Azure Devops Interview Questions and Answers

 

Azure Devops

1) What is DevOps?

DevOps is a set of practices and cultural values that aim to bridge the gap between software development and IT operations.It emphasizes automation of the software development and delivery process, continuous integration and delivery, and frequent testing and deployment of code. DevOps also stresses the importance of monitoring and logging in production to quickly identify and resolve issues.

The ultimate goal of DevOps is to improve the speed and efficiency of software delivery while maintaining high levels of reliability, security, and performance. By adopting DevOps practices, organizations can improve their ability to rapidly develop, test, and deploy new features and services, while also reducing downtime and improving overall customer satisfaction.

2) What is the need for DevOps?

In Traditional software development, after completing the development part, the code deployment time was huge. And many times, we heard the common fights between the Development Team and Operations Team or deployment team that it works fine on our system, it’s the sever causing problem and operation team defenses it’s not your server it’s your code, Right? Well, DevOps solves the Traditional Dev and Ops fights by breaking the wall of confusion.

3) How DevOps Works?

DevOps is the practice of operations and development engineers that work together in the entire project lifecycle, from the design and development process to production releases and support.

Starting from design and development to testing automation and from continuous integration to continuous delivery, the team works together to achieve the desired goal. People having both development and operations skill sets working together and use various tools for CI-CD and Monitoring to respond quickly to customer’s need and fix issues and bugs.

4) What are the benefits of DevOps?

The main benefits of implementing DevOps are:

• Customer Satisfaction.

• More engaged and Collaborative Development and Operation teams.

• DevOps Deploy code faster in the market through Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery.

• Faster Operational Support.

• Strong Infrastructure Performance and IT performance.

• Less failures and continuous improvement.

• Transparency between the team.

• Constant Monitoring and better adaption.

• Increase efficiency

5) What are the DevOps tools?

To Implement DevOps, Automation plays a major role and we defiantly need some tools for Implementation. Following are the major areas:

• Planning

• Code management

• Build and Testing

• Release management

• Deploy and Monitor

Here’s a list of tools that can help you meet your DevOps requirement perfectly.

6) Which tools are useful for Continuous Integration?

Azure Pipelines has support for all the platform like Linux, macOS, and Windows also we can consider following tools for the Continuous Integration.

• Jenkins 

• TeamCity 

• Travis CI 

• Bamboo 

• GitLab CI 

• CircleCI

• Codeship

7) Which tools are useful for Continuous Deployment?

Following are few useful Continuous Deployment tools

·       Azure Pipelines for Deployment.

·       Jenkins.

·       TeamCity.

·       Bamboo.

·       ElectricFlow.

·       Octopus Deploy.

·       AWS CodeDeploy.

·       DeployBot.

·       Shippable.

8) What is InfrastructureConfiguration Which tools are useful for InfrastructureConfiguration?

In today’s fast and competitive market, many companies demand a faster deployment process and Infrastructure Configuration, so treating Infrastructure as software and manage the processes such as version control, continuous integration, deployment and automated testing will make infrastructure changes more rapidly and reliably.

Following are the most popular tools for Infrastructure Configuration.

• Chef

• Puppet

• Ansible

9) What is Continuous Testing? What is the use of Test Automation in DevOps?

DevOps is not about jobs or tools, it’s about people, culture and automation. and to implement DevOps, continuous testing plays a very important role where writing scripts for software testing and make it auto executable so that we can automate the testing and do the frequent releases using the delivery pipelines.

We have to write unit testing to achieve Continuous Testing.

10) Which tools are useful for Continuous Testing?

For test Automation there are many open source tools are available, following are few names

·       Selenium

·       JMeter

·       JUnit

·       AntUnit

·       Cucumber

·       SoapUI

·       Tricentis Tosca

11) What is Continuous Monitoring?

DevOps and Agile are all about inspection and adaption to make continuous improvement in our process, and for that, we must have to monitor continuously the process, application performance and infrastructures.

By doing continuous infatuates monitoring, we can visualize the process and get the early alerts in real time. By analyzing that data, we can take decision wisely and adapt the things and process that best suits for the business.

12) Which tools are useful for Continuous Monitoring?

For continuous monitoring Nagios, SysDig and Zabbix are the famous open source tools available in the market. Infrastructure as code(laC) vendors like Amazon and Google have tools like AWS CloudWatch and StackDriver. Also, New Relic is a good option for continuous monitoring.

13) What is the container and What containers Azure DevOps support?

The container will provide a way to package your software code, its configurations, Packages and its dependencies into a single unit or object.

We can have multiple containers that can run on the same machine and share the operating system with other containers so that we can run anywhere fast and reliable and consistent deployments.

    Azure DevOps has the following container support.
·       Docker
·       Asp.Net with containers.
·       Azure Kubernetes services.
·       Azure Service Fabric application with Docker support.

14) What is Azure DevOps? What is the difference between Azure DevOps and VSTS Online?

Microsoft Visual Studio Team Services, now known as Azure DevOps having excellent application lifecycle management tool.

We can plan a project with Agile tools and templates, manage and run test plans, Version control source code and manage the branches, deploy the solution across all platform using Azure Pipelines, by implementing Continuous Instigation and Continuous Deployment.

15) What services Azure DevOps Provides?

Azure DevOps provides full application lifecycle management from planning to coding, and from testing to build and deploy.

16) List out some famous tools of DevOps ?

·       Jenkin

·       Travis CI

·       Bamboo

·       Hudson

·       TeamCity

·       CircleCI

·       JIRA

·       Slack

·       Zoom

·       Clarizen

·       Asana

·       SVN

·       Git

·       Bitbucket

·       GitHub

17) Mention various phases of DevOps ?

The given below are the different phases of DevOps

·       Plan: plan is essential for any application which requires the development, preparing plan for the process of development is the best practice

·       Code: The code of application is designed according to the needs of users.

·       Build: with the help of different codes that are generated in earlier steps, the build of the application created.

·       Test: Test plays an essential role in the development of the It application, which helps to test the application and it re-built the application when required.

Integrate: It is used to collaborate the various codes, which are from multiple programers.

·       Deploy: It helps for the future use by forming the environment of the cloud from the deployed codes, and it maintains continuous functioning even though the new changes take place in the website with a high traffic.

·       Operate: When it is necessary operations take place on code.

·       Monitor: For the customer needs, the performance of the application is monitored

18) What are the advantages of Azure DevOps ?

The given below are some important advantages of the Azure DevOps

·       It delivers the software continuously.

·       It simply solves the problems which are complex.

·       It identifies the problems quickly and solves them with high speed.

·       It is also used for quick features transport.

·       It maintains the secured operating environment.

·       It is used to develop the collaboration of the various teams.

19) Describe about azure DevOps ?

It is a new version of Microsoft VSTS, it is used for the project planning by using the templates and the tools of Azure. Its functionality helps to manage and run the plans of the test, it is also used for the solution deployment through various platforms to leverage the pipelines. It provides CI and CD quick deployment.

20) Define Azure boards ?

It is a DevOps service which is used to manage the projects of software, It offers various sets of abilities like dashboards, reporting, scrum and kanban. Its essential feature contains queries, backlogs, sprints, dashboards and work items.

21) Describe about Azure repos ?

It is a system version control which is used for code management and various versions by using the lifecycle of the development. It is also used to track the changes for the code through various teams, the clear list of changes may be used for coordination between teams and collaborate the changes for future use.

One of the essential features of it is centralized version control and distributed version control. Git is an example for distributed version control, TFVC is an example for centralized version control.

22) Explain Azure pipelines ?

It is One of the essential azure cloud services, with which we can build and test the projects code automatically. It works productively with the help of major languages and types of the project, it shares that project code with other customers also.

23) Explain the test plans of Azure ?

They are Azure DevOps services which offer solutions for test management, it offers the essential abilities, exploratory testing, customer testing, planned testing manually. It maintains an extensive browser, which offers testing exploration along with stakeholders feedback storage. The essential techniques like testing exploration and manuals are required for the product development, they are the reason for testing automation.

24) Mention some important components of azure devops integration and the bit bucket ?

Answer for this question represents the relation between hosted agent and the service of external Git, its continuous integration and continuous deployment is congruent through Github and the server of Git such as bit bucket. Instead of transforming the complete Gitlab project, it is used for external respiratory connection to get the advantages of its continuous integration and the continuous development.

25) Describe the projects of Azure DevOps ?

Project of the azure devops is an essential choice for gaining experience, which is helped for code existence and Git repository to design the continuous delivery and integration pipelines of Azure DevOps.

26) Mention the services provided by Azure DevOps ?

It offers the complete lifecycle management of applications, that is from plan to code, and also from test to build and deployment.

27) Describe continuous monitoring ?

For simultaneous development of our process, agile and devops are used by adopting and spectations. We need to monitor the constant progress and the infrastructure, with the monitoring of simultaneous infatuation, we can do process visualization to gain quick alerts in real time. With the help of data analysis we can select and the process which suits our organization.

28) List Out some useful tools of continuous monitoring ?

·       Lansweeper

·       Spiceworks

·       Snort

·       Solarwinds

·       Nagios

·       Tenable

·       Ipswitch WhatsUp Gold

·       Paessler PRTG

·       Rapid7 Insight

·       Cisco Identity Services Engine

29) Name the web application which can be deployed with Azure ?

The given below are the web applications, that can be deployed with Azure

·       ASP.NET

·       PHP

·       WCF

30) Mention the service is used to manage the Azure resources.

Azure resource manager is the one for resource management, that contains various services like deployment, management etc.

31) What features does Azure DevOps provide?

Azure DevOps provides many integrated features that you can use based on your project requirement. You can access these features directly in the browser or IDE.

• Azure Boards to manage the PBIs and Tasks.
• Azure Pipelines for the automation of build pipelines and releases.
• Azure Repos allows you to manage your code versions.
• Azure Test Plans to manage the Test artifacts.
• Azure Artifacts manages the public and private package feeds.
• Azure OnePlan provides the capability for enhanced visibility and alignment of the team working on the project.

32) What is Azure DevOps Services?

Azure DevOps provides different services:

·       Azure Boards

·       Azure Pipelines

·       Azure Repos

·       Azure Test Plans

·       Azure Artifacts

·       Extensions Marketplace

34) What is the Azure DevOps Pipeline?

Azure DevOps Pipeline performs the build and testing of any type of projects with any programming language to make them available to other targets. Azure Pipeline is an automated combination of Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery to build, test the code project and ship it to deployment target.

35) What different ways does Azure DevOps offer to define pipelines?

You should have a basic understanding of key concepts such as triggers, stages, tasks, task group, variables, variable groups, build artifacts to create a release pipeline. Azure DevOps offers two ways to define pipelines:

Using YAML Syntax – Here you can use a YAML file to create your pipeline that you can version with your rest of code. The YAML file ‘azure-pipeline.yml’ contains all the code changes to build and deploy your infrastructure and application. You can also use YAML Editor in Azure DevOps portal to create your pipeline.

Using Classic Interface – Azure DevOps offers the capability to create releases using highly configurable and manageable pipelines by Classic User Interface. You can create releases to multiple stages with required approvals and checks using these pipelines. For more visit Define Classic Pipeline.

36) What is a Multi-stage Pipeline?

Multi-stage Pipeline allows you to define CI, CD or both in your single YAML pipeline code. It offers some benefits such as easy to maintain, you can easily check that in which stage your deployment is currently in, and many more. For more about Multi-stage pipeline visit Multi-stage Pipeline Azure DevOps.

37) Why should you use Azure DevOps Pipelines?

Azure pipelines comes with many benefits:

1.       Provides ability to work with any language or platform

2.      Provides integration with GitHub

3.      Can configure Open-Source Projects

4.      Has ability to deploy on different type of targets at same time

5.      Has integration with Azure Deployments

6.      Provide build on Linux, Windows and Mac Machines

38) What is Release in Azure DevOps?

Releases or Release Pipelines allow you to continuously deliver your software to customers at a faster rate with lower risk. Release pipelines provide capability to fully automate the testing and delivery of your software in multiple stages prior to production. You can control these automated ways by approvals or on-demand deployments.

Azure DevOps allows you to create release pipelines by navigating to Releases in Pipeline Menu. Once you click on ‘New’ then ‘New Release Pipeline’, It will navigate you to the new release pipeline page where you can specify Build Artifacts, Stages, Pre-deployment conditions, Variables and other Deployment options.

39) Explain variable and variable groups in Azure DevOps.

Variables allow you to store some data that can be used across pipelines. All variables are mutable and stored as strings.
Variable Groups provide the ability to use variables across multiple pipelines. You can store secrets in variable or variable groups.

40) What are Azure DevOps artifacts?

Azure Artifacts allows you to create and share npm, NuGet and Maven package feeds from private and public sources with a team. Azure artifacts has capability to manage all types of packages like npm, NuGet, Maven etc.
You can easily add fully integrated Package management to your Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery CI/CD pipelines with a single click or via ARM functionality. For more about Azure Artifacts visit Azure Artifacts.

41) What are Azure DevOps Test Plans?

Azure Test Plans is a planned and exploratory testing solution to improve code quality and provides three types of test management artifacts -test plans, test suites and test cases in Azure DevOps server.

42) What are Azure DevOps Repos?

Azure Repos is a set of version control tools by Azure DevOps. Azure repos are used to manage the code. It provides an unlimited number of private repositories, pull requests and code search for your projects. You can create a branch as per your requirement and can push the code from any IDE, GIT client or editor. Azure repos support two types of version control as below.

Git – is a distributed version control system and most widely used.
TFVC – Team Foundation Version Control – a centralized version control

43) What is Pull Request in Azure DevOps Repos?

Pull requests are used to review and merge code to a Git project. Pull requests allow your team to review your code and provide feedback on your code. Pull requests can come from either feature or topic branches in the same repository or from a fork.

44) What is Forks?

Forks provide a way to isolate confidential, risky and experimental changes from an original codebase. A fork is a complete new copy of code repository including branches, commits and files. A fork looks like someone cloned a repository and pushed to a new, empty repository. Once a Fork is created, you can not share fork files, branches with the original codebase unless pull request carries them along.

45) What are the major areas of DevOps tools?

The answer implies that automation plays a major role in the implementation of DevOps. Therefore, DevOps tools are highly dominant in the areas of planning, code management, building and testing, and release management. In addition, DevOps tools also have functionalities in deployment and monitoring tasks in the DevOps ecosystem.

46) What are the popular DevOps tools for continuous integration and continuous deployment?

The notable DevOps tools for continuous integration include Jenkins, GitLab CI, TeamCity, Bamboo, Codeship, CircleCI, and Travis CI. The popular DevOps tools for continuous deployment include Azure Pipelines for Deployment, Jenkins, Bamboo, DeployBot, Shippable, ElectricFlow, and TeamCity.

47) What is continuous testing and the ideal DevOps tools for the same?

 First of all, you need to understand that DevOps is not about tools or process improvements. DevOps focuses on people, automation, and culture changes. Therefore, automated testing through writing scripts to execute the testing process automatically enables frequent releases. Many opensource tools for test automation can help in achieving the DevOps objective of continuous testing. Some of the notable DevOps tools for continuous testing are Selenium, JMeter, AntUnit, JUnit, SoapUI, and Cucumber.

48) What is the difference between Azure DevOps Services and Azure DevOps Server?

 Azure DevOps Services is the cloud service of Microsoft Azure with a highly scalable, reliable, and globally available hosted service. On the other hand, DevOps Server is an on-premises offering, built on a SQL Server back end.

Enterprises choose the on-premises option when they need their day within their network. Another scenario for choosing on-premises involves the need for accessing SQL Server reporting services integrating effectively with Azure DevOps data and tools. Both Azure DevOps Services and Azure DevOps Server offer similar basic services, albeit with certain added benefits of the former. Here are the additional advantages of Azure DevOps Services.

·       Simpler server management.

·       Better connectivity with remote sites.

·       Faster access to new and productive features.

·       Transition in focus from capital expenditures on servers and infrastructure towards operational expenditures on subscriptions.

49) Which factors should I consider for choosing one from Azure DevOps Services and Azure DevOps Server?

 The important factors to consider before making the choice of a platform between Azure DevOps Services and Azure DevOps Server are:

·       Scope and scale data

·       Authentication requirements

·       Users and groups

·       Management of user access

·       Security and data protection precedents

·       Process customization

·       Reporting

50) What are the different DevOps solution architectures?

You can leverage multiple tools and technologies with Azure for the following DevOps scenarios to design solution architectures.

·       CI/CD for Containers

·       Java CI/CD using Jenkins and Azure Web Apps

·       Container CI/CD using Jenkins and Kubernetes on Azure Kubernetes Service

·       Immutable Infrastructure CI/CD using Jenkins and Terraform on Azure Virtual Architecture

·       DevTest image factory

·       CI/CD for Azure VMs

·       CI/CD for Azure Web Apps

52. What is the significance of having configuration management in DevOps?

Configuration management (CM) assists the team to streamline various tasks and accomplish them in less time. In this way, it enhances the organization’s agility and performance. Also, it assists in providing consistency and enhancing the product development process by implementing means of design streamlining, control, extensive documentation, and change implementation during different phases of the project. You can be aware of configuration management when you go through the devops tutorial.

53. Describe the flow of the DevOps pipeline?

Generally, a pipeline is a set of automated processes that are defined and being followed by the software engineering team. Essentially, DevOps pipeline permits the DevOps software developers and DevOps engineers to competently and consistently compile, create and deploy the software code into production environments.

The corresponding flow is as below:

·       Developer focus on accomplishing functionality.

·       The developer sets up his code for the test environment.

·       Testers work on authenticating the feature. The business team can arbitrate and give feedback.

·       Developers focus on the test as well as business feedback in a constant collaboration manner.

·       The code is finally handed over the production and authenticated again

54. What are the key differences between DevOps and Agile?

There are several similarities between DevOps and Agile methodology. But when it comes to software development, both are fundamentally unique approaches. Here are the differences between the two:

·       Agile prioritizes timeliness but DevOps provides identical priority to quality and timeliness.

·       DevOps presents smaller release cycles with instant feedback whereas Agile presents only smaller release cycles without instant feedback.

·       Agile depends on feedback from customers whereas DevOps depends on feedback from its monitoring tools.

·       The scope of work is agility only for Agile whereas it is agility and need for automation for DevOps.

55. What are the antipatterns of DevOps?

A pattern is the one that is most frequently followed by huge masses of entities. When a pattern is accepted by an organization by considering that it is being used by others without determining the requirements of the organization then it turns out to be an anti-pattern. Likewise, various myths around DevOps can lead to antipatterns, they are as below:

·       DevOps is not a culture but a process.

·       DevOps is nothing but an Agile approach.

·       There must be a distinct DevOps group.

·       DevOps resolves every problem.

·       DevOps associates to developers operating a production environment.

·       DevOps follows Development-driven management

·       DevOps does not excessively focus on development.

·       DevOps culture cannot be implemented because of the absence of the right set of people.

56. What are a few of the finest practices that must be followed for DevOps success?

Though you Learn DevOps Step by Step, it is important that you know which practices to follow for success in DevOps implementation.

Listed below are the important best practices necessary to be followed for DevOps implementation:

·       The speed of delivery implies the time taken for a task to continue into the production environment.

·       It is crucial to calculate the definite or the average time that it needs to recover in case any failure occurs in the production environment.

·       The number of bugs being mentioned by the customer also influences the overall quality of the application.

57. What is the DevOps toolchain?

DevOps toolchain is formed by a stack of tools. It automates some tasks like the development and deployment of your application. Tasks in DevOps can be carried out manually with easy steps, but the requirement for automation rapidly increases due to the rise in its complexity. Therefore, toolchain automation is important for continuous delivery. Basically, GitHub a Version Control Repository is recognized as the core component of a DevOps toolchain. In this toolchain, some other tools can be delivery pipelines, backlog tracking, etc. When you enroll in the Devops course in Hyderabad, you gradually become aware of various tools and toolchains in DevOps.

58. What does it mean by a branching strategy in DevOps?

Branching is a method implemented for code isolation. It creates a copy of the source code to make two versions that are separately developed. Various kinds of branching are available. Thus, the DevOps team should make a choice based on application requirements. Correspondingly, the choice is referred to as a branching strategy.

59. What is a Puppet?

Puppet is famously known as an open-source configuration management tool being utilized for the deployment, configuration, and management of servers. Essentially, its working is based on client-server architecture. In this architecture, the client is an agent whereas the server is recognized as the master. It is found that a puppet agent and master converse via a safely encrypted channel with the assistance of SSL.

60. What is the difference between Azure DevOps Services and Azure DevOps Server?

This is one of the trickier Azure DevOps interview questions. Azure DevOps Services is the cloud service of Microsoft Azure and it offers a highly scalable and reliable hosted service that is globally available. DevOps Server, on the other hand, is an on-premise offering that is on a SQL Server back end.

Enterprises go for the on-premise offering when they want their day within their network or when there is a requirement for accessing SQL Server reporting services that are integrated with Azure DevOps data and tools.

61. What are the different DevOps solution architectures?

Multiple tools and technologies can be leveraged with Azure to design solution architectures for the below DevOps scenarios:

·       CI/CD for Azure VMs

·       CI/CD for Azure Web Apps

·       CI/CD for containers

·       DevTest image factory

·       Using Azure Web Apps and Jenkins for Java CI/CD

·       Using Jenkins and Terraform on Azure Virtual Architecture for immutable infrastructure CI/CD

·       Using Jenkins and Kubernetes on Azure Kubernetes Service for Container CI/CD

62. What are the reasons to use CI and CD and Azure pipelines?

Make sure to go through this question as it is one of the important interview questions. Implementing CI and CD pipelines ensure quality and reliable code.

Azure pipelines are there to ensure a secure, easy, and quick way to automate project development processes and availability. They are entirely free for use in public projects and cost-effective for private ones (free 30 hours per month).

Below are a few reasons for using CI/CD and Azure pipelines:

·       Supports any platform or language

·       Enables work with open-source project>

·       Building on Windows, Mac, and Linux machines

·       Enables simultaneous deployment to various types of a target

·       Integration with GitHub and Azure deployments

·       Want to learn more about Terraform check out our course on Terraform Certification Course.

63. What should you do to make a NuGet package available to anonymous users outside your organization alongside minimizing the number of publication points?

The answer is the introduction of a new feed for the package. Packages that are hosted in Azure Artifacts, find storage in a feed. Sharing packages with higher scalability and according to requirements can be ensured by setting up permissions on the feed. These multiple feeds enable control of access to packages across four levels. These four levels of access are:

·       Owners

·       Readers

·       Contributors

·       Collaborators

 

64. How can you enable communication between members of the development team working in different locations around the world using Azure DevOps?

For such an application, the isolation of members of different project teams into different communication channels is the first criterion. Additionally, maintaining communication history in the concerned channels is necessary. Effective integration with Azure DevOps is also important for the application and allows one to add external suppliers and contractors to projects. The Microsoft teams have addressed these requirements through their offering of the right capabilities.

Classifying teams allows the creation of different channels by users for the organization of communications according to the topic. Every channel can include a few to thousands of users.

Microsoft Teams provides a guest access feature that allows the invitation of external people to join internal channels for the purpose of meetings,  file sharing, and messaging. It helps in B2B project management and can also directly integrate with Azure DevOps.

65. Which feature can be used for the development of a multi-tier application using Azure App Service web apps as the front end and Azure SQL database as the back end?

The appropriate option, in this case, is Application Map in Azure Application Insights. This is because it helps in identifying the performance bottlenecks as well as the failure hotspots in different components of the multi-tier applications.

Application components and the related dependencies are represented by the nodes on the map. Furthermore, it is also capable of providing the status for health KPI and alerts.

Become a master of Azure by going through this online Microsoft Azure Training

66. What are the necessary components for the integration of Azure DevOps and Bitbucket?

The integration of Azure DevOps and Bitbuckets requires a self-hosted agent and an external Git service connection. Since GitLab CI/CD is compatible with GitHub and Bitbucket. Instead of moving an entire project to GitLab, it is possible to connect the external repository. One can make use of GitLab CI/CD in this manner.

 

67. Explain Pair Programming with reference to DevOps.

Pair programming is an engineering practice of Extreme Programming Rules. It involves two programmers working on the same system and on the same design/code/algorithm.

One programmer can be the driver and the other as the observer and constantly monitor the progress of a project and identify problems. The roles can be removed at any moment without prior intimation.