet in Azure?

A cmdlet is a lightweight command that is utilized as a part of the Microsoft PowerShell environment. The cmdlets are summoned by the Windows PowerShell to automate the scripts which are in the command line. The Windows PowerShell runtime additionally invokes them automatically through Windows PowerShell APIs.

What is the concept of the table in Windows Azure?

A table is one kind of Azure Storage, where you can store your information away. Blobs are put away in compartment and Entity in a table. Following are the key concepts in a table. Tables allow structure data storage . There can be 0..n tables in a storage account. Table store information as an accumulation of elements . An element has an essential key and properties as a key-value pair.

What are the three principle segments of Windows Azure Platform?

A. Windows Azure Compute Windows Azure gives a code that can be managed by the hosting environment. It gives calculation benefit through parts. Windows Azure backs 3 types of roles: Web roles utilized for web application programming and upheld by IIS7. Worker roles utilized for foundation handling of web roles. Virtual Machine (VM) roles utilized for moving windows server applications to Windows Azure in a simple way. ________________________ B. Windows Azure Storage It gives 4 types of storage services: Queues for informing between web parts and worker roles. Tables for storing structural data. BLOBs (Binary Large Objects) to store content, records or vast information. Windows Azure Drives (VHD) to mount a page blob. These can be transferred and downloaded by means of blobs. ________________________ C. Windows Azure AppFabric AppFabric provides 5 services: Service bus Access Caching Integration Composite

What do you know about an AMI?

AMI are generally considered as the templates for the virtual machines. While starting an instance, it is possible to select pre-baked AMI's that AMI commonly have in them. However, not all the AMI's are available to use free of cost. It is also possible to have a customized AMI and the most common reason to use the same is nothing but saving the space on Amazon Web Service. This is done in case a group of software is not required and AMI can simply be customized in that situation.

How to implement a private connection to AWS Services?

AWS offers a service called AWS Direct Connect that lets you establish a dedicated network connection between your network and one of the AWS Direct Connect locations. This dedicated connection can be partitioned into multiple virtual interfaces as a VLAN. This allows you to use the same connection to access public resources using public IP address space, and private resources using private IP space while maintaining network separation between the public and private environments. Describe advantages and disadvantages of using private network connections.

When Instances are launched in the cluster placement group, what are the network performance parameters that can be expected?

Actually, it depends largely on the type of Instance, as well as on the specification of network performance. In case they are started in the placement group, you can expect following parameters a. 20 Gbps in case of full duplex or when in multi-flow b. Up to 10 Gbps in case of a single-flow c. Outside the group, the traffic is limited to 5 Gbps.

Name the services which can be used for collecting and processing e-commerce data?

Amazon Redshift and Amazon DynamoDB are the best options. Generally, data from the e-commerce websites is in an unstructured manner. As both of them are useful for unstructured data, we can use them.

Name the method that you will use for moving the data to a very long distance?

Amazon Transfer Acceleration is a good option. There are other options such as Snowball but the same doesn't support data transfer over a very long distance such as among continents. Amazon Transfer Acceleration is the best option because it simply throttles the data with the help of network channels that are optimized and assures very fast data transfer speed.

Differences between Microsoft Azure and AWS?

Analytics- Azure Stream Analytics/ Amazon Kinesis Backup Options- Azure Backup/ Amazon Glacier Compliance- Azure Trust Center/ AWS CLoudHSM Content Delivery Network (CDN )- Azure CDN/ Amazon CloudFront Data Orchestration- Azure Data Factory/ AWS Data Pipeline Hybrid Cloud Storage- StorSimple/ AWS Storage Gateway Monitoring- Azure Operational Insights/ Amazon CloudTrail NoSQL Database Options- Azure DocumentDB/ Amazon Dynamo DB

What are the managed database services provided by AWS? What kind of SQL databases are supported by AWS?

Answer with the Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS). It is a web service that makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. It provides cost-efficient and resizable capacity while managing time-consuming database management tasks, allowing you to focus on your applications and business. It gives you access to the capabilities of a MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, or PostgreSQL database engines running on your own Amazon RDS cloud-based database instance with high availability configurations.

What is the Azure App Service?

Azure App Service is a completely managed Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering for proficient developers that conveys a rich arrangement of abilities to web, mobile and integration scenarios. Mobile Apps in Azure App Service offer a very adaptable, universally accessible mobile application development platform for Enterprise Developers and System Integrators that conveys a rich set of capacities to mobile engineers.

What is the distinction between Windows Azure Queues and Windows Azure Service Bus Queues?

Azure Queues gives a solid, diligent messaging between and within the services. it also highlights a very straight forward rest- based get/put/peek interface Bus Queues are a part of a more extensive Windows Azure messaging framework that supports queuing.

What is the way to implement Caching/Session Management mechanism in Azure?

Azure Redis Cache is the most commonly used Caching mechanism available as Platform as a Service (PaaS) in Azure. In the recent announcement, Microsoft mentioned that Azure Managed Cache and InRole cache will be retiring on 30th November 2016.

What is Azure Resource Manager (ARM) and what are benefits of ARM over Classic services (Cloud Services)

Azure Resource Manager (ARM) is the deployment methodology/strategy to deploy your Azure components in Azure (IaaS and PaaS components). It acts like container of multiple resources however it can span across regions and services. It is template driven, declarative and idempotent in nature. Following are the benefits of using Azure Resource Manager (ARM) over Classic Services (Cloud Services): You can deploy, manage, and monitor all of the resources for your solution as a group, rather than handling these resources individually. You can repeatedly deploy your solution throughout the development lifecycle and have confidence your resources are deployed in a consistent state. You can use declarative templates to define your deployment. You can define the dependencies between resources so they are deployed in the correct order. You can apply access control to all services in your resource group because Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) is natively integrated into the management platform. You can apply tags to resources to logically organize all of the resources in your subscription. You can clarify billing for your organization by viewing the rolled-up costs for the entire group or for a group of resources sharing the same tag.

What is Azure cloud service?

Azure cloud service is an offering from Azure and specifically designed for hosting web applications, background processing applications [similar to traditional windows service applications] and Azure IaaS workloads means Virtual Machines. Cloud Service in Azure is a container under which applications run. The web application in cloud service is termed as "Web Role" whereas background processing applications are termed as "Worker Role". Every cloud service created from Azure provides you a DNS name such as "YourCloudServiceName.cloudapp.net". This DNS name is used for accessing web applications over internet. An Azure subscription can contain any number cloud services and one cloud service can contain any number of roles. Each role can run any number of "Instances (virtual machines)" on which actual application executes. To develop an application cloud service, roles aware we need Azure SDK. Using Azure SDK one can create cloud service type of project from tools such as Visual Studio (for .net) or Eclipse (for java).

What are the different Storage's in Windows Azure?

BLOB : BLOBs offer a component for storing a lot of content or binary data, for example, pictures, sound and visual documents. It can scale up to 200 terabytes and can be acquired by utilizing REST APIs Table : Tables represents storage areas across machines for information that is in the form of properties on the cloud. Line : The sole target of a Queue is to empower communication amongst Web and Worker Role instances. They help in storing messages that may accessed to by a customer.

What do you know about the Shared Responsibility Model established with AWS? Could you please explain more about what is the responsibility of a customer?

Because you're building systems on top of the AWS platform, the security responsibilities will be shared. While AWS manages the security of the cloud, security in the cloud is the responsibility of the customer. Customers retain control of the security they choose to implement to protect their own content, platform, applications, systems, and networks, no differently than they would have for the applications in an on-site datacenter.

What is cloud computing

Cloud computing is basically a great level of abstraction over the infrastructure that can help you to focus more on your business logic without having to worry about hosting or infrastructure needs. This is the general term used for delivering the hosted services over the internet. In cloud computing the computing resources are providing "as a service". Just like Electricity, you pay to electricity provider and get the electricity at your home and for this you don't need to create any infrastructure. Cloud computing provides you computing resources as a service where you don't have to focus on infrastructure requirements.

What is Microsoft Azure

Cloud computing is the concept and this concept has been implemented by many companies. For example, Amazon implemented it and named their product as Amazon EC2 or Amazon web services, Google call it as Google App Engine and so on. On similar lines Microsoft also created a product based on cloud computing concept and it is called as "Microsoft Azure". So MS Azure provides a platform with cloud computing capabilities so that you can get all the benefits of cloud computing.

What will happen if the content is absent in CloudFront and a request is made?

CloudFront sent the content from the primary server directly to the cache memory of the edge location. As it's a content delivery system, it tries to cut down the latency and that is why it will happen. If the operation is performed for the second time, the data would directly be served from the cache location.

What is Text Analytics API in Azure Machine?

Content Analytics API is a part of content examination web administrations worked with Azure Machine Learning. The API can be utilized to analyze unstructured content for tasks, like, sentiment analysis and key phrase extraction. The API restores a numeric score between 0 and 1. Scores near 1 show positive sentiment, while scores near 0 demonstrate negative sentiment. The upside of this API is that another new model need not be planned and prepared, the user just needs to bring the data and call the service to get the sentiment results.

What is an EC2 instance? How to protect and reuse it?

Explain that EC2 is a web service that provides resizable computing capacity in the cloud. Describe how to create an AMI, taking EC2 snapshot to backup, and reuse EC2 instance

How to increase the availability of your applications? How to avoid bottlenecks in the performance of your applications?

Describe AWS load balancing solutions. Remember that services like Elastic Load Balancing automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple Amazon EC2 instances in the cloud. It enables you to achieve greater levels of fault tolerance in your applications, seamlessly providing the required amount of load balancing capacity required to distribute application traffic. Describe ELB services, the difference between application and classic load balancing service.

How to create your own resources into the AWS Cloud?

Describe Amazon VPC service. Notice that Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) lets you provision a logically isolated section of the AWS Cloud, where you can launch AWS resources in a virtual network that you define. You have complete control over your virtual networking environment, including the selection of your own IP address range, the creation of subnets, and the configuration of route tables and network gateways. Highlight VPC security settings using security groups and ACLs for subnets.

What kind of instances does AWS offer?

Describe all EC2 instance types. Each EC2 instance type comprises varying combinations of CPU, memory, storage, and networking capacity giving you the flexibility to choose the appropriate mix of resources for your applications. For more information refers to https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/

Which AWS services are offered for business intelligence?

Describe each AWS related service, highlight Amazon Redshift as a fast, fully managed, petabyte-scale data warehouse solution that makes it simple and cost-effective to efficiently analyze all your data using your existing business intelligence tools. From the end-user analytic point of view, there exists a service named Amazon QuickSight which is a very fast, easy-to-use, and cloud-powered business intelligence (BI) service. It makes it easy for all employees within an organization to build visualizations, perform ad-hoc analysis, and quickly get business insights from their data. Amazon QuickSight integrates automatically with AWS data services, enables organizations to scale to hundreds of thousands of users, and delivers fast and responsive query performance to them via the SPICE engine.

How will you improve the deployment and management of AWS services?

Describe how AWS services as AWS Elastic Beanstalk, AWS OpsWorks, and Cloudformation contribute to improving the deployment and management of AWS services?

Which option exists to accelerate the performance of a web application?

Describe how to improve the performance of web applications by allowing you to retrieve information from a fast, managed, in-memory system, instead of relying entirely on slower disk-based databases. AWS offers a service called Amazon ElastiCache, it can not only improve load and response time to user actions and queries but also reduce the cost associated with scaling web applications.

What other AWS services do you use at the application level?

Describe in detail all the application services provided by AWS like SNS, SES, SQS, and Workflow. Remember that Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) is a highly scalable and cost-effective email-sending service for businesses and developers. On the other hand, Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) is a web service that makes it easy to set up, operate, and send notifications from the cloud. It provides developers with a highly scalable, flexible, and cost-effective capability to publish messages from an application and immediately deliver them to subscribers or other applications. Finally, Amazon Simple Queue Service offers a reliable, highly scalable hosted queue for storing messages as they travel between computers. By using Amazon SQS, developers can simply move data between distributed application components performing different tasks, without losing messages or requiring each component to be always available. Amazon SQS makes it easy to build an automated workflow. Don't forget that Amazon Simple Workflow Service (Amazon SWF) is a web service that makes it easy to coordinate work across distributed application components. Amazon SWF enables applications for a range of use cases, including media processing, web application back-ends, business process workflows, and analytics pipelines, to be designed as a coordination of tasks.

What is Cloud Computing? What are their principal characteristics and benefits?

Explain the meaning of cloud computing, talk about characteristics as flexibility, elasticity, pay on demand. Describe each different cloud models as IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. Reflect on the benefits and myths of the cloud.

What are storage options provided by AWS?

Describe in detail all the storage options provided by AWS like EBS, S3, Glacier etc. Remember that AWS offers many different storage services, including Amazon S3, Amazon EBS, Amazon EFS, and Amazon Glacier. Amazon S3 is an object storage service, Amazon EBS is a block storage service, Amazon EFS is a file storage service, and Amazon Glacier is a long-term archive storage service. Refer depending on scenario what is the best storage option.

How to deliver content faster?

Describe in detail the service like Amazon CloudFront which is a content delivery web service. It integrates with other AWS services to give developers and businesses an easy way to distribute content to end users with low latency, high data transfer speeds, and no minimum usage commitments.

When there is a need to acquire costs with an EIP

EIP stands for Elastic Internet Protocol address. Costs are acquired with an EIP when the same is associated and allocated with a stopped instance. In case only one Elastic IP is there with the instance you are running, you will not be charged for it. However, in case the IP is attached to a stopped instance or doesn't attach to any instance, you need to pay for it.

What is purpose of cloud service configuration file (.cscfg)?

Every cloud service type of project contains .cscfg file and primarily is used for storing - - Number of role instances to deploy for each role in cloud service project - Thumbprint of certificates used if any - And most important, User defined configuration settings The primary aim or purpose of this file is to allow configuration changes in production environment without downtime of your application.

How to enable an automatic scaling solution according to the user demand?

Explain about Auto scaling features of AWS. Remember that Auto Scaling allows you to scale your Amazon EC2 capacity up or down automatically according to conditions you define, and it is particularly well suited for applications that experience hourly, daily, or weekly variability in usage. Describe how to create a launch configuration, an auto-scaling group including common limits and how to monitor it using Cloudwatch and how to establish automatic alerts and actions.

What is the difference between SQL and NoSQL Database in AWS?

Explain about RDS options and DynamoDB characteristics, their differences, benefits, and purpose of each related to AWS service.

What is the AWS free tier? What is included in it?

Explain how the AWS Free Tier is designed to enable you to get hands-on experience with AWS cloud services; and what AWS services are freely available for 12 months following your AWS sign-up date, as well as additional service offers that do not automatically expire at the end of your 12-month AWS Free Tier term.

How cloud you implement a DNS service in AWS? How could you register a new domain name? How could you implement a low-latency, fault-tolerant architectures managing Web application traffic?

Explain services like Amazon Route 53, a highly available and scalable Domain Name System (DNS) web service. You can use Amazon Route 53 to configure DNS health checks to route traffic to healthy endpoints or to independently monitor the health of your application and its endpoints. Amazon Route 53 makes it possible for you to manage traffic globally through a variety of routing types, including Latency Based Routing, Geo DNS, and Weighted Round Robin—all of which can be combined with DNS Failover to enable a variety of low-latency, fault-tolerant architectures. Don't forget that Amazon Route 53 also offers Domain Name Registration - you can purchase and manage domain names such as example.com and Amazon Route 53 will automatically configure DNS settings for your domains.

What is the best practice for achieving the High availability of applications running on Azure VM having web tier and DB tier?

For achieving high availability in case of Azure IaaS VMs - Availability sets should be used along with at least 2 instances of VMs and implement this redundancy at every web tier and DB tier.

Tell us various parameters that you should consider while selecting the Availability Zone?

For this, there are various parameters that should be kept in mind. Some of them are performance, pricing, latency, as well as response time.

What is AWS?

Highlight AWS leadership in the cloud. Describe briefly some of the AWS services with which you feel at ease, for example, EC2, RDS, DynamoDB, Cloudformation etc... Note that AWS has comprehensive security capabilities that support virtually any cloud workload.

As an AWS Solution Architect, how could you implement Disaster recovery on AWS?

If you want to enable faster disaster recovery of their critical IT systems without incurring the infrastructure expense of a second physical site, you should use AWS services. Remember, that the AWS platform supports many popular disaster recovery (DR) architectures, from "pilot light" environments that are ready to scale up at a moment's notice, to "hot standby" environments that enable rapid failover and enable rapid recovery of your IT infrastructure and data.

When there is a need to consider Provisional IOPS than Standard RDS storage in AWS?

In case you have hosts that are batch oriented, there is a need for same. The reason is provisional IOPs are known to provide faster IO rates. However, they are bit expensive when compared to other options. Hosts with batch processing don't need manual intervention from the users. It is because of this reason provisional IOPs are preferred.

.What is the option to connect on premises Database in case user is not willing to open up VNET based connectivity?

In such case, a WCF service can be developed and hosted on premises. This WCF service will have CRUD operations specifically against the on premises database. Then Service bus relay option can be used for invoking on premises WCF service from Azure hosted web application to access the database. Use of WCF and service bus relay will avoid the option of VPN connectivity using Azure VNETs offerings.

How terminating and stopping an instance are the different processes

Instance performs a regular shutdown when it is stopped. It then performs transactions. As the entire EBS volumes remain present, it is possible to start the instance anytime again when you want. The best thing is when the instance remains in the stopped state, users don't need to pay for that particular time. Upon termination, the instance performs a regular shutdown. After this, the Amazon EBS volumes start deleting. You can stop them from deleting simply by setting the "Delete on Termination" to false. Because the instance gets deleted, it is not possible to run it again in the future.

What are the states available in Processor State Control?

It contains two states and they are: P-state- It has different levels starting from P0 to P15. P0 represents the highest frequency and P15 represents the lowest frequency. C-State- Its levels are from C0 to C6 where C6 is the strongest state for the processor. It is possible to customize these states in a few EC2 instances which enable users to customize processor as per need.

What is Windows Azure Traffic Manager?

It enables Users to control the distribution of user traffic of installed Azure cloud services.There are 3 distinctive load balancing strategies provided by Azure. The Manager who works on traffic apply's a routing policy to the Domain Name Service (DNS) questions on your domain names and maps the DNS courses to the apt instances of your applications.

What is table storage in Windows Azure?

It is a NoSQL datastore which acknowledges verified calls from inside and outside the Windows Azure cloud. Windows Azure tables are perfect for putting away organized, non-relational data Table: A table is an accumulation of elements. Tables don't implement a pattern on elements, which implies a solitary table can contain substances that have distinctive arrangements of properties. A record can contain numerous tables.

Which Instance can be used for deploying a 4-node cluster of Hadoop in Amazon Web Services?

It is possible to use i2.large or c4.8x large Instance for this. However, c.4bx needs better configuration on the PC. At some stages, you can simply launch the EMR for automatic configuration of the server for you. Data can be put into S3 and EMR is able to pick it from there. It will load your data in S3 again after processing it.

What happens if the AWS Direct Connect fails to perform its function?

It is recommended to backup the Direct Connect as in case of power failure you can lose everything. Enabling BFD i.e. Bi-directional Forwarding Detection can avoid the issues. In case no backup is there, VPC traffic would be dropped and you need to start everything from the initial point again.

At what value the instance's tenancy attribute is to be set for running it on single-tenant hardware

It should be set to the Dedicated Instance for smoothly running it on single-tenant hardware. Others values are not valid for this operation.

What is Log Analytics (Operational Management Suite)?

Log Analytics (OMS) (formerly known by "Operational Insights") in Azure cater all requirements in one single service and takes care of Log Analytics, Automation, Availability and Security at one single place. It provides single dashboard which gives all details of Logs, IIS Logs, Storage and other Infrastructure Log and Capacity planning details. Log Analytics also extend itself to On Premise infrastructure, Amazon (AWS) workload and Open Stack beside traditional Windows and Linux virtual infrastructure in Azure. Log Analytics also enables you to generate Power BI data source from which you can build Power BI visuals for your data. Log Analytics leverages OMS which also gives you Security and Threat Management related data with all necessary details like Login Information, IP Addresses etc. It is paid services and comes with 3 different pricing tier as Free, Standard and Premium. It helps you to search Logs across your infrastructure from a single dashboard and also allows you to export the results as well. Hence this becomes one single point/dashboard for all your logs of all your infrastructure irrespective whether it is Windows or Linux or On premise or Azure hosted.

An application front end is hosted on Azure but due to security reasons customer want database to be hosted on-premises within his office building. What are the different ways to handle this connectivity scenario in Azure?

Looking at the requirement of connecting single on premises DB machine to Azure hosted application, Azure VNET based "Point to Site" can be considered as correct choice in this scenario for Azure to on premises connectivity. Point to Site is ideal choice for establishing VPN connectivity between on premises resources and Azure resources where number of resources to be connected is limited.

What is Migration Assistant tool in Azure Websites?

Migration Assistant tool will examine your IIS installation and recognize which sites can be migrated to the cloud, featuring any components which can't be migrated or are unsupported on the platform. Once broke down this tool will likewise create sites and databases provided under given Azure membership.

Is it possible to run the multiple websites on EC2 server with one Elastic IP address?

No, it's not possible. We need more than one elastic IP in such a case.

Name the approach that restricts the access of third party software in Storage Service to S3 bucket named "Company Backup"?

There is a policy named custom IAM user policy that limits the S3 API in the bucket

What is Federation in SQL Azure?

Organization in SQL Azure is introduced for scalability. federation helps both managers and developers to scale information. It helps managers by making repartitioning and redistributing of information simpler. It enables developers in the layer of routing and sharing of information. It helps in routing without application downtime.

What are the differences between an public cloud and a private cloud?

Private clouds are those that are constructed solely for an individual enterprise. They enable the firm to have applications in the cloud while tending to concerns with respect to data security and control that is frequently ailing in an public cloud environment. It is otherwise called an internal cloud or enterprise cloud and dwells on the organization's intranet or hosted data center where the data is protected.

What is profiling in Azure?

Profiling is only a procedure of measuring the performance analysis of an application. It is normally done to guarantee that the application is sufficiently steady and can maintain overwhelming traffic. Visual Studio gives us different tools to do it by gathering the performance information from the application that likewise helps in the troubleshooting issues. Once the profiling wizard is run, it sets up the execution session and collects the data of the sample The profiling reports helps in: Deciding the longest running strategies inside the application. Measure the execution time of every strategy in the call stack. Assess memory allocation.

What is Public, Private and Hybrid cloud implementation with respect to Azure?

Public Cloud - All components of your application/ system are running in Azure only. Private Cloud - You are running Azure services and features within on-premises data center OR you are using on premises data center for hosting your system or applications. Hybrid Cloud - Combination of Public and Private. Some part or components of your application running on Azure where as some part of your application is running within on premises datacenter.

Compare RDS, Redshift, and DynamoDB?

RDS is basically a DBM service that is considered for relational databases. It is useful for upgrading and patching of data automatically. However, it works for structured data only. On the other side, Redshift is used in Data analysis. It is basically a data warehouse service. When it comes to DynamoDB, it is considered when there is a need to deal with unstructured data. RDS is quick as compared to both Redshift and DynamoDB. All of them are powerful enough to perform their tasks without errors.

How to achieve zero downtime in cloud service deployments during upgrades and all hardware failures?

Run at least 2 instances of each role within a cloud service. When we have 2 or more instances running for a role in cloud service then automatically the deployment gets distributed across different fault and upgrade domains and achieves almost or near to zero downtime.

What is SQL Azure Database?

SQL Azure database is just an approach to get associated with Cloud Services where we can store our database into Cloud. Microsoft Azure is the most ideal approach to utilize PAAS where we can have different databases on a similar Account. Microsoft SQL Azure has a similar component of SQL Server, i.e. high accessibility, versatility and security in the core. Microsoft Azure SQL Database has an element, it makes backups automatically of each active database. Consistently a backup is taken and geo-repeated to empower the 1-hour recuperation point objective (RPO) for Geo-Restore.

What is the difference between SQL Server on Azure VM and Azure SQL Database?

SQL SERVER ON VM : 1. This is IaaS offering on Azure 2. Access to underlying VM is available. 3. Automated backups, DR and high availability is not available and one needs to configure it. 4. Eliminates Hardware cost 5. Distributed transaction or all SQL server capabilities are supported. 6. DB mirroring, Log shipping, transaction replication supported. 7. SSIS, SSRS, SQL agent is available. SQL AZURE DATABASE : 1. This is PaaS offering on Azure. It is also termed as "Database as a service (DBaaS)". 2. Access to underlying VM is not available and everything to be accessed over TDS (Tabular Data stream) based endpoint. 3. DR, Backup and High availability is available default. 4. Eliminates hardware and administration cost as well. 5. Distributed transaction is not supported. - Additionally there are restrictions on the usage of some reserved keywords also. - Use command not supported. 6. DB mirroring, Log shipping, transaction replication not supported. 7. SSIS, SSRS, SQL agent is not available.

What is AutoScaling in Azure?

Scaling by including extra instances is frequently referred to as scaling out. Windows Azure likewise supports scaling up by utilizing bigger role rather than more role instances.By adding and expelling role instances to your Windows Azure application while it is running, you can adjust the execution of the application against its running costs. An autoscaling solution reduces the amount of manual work engaged in dynamically scaling an application.

What are the other VNET options for achieving connectivity with on premise and azure resources?

Site to Site and express route are other options for achieving cross premises connectivity. Site to site to specifically use when you have large number of resources to be connected. In some cases, Site to Site or Point to Site connectivity may introduce network latency as VPN created by these features work on public infrastructure (Internet) only. To overcome on this situation "Express Route" option can be taken which offers dedicated Leased Line based offering to overcome on latency issue.

What is the difference between On-demand instance and a Spot Instance?

Spot instance is similar to bidding and the price of bidding is known as Spot price. Both Spot and on-demand instances are pricing models. In both of them, there is no commitment for the exact time from the user end. Without upfront payment, Spot instance can be used while the same is not possible in case of On-demand instance. It needs to be purchased first and the price is higher than spot instance.

What is a Storage keys?

Storage keys or Access Keys are utilized as a validation mode for accessing to the storage services account to control data based on our prerequisites. In Windows Azure we have an alternative to give a Primary Access Key and a Secondary Access Key, despite the fact that we will utilize a solitary access key to confirm our application to the storage. The primary reason to give the secondary access key is to avoid downtime to the application.

What is the difference between Table Storage and SQL Azure Table?

TABLE STORAGE : 1. This is NoSQL store on Azure 2. As NoSQL, the data is stored in Key-Value pair combination and data is referred as an Entity. 3. Schema is not enforced while storing the data 4. Combination of partition and row key is treated as unique for an entity. 5. Can't have relationship between tables. 6. Being key-value store, we can't define objects such as Stored procedures, Views, functions. 7. General usage is observed for storing diagnostics information, error log information. SQL AZURE TABLE 1. This is relational store on Azure 2. The data is stored in Rows and Columns combination. 3. Schema is enforces while storing the data. If schema is violated, then error is thrown. 4. User can define various constraints such primary key, unique key. 5. We can define relationships between tables such as foreign key. 6. We can created Stored procedures, views, functions. 7.Used widely in transaction based systems.

What is table storage in Windows Azure?

Table: A table is a collection of entities.Tables don't uphold a blueprint on elements, which implies a solitary table can contain substances that have distinctive arrangements of properties. A record can contain numerous tables Entity: An entity is an arrangement of properties, like a database row. An entity can be upto 1MB in size. Properties: A property is a name-value pair. Every entity can incorporate up to 252 properties to store data. Every entity likewise has 3 system properties that determine a segment key, a row key, and a timestamp.

What is the AWS Storage Gateway?

The AWS Storage Gateway is a service connecting an on-premises software appliance with cloud-based storage, to provide seamless and secure integration between an organization's on-premises IT environment and AWS storage infrastructure. Notice when to use it, and how to use it for recovery or backup storage option.

Explain Azure Fabric?

The Azure Fabric is the principle core concept. It gives a service called the Azure Fabric Controller. It is called as OS for the Azure. Since it handles/oversees: All roles (processing) and resources. Sending and activating services. Monitoring the health for all services. Releasing and allocating of resources. Provisioning VM, terminating etc. Patches gets updated for installed OS on VM in the most automated form.

Name the Instances types for which the Multi AZ-deployments are available

The Multi-AZ deployments are simply available for all the instances irrespective of their types and use.

What is Azure Service Level Agreement (SLA)?

The SLA ensures that, when you send two or more role instances for each role, access to your cloud service will be maintained not less than 99.95 percent of the time. Additionally, identification and recorrection activity will be started 99.9 percent of the time when a role instance's procedure isn't running.

What are the various ways by which an on premises VM can be migrated to Azure?

The best and quick way can be to migrate the associated OS disk and data disks from on premises to Azure storage, and then provision VM out of it. For migration of on premises VM, we need to understand what is the virtualization platform used for hosting the VM. Various virtualization techniques are HyperV, VMWare etc. For creating VM on Azure requires VHD file only and that can be obtained from HyperV directly. In case VM is hosted on virtualization platform other than HyperV then we need to first convert the existing VM disks into vhd format and then can be uploaded to Azure storage. Once the disk files are present on Azure, VM can be provisioned.

On premises application running few windows services, console applications to handle certain tasks. What should be the approach for migration of such applications to Azure?

There are 3 ways by which we can achieve background process migration to Azure - 1. Azure Virtual Machine 2. Worker role 3. Azure Web Jobs

What is the significance of Connection Draining?

There are certain stages when the traffic needs to be re-verified for bugs unwanted files that raise security concerns. Connection draining helps in re-routing the traffic that comes from the Instances and which is in a queue to be updated.

How to control the access to your resources located at AWS? How could you protect your data at rest?

There is a service called AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) that enables you to securely control access to AWS services and resources for your users. Using IAM, you can create and manage AWS users and groups and use permissions to allow and deny their access to AWS resources. For protecting your data, there is AWS Key Management Service (KMS), it is a managed service that helps make it easy for you to create and control the encryption keys used to encrypt your data.

Name the practices available when it comes to securing the Amazon EC2?

This can be done through several practices. Review of the protocols in security group is to be monitored regularly and it is to be ensured that the principle of least is applicable over there. Next practice is using access management and AWS identity for controlling and securing the access. Access is to be restricted to hosts and networks that are trusted. In addition to this, only those permissions are opened which are required and not any other. It would also be good to disable password based logins for the instances.

What will happen if you launch the instances in Amazon VPC?

This is a common approach that is considered when it comes to launching EC2 instances. Each instance will be having a default IP addressed if the instances are launched in Amazon VPC. This approach is also considered when you need to connect cloud resources with the data centers.

Why is it not possible to change or modify the private IP address of an EC2 instance when it is running?

This is because the private IP remains with the instance permanently or through the life cycle. Thus it cannot be changed or modified. However, it is possible to change the secondary private address.

If an organization is facing a major change, what is your approach as AWS Solution Architect to suggest to face it? What steps will you perform to resolve this situation?

This reveals if the candidate for AWS Solution Architect position possesses an open interest in a future customer, understand their business model, and recognize actual changes and challenges.

How can you create a HDInsight Cluster in Azure?

To make an Azure HDInsight Cluster, open the Azure portal and then click on New, Data Services,then HDInsight. Hadoop is the default and native execution of Apache Hadoop. HBase is an Apache open-source NoSQL database based on Hadoop that gives random access and solid consistency for a lot of unstructured data. Storm is a distributed, fault tolerant, open-source computation system that enables you to process data in real time.

What is Windows Azure Portal?

To run an application, a designer gets to the Windows Azure portal through his Web program, by logging in with a Windows Live ID. The User at that point picks whether to create a host account for running applications, a storage account for storing data or both. Once the designer has a host account, He can utilize a Windows Azure portal to submit applications to Windows Azure.

What is the difference between Azure AD and Windows Server AD?

WINDOWS SERVER AD : 1. Windows AD offers 5 core services - ADCS, ADRMS, ADFS, ADDS, ADLDS. 2. Designed to operate in corporate network where companies have full control over topology. This exposes services exposed through various protocols like LDAP, Kerberos, DNS, AD replication etc. 3. Operations/ information can be retrieved from AD are performed through LDAP queries. 4. The management of devices are limited to corporate assets. 5. Can't be integrated with enterprise ready SaaS applications. 6. You have access to underlying Domain controller as this is Infra offering. AZURE ACTIVE DIRECTORY 1. Azure AD provides only one solution - "Identity management throughout the internet". 2. Type of communication is Http or Https and authentication protocols supported are OAuth, WS-Federation, SAMP-P. 3. Azure AD provides Graph API which is REST API. 4. Http and https enables support for any device that can talk over http/ (s) hence enabling true Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) scenario. 5. The nature of Azure AD enables to integrate with enterprise grade SaaS applications such as Salesforce, Facebook at work, dropbox and so on. 6. No access to underlying servers as this is PaaS offering and communication happens using internet facing endpoints.

What are the roles implemented in Windows Azure?

Web Role : It gives a web solution that is front-end. This is like an ASP.NET application. While under facilitating Azure gives IIS and required services. Worker Role : It gives a solutions of background service. It can run long activities. Virtual Machine Role : The roles of both web and worker are executed on virtual machines. The Virtual Machine Roles gives the client the capacity to modify the virtual machine on which the web and worker roles are running.

What do you know about the private and the public address?

Well, the private address is directly correlated with the Instance and is sent back to EC2 only in case it is terminated or stopped. On the other side, public address is correlated in a similar manner with the Instance till it is terminated or stopped. It is possible to replace the public address with Elastic IP. This is done when a user wants it to stay with Instance as per the need.

What is Windows Azure Scheduler?

Windows Azure Scheduler enable you to invoke activities -, for example, calling HTTP/S endpoints or presenting a message on a storage queue on any schedule. With Scheduler, you make jobs in the cloud that dependably call services both inside and outside of Windows Azure and execute those jobs on demand, on a routinely repeating schedule, or assign them for a future date.

What are the Features of Windows Azure?

Windows Azure runs and stores the information on Microsoft datacenters. The main Features are : Websites enable the designers to assemble the sites utilizing ASP.NET, PHP, etc and send these websites utilizing FTP, Git and etc QL Database, formally known as Azure database makes, broadens and scales the application into the cloud utilizing Microsoft SQL Server. This is Microsoft's platform as a service that supports the Multi-level applications and automated deployment.

Is it possible to use direct connect for transferring the objects from the data centers?

Yes, it is possible. Cloud Front simply supports custom origins and thus this task can be performed. However, you need to pay for it depending on the data transfer rates.

It is possible to use S3 with EC2 instances. How?

Yes, it's possible if the instances are having root devices and they are supported by the instance storage. Amazon uses one of the very reliable, scalable, fast, as well inexpensive networks for hosting all their websites. With the help of S3, it is possible for the developers to get access to the same network. There are tools available in AMI's that users can consider when it comes to executing systems in EC2. The files can simply be moved between EC2 and S3.

Is it possible to establish a connection between Amazon cloud and a corporate data center? How?

Yes, it's possible. For this, first, a Virtual Private Network is to be established between the Virtual private cloud and the organization's network. After this, the connection can simply be created and data can be accessed reliably.

Is it possible to run multiple DB for Amazon RDS free of cost?

Yes, it's possible. However, there is a strict upper limit of 750 hours of usage post which everything will be billed as per RDS prices. In case you exceed the limit, you will be charged only for the extra hours beyond 750.

Is it possible to speed up data transfer in Snowball? How?

Yes, it's possible. There are certain methods for this. First is simply copying from different hosts to the same Snowball. Another method is by creating a group of smaller files. This is helpful as it cut down the encryption issues. Data transfer can also be enhanced by simply copy operations again and again at the same time provided the workstation is capable to bear the load.

Is it possible to attach multiple subnets to a route table?

Yes, it's possible. They are generally considered when it comes to routing the network packets. Actually, when a subnet has several route tables, it can create confusion about the destination of these packets. It is because of no other reason than this there should be only one route table in a subnet. The route table can have unlimited records and therefore it is possible to attach multiple subnets to a route table.