Advanced Azure DevOps Interview Questions and Answers
1. What is Azure DevOps?
Azure DevOps is a suite of services including Repos, Pipelines, Boards, Artifacts and Test Plans for managing end-to-end DevOps lifecycle.
2. Difference between Azure DevOps and GitHub Actions?
Azure DevOps provides full ALM tools, while GitHub Actions focuses mainly on CI/CD workflows.
3. What is YAML pipeline?
A pipeline defined as code using YAML file stored in repository for CI/CD automation.
4. Difference between Classic pipeline and YAML pipeline?
Classic uses UI-based configuration; YAML uses code-based configuration and version control.
5. What is Azure Artifacts?
Package management service for Maven, NuGet, npm and Python packages.
6. What is Service Connection?
Secure connection between Azure DevOps and external services like Azure, AWS or Docker registry.
7. What is Variable Group?
A shared set of variables used across multiple pipelines.
8. What is Secure File in Azure DevOps?
Used to store sensitive files like certificates and keystores securely.
9. What is Pipeline caching?
Technique to reuse dependencies between pipeline runs to reduce build time.
10. What is Multi-stage pipeline?
Pipeline with stages like Build, Test, Deploy for structured delivery flow.
11. How do you implement approvals in pipeline?
Using environment approvals or manual intervention tasks.
12. What is Release pipeline?
Used for deploying build artifacts to environments like dev, test and prod.
13. What is Infrastructure as Code in Azure?
Provisioning infra using ARM templates, Bicep or Terraform.
14. What is Azure Key Vault integration?
Storing secrets centrally and referencing them in pipelines or applications.
15. What is Blue-Green deployment in Azure?
Two environments used; traffic is switched using Azure Load Balancer or Traffic Manager.
16. What is Canary deployment in Azure?
Gradual release of new version using traffic splitting.
17. What is Azure Monitor?
Service for collecting metrics, logs and alerts from Azure resources.
18. What is Application Insights?
APM tool for monitoring application performance and failures.
19. What is Azure Policy?
Service to enforce organizational rules and compliance.
20. What is RBAC in Azure DevOps?
Role-based access control to manage permissions for users and groups.
21. What is Self-hosted agent?
Agent installed on your own machine or VM to run pipelines.
22. What is Microsoft-hosted agent?
Preconfigured agent provided by Microsoft for pipeline execution.
23. What is Environment in Azure DevOps?
Logical target for deployments with approvals and checks.
24. What is Branch policy?
Rules like mandatory reviews and build validation before merge.
25. What is Pull Request validation?
Triggering pipeline on PR to validate code quality.
26. What is Artifact promotion?
Using the same build artifact across all environments instead of rebuilding.
27. What is Azure DevOps Boards?
Work item tracking system for Agile and Scrum projects.
28. What is Work Item automation?
Automatically updating work items based on pipeline status.
29. What is GitOps in Azure?
Deployment strategy where Git is the source of truth for infrastructure and app state.
30. Why Azure DevOps for enterprises?
It provides security, scalability, CI/CD automation and full project lifecycle management.
31. What is Azure DevOps REST API?
API used to automate DevOps tasks like creating builds, releases and work items.
32. What is Test Plans in Azure DevOps?
Manual and exploratory testing management service.
33. What is Pipeline as Code?
Managing pipelines using version-controlled YAML files.
34. What is Drift detection in Azure?
Identifying difference between deployed infra and defined IaC templates.
35. What is Hybrid cloud deployment?
Deploying applications across on-prem and Azure environments.
36. What is Azure DevTest Labs?
Service to quickly create test environments with cost control.
37. What is Azure DevOps security best practice?
Least privilege access, secret management, audit logs and branch protection.
38. What is YAML template?
Reusable pipeline code for standardization.
39. What is Progressive delivery?
Releasing features gradually with monitoring and feedback.
40. Why use Azure DevOps with Kubernetes?
For CI/CD automation, Helm deployment and cluster integration.
Source: sureshtechlabs.com