Top 25 Interview Questions With Answers For AZ-305T00

Preparing for the AZ-305T00 exam can be daunting, but with the right guidance and resources, you can ace it. This blog post provides the top 25 interview questions and answers to help you succeed in designing Microsoft Azure infrastructure solutions.

Top 25 Interview Questions with Answers for AZ-305T00: Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions

The AZ-305T00 exam is critical for professionals aiming to validate their expertise in designing Microsoft Azure infrastructure solutions. To help you prepare, we've compiled a comprehensive list of the top 25 interview questions along with detailed answers. These questions cover a wide range of topics, ensuring you have a thorough understanding of the subject matter.

1. What is the AZ-305 certification and who should take it?

The AZ-305 certification, “Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions,” is aimed at IT professionals aspiring to become Azure Solutions Architects. It tests your ability to design cloud infrastructure, networking, security, and identity solutions on Microsoft Azure. It is best suited for individuals with experience in Azure administration (AZ-104) and foundational knowledge of IT operations, including networking, virtualization, and security. The certification ensures candidates can translate business requirements into secure, scalable, and reliable Azure solutions.

2. How would you design a highly available application architecture in Azure?

Designing a highly available application involves leveraging multiple Azure services that ensure redundancy and failover. You would typically deploy applications across multiple Azure Availability Zones within a region to mitigate single-point-of-failure risks. Load Balancers (Azure Load Balancer or Application Gateway) distribute incoming traffic across healthy instances. Azure Traffic Manager can also be used for DNS-based global distribution. Database availability can be enhanced using Azure SQL with geo-replication or Cosmos DB with multi-region writes.

3. What is the difference between Azure Availability Sets and Availability Zones?

Azure Availability Sets are used to ensure that VMs are deployed across multiple fault domains (power sources) and update domains (maintenance schedules) within a single data center. This protects against local hardware or software failures. On the other hand, Availability Zones are physically separate locations within an Azure region. Each zone has independent power, networking, and cooling, offering greater fault tolerance. For higher SLA requirements, Availability Zones are the preferred choice.

4. What key factors should be considered when designing identity solutions in Azure?

• Use Azure Active Directory (AAD) for identity and access management.
• Implement Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for additional security.
• Use Conditional Access Policies to control access based on user, location, and device.
• Design B2B and B2C identity solutions for external partners and customers.
• Integrate with on-premises Active Directory using Azure AD Connect.

5. What are the best practices for designing a secure networking solution in Azure?

• Use Network Security Groups (NSGs) and Azure Firewall for traffic control.
• Implement Private Endpoints and Service Endpoints for secure service connectivity.
• Use Virtual Network (VNet) Peering to connect VNets across regions securely.
• Employ Azure Bastion for secure RDP/SSH access to VMs.
• Monitor traffic using Azure Network Watcher and NSG flow logs.

6. How would you design a disaster recovery (DR) strategy using Azure services?

• Implement Azure Site Recovery (ASR) to replicate workloads across regions.
• Use Geo-redundant Storage (GRS) for data durability.
• Leverage Traffic Manager to reroute traffic to healthy endpoints.
• Use Azure Backup for consistent, encrypted backups.
• Define Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) per application.

7. Compare Azure Storage Account types.

10. How would you secure sensitive data in Azure?

• Encrypt data at rest using Azure Storage Service Encryption.
• Use Azure Key Vault for managing secrets and certificates.
• Implement Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) for SQL databases.
• Apply Azure Disk Encryption for VM disks.
• Use RBAC and Access Policies for strict access control.

11. What considerations are important when designing monitoring solutions in Azure?

• Integrate Azure Monitor to collect metrics and logs.
• Use Log Analytics for querying and analyzing collected data.
• Configure Alerts and Action Groups for proactive notifications.
• Deploy Application Insights to monitor application performance.
• Enable Network Watcher for diagnosing network issues.

12. How do you design network segmentation in Azure?

• Create multiple VNets for isolated environments.
• Use subnets to segment workloads logically.
• Apply NSGs to control traffic at subnet or NIC level.
• Leverage Azure Firewall or 3rd party appliances for deep packet inspection.
• Implement User Defined Routes (UDRs) to control traffic flow.

13. What is Azure Policy and how does it help governance?

Azure Policy is a governance tool that allows you to enforce rules and effects on resources in your Azure environment. It helps ensure compliance with organizational standards by auditing, enforcing, or preventing deployments that don’t meet specific conditions. For example, you can prevent VMs from being deployed in unapproved regions or enforce the use of tags for resource tracking.

14. What are design principles for scalable Azure applications?

• Use stateless services for easier scaling.
• Leverage Auto-scaling with Azure App Services or VMSS.
• Decouple components using message queues like Azure Service Bus.
• Design with asynchronous processing for long-running tasks.
• Employ caching using Azure Cache for Redis.

15. What is Azure Blueprint and how does it differ from ARM templates?

• Azure Blueprint is a higher-level service to define governance and resource setup together.
• Combines policies, RBAC, ARM templates, and resource groups into a single package.
• ARM templates are focused on resource deployment, while Blueprints focus on environment setup and compliance.
• Blueprints help manage compliant environments across subscriptions.

16. How do you choose between Azure SQL Database and Cosmos DB?

• Use Azure Arc to manage on-prem and multi-cloud resources.
• Integrate on-prem AD with Azure AD Connect.
• Extend networks using VPN Gateway or ExpressRoute.
• Use Azure Stack HCI for hybrid workload deployment.
• Ensure identity and policy consistency across environments.

18. What are the design strategies for multi-region deployment in Azure?

• Deploy active-active or active-passive architectures using Traffic Manager.
• Replicate databases using Geo-redundant storage or SQL geo-replication.
• Use Front Door or CDNs for faster content delivery and failover.
• Consider data residency and compliance requirements.
• Implement consistent CI/CD pipelines across regions.

19. What is role-based access control (RBAC) and how is it used in Azure?

RBAC in Azure allows you to grant granular access to users, groups, or applications. It works by assigning roles to security principals at different scopes such as management group, subscription, resource group, or resource. Common built-in roles include Owner, Contributor, and Reader. RBAC helps enforce the principle of least privilege and secure access control.

20. How does Azure Front Door differ from Azure Traffic Manager?

21. How would you implement cost control in a large Azure environment?

• Use Azure Reservations for predictable workloads.
• Tag resources to track usage per department or project.
• Set budgets and alerts via Cost Management.
• Choose the right VM sizes and storage tiers.
• Periodically review unused resources and scale-down.

22. What are considerations for designing secure API access in Azure?

• Use Azure API Management to expose APIs securely.
• Enforce authentication via OAuth2/JWT.
• Implement rate limiting and throttling policies.
• Secure backends with VNET integration or private links.
• Log and monitor usage via Azure Monitor and App Insights.

23. How would you design an IoT solution using Azure services?

• Use IoT Hub for device connectivity and management.
• Stream data via Azure Stream Analytics.
• Store data using Azure Data Lake or Blob Storage.
• Analyze data with Azure Synapse Analytics or ML models.
• Secure communication with device provisioning services (DPS).

24. How do you handle identity federation in Azure?

• Use Azure AD B2B/B2C for external identity management.
• Connect on-prem AD via AD FS or Azure AD Connect.
• Use SAML, OIDC, or OAuth protocols for federation.
• Enforce MFA and Conditional Access policies.
• Enable Just-In-Time (JIT) access for third-party users.

25. What are the components of a well-architected framework in Azure?

• Cost Optimization: Avoid unnecessary costs and right-size resources.
• Operational Excellence: Use monitoring and automation for consistent operations.
• Performance Efficiency: Use scalable and performant compute, storage, and network services.
• Security: Implement least privilege, encryption, and threat detection.
• Reliability: Ensure availability, backup, and disaster recovery plans.