Top 18 Azure DevOps Interview Questions in 2022

Azure DevOps is a comprehensive solution suite that helps software development and operations teams build and deploy applications on the cloud. That is why it is among the top skills that companies look for when hiring a DevOps professional. This article discusses the 18 questions you are most likely to be asked when appearing for an Azure DevOps interview. It also mentions the questions relevant for entry-level, intermediate, and senior positions.

DevOps is a software deployment approach that helps developers and operations departments collaborate effectively. Azure DevOps is a Microsoft offering that enables users to organize their work, collaborate on code development, and create and deploy apps employing developer services. It promotes a collaborative culture and supports practices that bring together developers, project supervisors, and code contributors. As a result, businesses can build and enhance software products more quickly than conventional methodologies. 

That is why agile DevOps is becoming the default standard for software development, and Azure’s toolkit is one of the leading technologies in demand. Azure DevOps skills can help a candidate streamline DevOps processes and use Microsoft’s cloud-hosted tools and offerings to build great products with minimum infrastructure efforts. When applying for such a job, candidates must first undergo an extensive Azure DevOps interview to test their familiarity with the tools and processes. 

Here are the top Azure DevOps interview questions that can help one secure a job in entry-level, intermediate, or senior positions.

See More: Top 10 DevOps Certifications and Courses in 2022

Entry-level Azure DevOps Interview Questions 

First, we will discuss the questions and answers needed to succeed in an entry-level Azure DevOps interview.

1. Why is DevOps required?

Code deployment was typically slow using traditional means in a non-agile or non-DevOps-enabled software development landscape. The development side of the DevOps team and the operations team or deployment team could have arguments regarding the progress of the project from time to time, with each side pointing blame at either the server or the code. DevOps steps in as a solution in such cases.

With DevOps, businesses try to roll out minor improvements that they might deliver to customers via quick releases instead of providing a whole set of features at one time. This has numerous advantages – such as immediate customer feedback, higher software quality, and fewer errors, contributing to increased user satisfaction. Companies must do four things to achieve this:

• Increase deployment frequency.
• Minimize failure rate in new releases. 
• Reduce the time between fixes.
• Recover faster if a release fails

These requirements are met by DevOps, which aids in achieving seamless software delivery, particularly when powered by tools like Azure DevOps. Companies such as Amazon, Etsy, and Google employ DevOps to attain performance levels unfathomable with more conventional and compartmentalized techniques. These performance levels would have been impossible to achieve without the usage of DevOps. They deliver tens, hundreds, or even thousands of lines of code daily while maintaining high levels of dependability, security, and stability. 

2. What is Azure DevOps and how does it work?

Microsoft VSTS (Visual Studio Team Services), an application lifecycle management service, was renamed Azure DevOps in 2018 – in response to the ascent of the Microsoft Azure cloud and rising demand for DevOps features.

People with development and operations expertise collaborate to build a wide range of software products using continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) tools and Azure DevOps monitoring solutions. This helps them respond quickly to user requests, resolve issues, and find and fix defects. The agile tools and templates available in the Azure DevOps suite assist in project planning and execution. Its other features include source code version control, test plan management and implementation, and branch management.

Additionally, it provides Azure Pipelines to help with solution deployments across multiple platforms, allowing for continuous integration and deployment in heterogeneous environments.

3. What is Azure Repos?

In the course of the design and development process, Azure Repos serves as a version control system that manages the many versions of a code and the code itself. It makes it much simpler to monitor and track any changes to the code that several teams may have made. 

It maintains a detailed record of the modifications that have been made and the history of those changes to increase team collaboration while also maintaining responsibility. One may readily implement changes at a later time, or they might reject them altogether. Both a centralized solution in the form of Team Foundation Version Control and a distributed version control system in the form of Git are made available to users of Azure Repos.

4. What are containers, and which ones does Azure DevOps support?

A container is a software package that decouples an application from its environment and bundles its code with the necessary configuration files and libraries and the dependencies required for the app to operate. 

As a result, developers and IT professionals can deploy apps across environments seamlessly. Containers provide encapsulation of configurations, software code, dependencies, as well as packages into a singular object or unit. Multiple containers may operate on the same machine and share the same operating system, allowing for speedy, consistent, and reliable deployments everywhere. Azure DevOps is compatible with container solutions, such as Docker, Azure Kubernetes services, Asp.Net with containers, and Azure Service Fabric application with Docker support.

5. What exactly is the DevOps toolchain?

The stack of tools necessary to complete the critical DevOps phases makes up the DevOps toolchain. It automates essential operations, such as application deployment or testing. You can complete some DevOps tasks manually in the more simple phases – but the need for automation grows as the complexity of tasks increases. As a result, the DevOps toolchain is critical for continuous delivery while maintaining quality. Essentially, GitHub, a version control repository, is central to the DevOps toolchain, and its other components include delivery pipelines, backlog tracking, etc. 

6. Explain the various DevOps phases.

The seven stages that Azure DevOps must follow are listed below:

• Plan: Any application that requires development needs a project plan, and establishing a plan for the development process is advisable before commencing.
• Code: The application is tailored to the needs of its users, using fresh code written from scratch or open-source repositories. 
• Build: The build phase of the program is designed based on various code packages generated in prior stages. This is when the code is prepared for deployment.
• Test: Testing (also termed quality assurance or QA) is an integral part of the DevOps process since it helps test and re-construct the application.
• Integrate: This phase gathers several programmers’ code and consolidates different versions, features, and components.
• Deploy: The application code is pushed into the production environment for deployment. It will consequently become available to end-users. 
• Operate: When necessary, operations are carried out on code to ensure quality. One may also reconfigure infrastructure operations to improve the application’s performance. 
• Monitor: The application’s performance is evaluated to meet the needs of the customers.

See More: DevOps Roadmap: 7-Step Complete Guide

Intermediate-Level Azure DevOps Interview Questions 

The next set of questions is relevant for professionals with two to seven years of experience. 

7. What are Azure Test Plans?

Microsoft’s Azure Test Plans is a web-based solution that runs on the software as a service (SaaS) delivery paradigm and is hosted in the cloud. It has an integrated test management system that can be accessed using a web browser, as well as essential tools for user acceptance testing, exploratory testing, and scheduled manual testing. In addition to that, it includes an extension for the browser that enables exploratory testing and input from stakeholders.

Testing a product or service the old-fashioned way, i.e., by manual code, and using exploratory testing are two effective methods for determining its overall quality. Additionally, Azure Test Plans emphasize DevOps and automated testing, both of which contribute to an improvement in the overall quality of a project. This improvement is achieved by integrating the efforts of developers, team managers, testers or QA professionals, product owners, and user experience (UX) advocates.

8. What is Jenkins, and how can it be integrated with Azure Pipelines?

Jenkins is a popular Java-based open-source continuous integration (CI) server that enables DevOps teams to build applications across several platforms in real-time. Azure Pipelines can help developers build applications on any platform, including Windows, Linux, and Mac. It also connects effectively with Jenkins for DevOps teams who already use or prefer Jenkins for CI.

Developers can integrate Jenkins with Azure Pipelines in two ways. The first approach is to run CI tasks separately in Jenkins. This requires configuring a Jenkins CI pipeline and an Azure DevOps webhook to trigger the continuous integration process when a developer pushes the source code to a repository or branch.

Another option is to wrap a Jenkins CI operation inside an Azure pipeline. In this technique, an Azure Pipelines build definition will be set to leverage Jenkins tasks to invoke a CI job in Jenkins, and download and publish the artifacts produced by Jenkins. 

9. What are fault domains and update domains?

Fault domains and update domains are the two IT infrastructure redundancy options available to Azure DevOps users. The former is a logical set of the underlying hardware that shares a common power source and network switch. It is similar to a rack in an on-premise data center in terms of its operations. The Azure platform distributes virtual machines (VMs) among various fault domains, which reduces the impact of physical hardware failures, network outages, and power outages.

The latter (update domains) is also a logical collection of the underlying hardware – the difference is that it may be serviced or rebooted simultaneously. The Azure platform distributes the VMs among various update domains. As the Azure platform goes through pre-scheduled maintenance at regular intervals, this strategy assures that at least one application instance is always available. 

10. Can you briefly explain the concept of virtual machine scale sets, and do scale sets work with Azure availability sets?

Users can construct and manage a group of load-balanced VMs using Azure virtual machine scale sets. The number of virtual machine instances can be increased or decreased automatically in response to demand or a set schedule. Scale sets give the applications high availability while allowing users to manage, configure, and upgrade many VMs from a single site. Using virtual machine scale sets, one may create large-scale services for areas like computation, big data analysis, and container workloads.

Yes, scale sets do work with Azure availability sets. A scale set of VMs and an availability set of VMs can coexist in the same virtual network. Control node VMs (which often require special configuration) can be placed in the availability set, whereas data nodes are placed in the scale set.

11. What is continuous testing?

As the name implies, continuous testing is the execution of automated tests at regular intervals whenever code changes are performed. These tests are executed as a component of the software deployment process to offer quicker feedback on source repository-published changes. Initially, the goal of continuous testing was to reduce the amount of time required to deliver feedback to developers. The fundamental purpose is to test more frequently, particularly at the individual level early in development.

Eventually, one must test the unified codebase as a whole. Continuous testing promotes the automation of tests wherever possible during the development cycle. This guarantees that teams analyze the code validity and overall quality at each level. These insights can assist organizations in determining whether the application is ready to enter the delivery pipeline.

12. What are the benefits to be gained from continuous testing?

Some of the primary benefits or advantages of adopting continuous testing are as follows: 

• Early detection of critical flaws
• Collaboration among developers, QA, and the operations team 
• Accurate assessment of code quality at each milestone
• Easy integration into the rest of the DevOps process
• Better code quality through faster test results
• Lower failure rates for new releases
• Rapid deployment of products to market 

See More: What Is DevOps Lifecycle? Definition, Key Components, and Management Best Practices

Senior-Level Azure DevOps Interview Questions

Finally, let us look at the questions typically asked during senior-level Azure DevOps interviews. 

13. What are the key advantages of using Azure Pipelines and CI/CD?

This is one of the most important interview questions that candidates will be asked. CI and CD pipelines are designed to provide high-quality, reliable code. Azure Pipelines is intended to offer a safe, straightforward, and speedy method of automating project development operations while also guaranteeing the availability of those processes. One may use it for free in public projects, and their pricing for private projects is quite competitive, with a free tier of up to 30 hours per month.

Some of the key advantages of using CI/CD on Azure Pipelines include:

• Any language or platform is supported.
• It allows you to work with open-source projects.
• Building on PCs running Windows, macOS X, and Linux is possible.
• It supports simultaneous deployment to different kinds of targets
• GitHub and Azure deployments are both supported.

14. How can one use Azure DevOps to enable communication in a development team located across the world?

To enable communication in distributed teams, one must first organize team members as per their function and collaboration requirements. It is possible to achieve this via designated channels on Microsoft Teams. 

It is also vital to keep track of communication history in the relevant channels. Integrating Microsoft Teams with Azure DevOps is essential because it enables users to add external experts and consultants to projects while retaining full visibility.

Microsoft Teams aids in DevOps communication in several ways. Users can create distinct channels for structuring communications based on the topic by classifying teams. These channels can have several users — ranging from hundreds to thousands. The guest access function lets you invite anyone from outside your organization to join internal streams for discussions, document sharing, and conversations. It aids in administering software development projects and may be seamlessly integrated with Azure DevOps.

15. What is NuGet? How can one allow anonymous external users to access a NuGet package while also reducing the number of publishing points? 

NuGet is the Microsoft-supported system for exchanging code for .NET (including.NET Core) frameworks. It defines how packages for .NET are created, hosted, and consumed, providing the tools for each of those functions. A NuGet package is a single ZIP file with the .nupkg extension that contains compiled code, any related files, and a detailed manifest that provides information like the package’s version number.

It may be feasible to make a NuGet package accessible to anonymous users from the outside world by adding a new feed that is associated with the package. This would be one such approach — i.e., to save packages that are hosted in Azure Artifacts in a feed so that they are more easily accessible. By assigning rights to the feed, you can make sure that data packets are exchanged with a focus on maintaining security and per the needs of certain roles. These feeds provide four layers of package access control. These are the four tiers of access – owner, readers, contributors, and collaborators. 

16. What distinguishes Azure DevOps Services from Azure DevOps Server?

This is a challenging Azure DevOps interview question. Azure DevOps Services offers a scalable and trustworthy hosted developer solution. In contrast, DevOps Server works on-premise with a SQL Server backend. When organizations prefer to retain their data inside their network or want access to SQL Server’s reporting services, they may choose the on-premise solution. 

17. Which feature can help create a multi-tier app – for example, with Azure SQL at the backend and Azure App Service web apps in front?

The Application Map is the suitable option in Azure Application Insights in this scenario. This is because it aids in detecting performance bottlenecks and failure hotspots in various components of multi-tier applications. The nodes on the map indicate application components and their dependencies. Additionally, it can provide the status of health key performance indicators (KPIs) and warning signals. 

18. How can a script be set up such that it will execute whenever a repository gets new commits from the push stream?

There are three different approaches to modifying a script so that it would run automatically whenever a repository obtains new commits through push: define a pre-receive hook or an update hook based on when one should trigger the script.

• When commits are pushed to the target repository, the pre-receive hook is activated and begins processing the data. Any script that is associated with this hook will be executed before the updating of any references. This is a helpful hook for running scripts that aid in enforcing development policies.
• The update hook functions like the pre-receive hook and is triggered before any changes are made. But the update hook is called just once for each commit published to the destination repository.

At this point, the post-receive hook of the target repository is activated, which occurs after updates are successfully merged into the repository. This is a fantastic method for configuring simple deployment scripts, invoking continuous integration systems, sending notification emails to repository maintainers, and other similar tasks. 

Hooks are not versioned and are instead kept locally in each Git repository’s directory. One may generate scripts in the hooks directory included inside the “.git” directory, or they can be generated in another location and associated within the directory.

See More: Scrum vs. DevOps: Understanding the Key Differences

Takeaways

The best Azure DevOps interviewing questionnaire given above may aid a candidate in successfully completing interviews and establishing a thriving career as a technical expert. Microsoft Azure is among the most likely choices for DevOps engineers because it is highly comprehensive, simple to integrate, and reasonably priced even at scale. 

The questions discussed in this article cover the most relevant topics for an Azure DevOps role, which an interviewer is likely to ask at the time of recruitment. Knowing the answers to these questions can help candidates when applying for an Azure DevOps position and during general DevOps interviews across platforms and environments.

Have you appeared for an Azure DevOps interview recently, and if yes, could you add a question to this list? Tell us on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . 

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