Top 25 Interview Questions With Answers For AZ-204T00

Navigating the world of Microsoft Azure can be daunting, but having the right preparation can set you apart. This blog dives deep into the top 25 interview questions and answers for the AZ-204T00 certification, ensuring you're ready to impress.

Top 25 Interview Questions with Answers for AZ-204T00: Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure

1. What is Azure App Service, and how does it help developers?

Azure App Service is a fully managed platform for building, deploying, and scaling web apps. It supports multiple languages such as .NET, Java, Node.js, Python, and PHP. Developers benefit from built-in CI/CD support, auto-scaling, custom domains, TLS/SSL, and seamless integration with Azure DevOps and GitHub. It abstracts away infrastructure management, allowing teams to focus purely on application development and deployment.

2. What is the difference between Azure Blob Storage and Azure File Storage?

Azure Blob Storage is optimized for storing large amounts of unstructured data such as text or binary, while Azure File Storage offers a fully managed file share in the cloud that can be mounted as a network drive. Blob Storage is best for media streaming and big data analytics; File Storage is ideal for shared storage needs across VMs using SMB protocol.

3. How can you secure sensitive data in Azure Functions?

Securing sensitive data in Azure Functions involves:

• Using Azure Key Vault to store secrets and keys.
• Leveraging managed identities for secure service-to-service communication.
• Ensuring app settings are encrypted and not hard-coded.
• Enforcing HTTPS connections.
• Applying RBAC policies and role assignments to function apps.

4. What are Durable Functions in Azure?

• An extension of Azure Functions that allows for stateful workflows.
• Supports patterns like function chaining, fan-out/fan-in, and human interaction.
• Best suited for long-running processes.
• Handles checkpoints and state management automatically.
• Uses orchestrator, activity, and client functions.

5. How does Azure Cosmos DB ensure high availability and scalability?

• Globally distributed with multi-region writes and reads.
• Offers 99.999% availability SLA.
• Supports horizontal partitioning via partition keys.
• Uses multi-model APIs: SQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, Gremlin, Table.
• Elastic throughput and storage scaling on demand.

6. What triggers are available in Azure Functions?

• HTTP trigger (via API calls)
• Timer trigger (scheduled tasks)
• Blob trigger (on blob changes)
• Queue trigger (message queues)
• Event Grid trigger (event-driven)
• Service Bus trigger (enterprise messaging)

7. Explain the difference between IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS in Azure.

8. How can you implement caching in Azure applications?

Caching can be implemented using Azure Cache for Redis:

• Provides in-memory data storage.
• Reduces database round trips and improves performance.
• Supports pub/sub messaging.
• Offers geo-replication for redundancy.
• Enables persistent cache by using Redis persistence.

9. What is the role of Azure Event Grid in building serverless applications?

Azure Event Grid is a fully managed event routing service that enables reactive programming by supporting an event-driven architecture. It allows components to subscribe to and react to events in real-time. Event Grid supports high throughput and low latency, making it suitable for serverless applications that respond to storage changes, custom app events, or Azure resource events.

10. What is the difference between Azure Table Storage and Azure SQL Database?

11. How can you manage secrets in a .NET Azure App without hardcoding them?

Secrets in a .NET Azure App can be managed using Azure Key Vault. By referencing secrets from Key Vault in your application configuration, and enabling managed identity for the app, you ensure secure access without exposing secrets in code. This decouples sensitive configuration data from your application code and enables automated rotation and policy enforcement.

12. What are the key benefits of Azure Logic Apps?

• Enables workflow automation with minimal code.
• Integrates with over 200 connectors like Outlook, Salesforce, Twitter.
• Supports conditional logic and looping.
• Easily monitors workflows through built-in diagnostics.
• Suitable for B2B scenarios using EDI and enterprise integration.

13. How does Azure Monitor help developers maintain application health?

Azure Monitor collects telemetry data such as metrics, logs, and traces from applications and infrastructure. It integrates with Application Insights to provide distributed tracing, dependency maps, failure diagnostics, and performance analysis. Developers can set up alerts, dashboards, and workbooks to ensure proactive monitoring and troubleshooting of application issues.

14. How can developers implement retry logic in Azure SDK?

• Use RetryPolicy from SDK libraries.
• Configure exponential backoff.
• Use Polly library in .NET for advanced retry logic.
• Customize retry count and interval.
• Handle transient failures gracefully in distributed systems.

15. What are managed identities in Azure?

• Automatically managed identity for Azure services.
• Used to authenticate to services like Key Vault, SQL, Storage.
• Two types: System-assigned and User-assigned.
• Eliminates need for credentials in code.
• Works with RBAC to authorize resource access.

16. How do you deploy an Azure Web App using ARM templates?

You define the web app’s configuration in an ARM JSON template file. Use az deployment group create to deploy it. The template includes resource type, location, app settings, SKU, and tags. This ensures infrastructure-as-code and repeatable deployments.

17. What are the key differences between Azure Functions and Azure Logic Apps?

19. What are the options for message queuing in Azure?

• Azure Queue Storage – Simple queuing for background jobs.
• Azure Service Bus Queues – Enterprise-grade messaging with ordering and sessions.
• Event Grid – Pub/sub messaging for reactive apps.
• Event Hubs – For telemetry and real-time streaming.

20. How do you connect a .NET Core app to Azure SQL Database securely?

Use Azure Active Directory Authentication and Managed Identity. Configure the connection string without username/password and set AAD as the authentication mode. This ensures your app uses its identity to access the DB securely.

21. What is the role of Azure API Management (APIM)?

Azure API Management allows developers to publish, manage, secure, and analyze APIs in a centralized environment. It provides features like rate limiting, API gateway, OAuth 2.0 support, developer portal, and analytics. APIM acts as a front door for backend services, improving security and scalability.

22. What are deployment slots in Azure App Services?

• Enable zero-downtime deployments.
• Create staging, testing, or QA slots.
• Swap slots after verification.
• Rollback easily by re-swapping.
• Isolate production from incomplete deployments.

23. What is Azure Cognitive Search and how is it used?

Azure Cognitive Search is a cloud-based search-as-a-service solution. Developers use it to add rich full-text search capabilities to applications. It supports filters, scoring, faceting, and natural language processing. It’s commonly used in e-commerce, document search, and knowledge bases.

24. How can you secure an Azure Function endpoint?

• Apply Function-level authorization keys.
• Use JWT tokens with Azure AD authentication.
• Restrict IP addresses using IP filtering.
• Set up CORS policies for specific domains.
• Use Private Endpoints for internal access.

25. What are the ways to deploy code to Azure Web Apps?

• GitHub Actions for CI/CD.
• Azure DevOps Pipelines.
• FTP/FTPS uploads.
• Zip Deploy through Azure CLI.
• Local Git Repos push.
• Visual Studio Publish.