Azure DevOps Interview Questions with Answers updated March 2024

DevOps engineer looking to level up your skills or a job seeker preparing for an Azure DevOps interview, having a solid understanding of key concepts and best practices is crucial.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll delve into the realm of Azure DevOps interview questions, covering a wide range of topics to help you prepare effectively. From basic fundamentals to advanced scenarios, we’ll explore the most common questions asked by interviewers and provide in-depth explanations and insights to help you ace your interviews with confidence.

How can you leverage Azure Artifacts for package management in your projects?

Azure Artifacts is a package management service provided by Microsoft Azure, designed to help developers manage their dependencies and artifacts efficiently. Here’s how you can leverage Azure Artifacts for package management in your projects:

1. Set Up Azure Artifacts: Begin by creating an Azure DevOps organization if you haven’t already. Once set up, navigate to the Azure DevOps portal and create a new project. Within your project, you can enable Azure Artifacts.
2. Create Feeds: Feeds are containers for packages and can be thought of as repositories. You can create multiple feeds within Azure Artifacts to organize your packages based on projects, teams, or any other criteria that suit your needs.
3. Publish Packages: Once your feeds are set up, you can start publishing packages to them. You can publish various types of packages such as NuGet, npm, Maven, Python, and more. Use the appropriate client or command-line interface to publish your packages directly to Azure Artifacts feeds.
4. Manage Access Control: Azure Artifacts allows you to control access to your feeds. You can specify who has read, write, or manage permissions for each feed, ensuring that only authorized individuals or teams can access and modify packages.
5. Integrate with Build Pipelines: Azure Artifacts seamlessly integrates with Azure Pipelines, allowing you to automatically publish packages as part of your CI/CD process. You can configure your build pipeline to build your code, run tests, and then publish packages to Azure Artifacts feeds upon successful builds.
6. Pull Packages into Projects: Once packages are published to Azure Artifacts feeds, you can easily pull them into your projects as dependencies. Depending on the package manager you’re using (e.g., NuGet, npm, Maven), you’ll configure your project to fetch packages from the appropriate Azure Artifacts feed.
7. Versioning and Dependency Management: Azure Artifacts supports versioning of packages, enabling you to manage dependencies effectively. You can specify version ranges or pin specific versions of packages to ensure consistency and compatibility across your projects.
8. Monitor and Audit: Azure Artifacts provides monitoring and auditing capabilities, allowing you to track package downloads, view usage trends, and audit changes to packages. This helps you gain insights into how packages are being consumed within your organization and ensures compliance with regulatory requirements.

Describe the functionalities of Azure Release Management.

Azure Release Management is a vital component of the Azure DevOps suite, offering a range of functionalities to automate and manage the release pipeline for software applications. Here’s a breakdown of its key functionalities:

1. Release Pipelines Creation: Azure Release Management allows users to create release pipelines that define the steps and stages involved in deploying an application from development through to production. Users can customize these pipelines to suit the specific needs of their projects, including defining triggers, approval gates, and environment configurations.
2. Artifact Management: Release Management integrates seamlessly with Azure Artifacts and other artifact repositories, enabling users to store and manage the build artifacts generated during the continuous integration (CI) process. These artifacts serve as the deployable units for release pipelines, ensuring consistency and reliability in the deployment process.
3. Environment Configuration: Release Management enables users to define multiple deployment environments, such as development, testing, staging, and production. Users can configure each environment with specific variables, settings, and deployment targets to ensure that applications are deployed consistently across different stages of the release pipeline.
4. Deployment Automation: One of the primary functionalities of Release Management is automation. Users can automate the deployment of applications across various environments, eliminating manual intervention and reducing the risk of errors. Release Management supports a wide range of deployment targets, including Azure services, virtual machines, containers, and on-premises servers.
5. Deployment Gates: Release Management allows users to incorporate deployment gates into their release pipelines to enforce quality checks and ensure the stability of deployments. Deployment gates can include pre-defined conditions, such as automated tests, manual approvals, and integration with external monitoring systems, to validate the health and performance of applications before progressing to the next stage.
6. Rollback and Recovery: In the event of a deployment failure or unexpected issues in production, Release Management provides mechanisms for rollback and recovery. Users can easily roll back to a previous version of the application or trigger automated recovery actions to restore service availability, minimizing downtime and impact on end-users.
7. Release Analytics and Insights: Release Management offers built-in analytics and reporting capabilities to provide visibility into the release pipeline’s performance and status. Users can track key metrics, such as deployment frequency, lead time, and success rate, to identify bottlenecks, optimize processes, and drive continuous improvement.
8. Integration with Azure DevOps Ecosystem: Release Management seamlessly integrates with other Azure DevOps services, such as Azure Boards for work item tracking, Azure Repos for source code management, and Azure Pipelines for continuous integration. This tight integration enables end-to-end traceability and collaboration across the entire software development lifecycle.

What are the different access levels available in Azure DevOps?

The different access levels in Azure DevOps along with their corresponding license details:

1. Basic: Users with the Basic access level have access to essential features for software development and collaboration. This includes capabilities such as creating and managing work items (like tasks and bugs), accessing source code repositories, managing build and release pipelines, and accessing project wikis. The license display name is “Basic”, and the account license type is “express”.
2. Basic + Test Plans: This access level includes all the features of Basic access, along with additional access to Test Plans for test case management and execution. Users with this access level can create and manage test plans, execute tests, and track test results within Azure DevOps. The license display name is “Basic + Test Plans”, and the account license type is “advanced”.
3. Visual Studio Subscriber: Users with a Visual Studio Subscriber license have full access to Azure DevOps services. They have access to all features and capabilities, including advanced analytics, code search, and security features. The license display name is “Visual Studio Subscriber”, and the licensing source is “msdn”.
4. Stakeholder: Stakeholders have limited access to Azure DevOps services and are typically users who need minimal interaction with the platform. They have read-only access to most features, including viewing work items, dashboards, and reports. Stakeholders also have limited access to source code repositories. The license display name is “Stakeholder”, and the account license type is “stakeholder”.
5. Visual Studio Enterprise subscription: Users with a Visual Studio Enterprise subscription have access to all Azure DevOps features and capabilities, similar to Visual Studio Subscribers. However, this subscription level is typically associated with enterprise-level organizations and may include additional benefits such as enhanced support, security, and customization options. The license display name is “Visual Studio Enterprise subscription”, and the licensing source is “msdn”, with an “enterprise” MSDN license type.

What are service hooks in Azure DevOps and how can they be used for automation?

Service Hooks in Azure DevOps are a powerful feature that allows you to automate workflows and integrate external services with your Azure DevOps projects. Service Hooks enable you to set up automatic notifications and trigger actions in response to events that occur within your Azure DevOps organization. Here’s how they work and how they can be used for automation:

1. Event-based Triggers: Service Hooks can be configured to trigger actions based on a wide range of events that occur within your Azure DevOps projects. These events can include code commits, pull requests, work item updates, build completions, release deployments, and more.
2. Integration with External Services: Once a trigger event occurs, Service Hooks can invoke predefined actions or call web endpoints to integrate with external services, such as issue trackers, project management tools, chat platforms, or custom scripts. This allows you to automate tasks and keep your workflows synchronized across different tools and systems.
3. Predefined and Custom Actions: Azure DevOps provides a variety of predefined service hook actions for popular services like Microsoft Teams, Slack, GitHub, Jenkins, Azure Functions, and more. Additionally, you can define custom actions to execute specific tasks or workflows tailored to your organization’s requirements.
4. Configuration Flexibility: Service Hooks offer flexibility in configuring the conditions and actions for each hook. You can specify filters to trigger actions only for specific events or criteria, and you can define payloads to pass relevant data to external systems or scripts.
5. Streamlined Collaboration: By automating workflows with Service Hooks, teams can streamline collaboration and communication across different tools and teams. For example, you can automatically notify team members in a chat channel when a new work item is created or trigger a build pipeline in response to a code commit.
6. Continuous Integration and Delivery (CI/CD): Service Hooks play a crucial role in CI/CD pipelines by enabling automation of various stages, such as triggering builds and deployments, notifying stakeholders about pipeline status, and integrating with release management systems.
7. Monitoring and Alerting: Service Hooks can also be used for monitoring and alerting purposes. For example, you can configure hooks to trigger notifications or invoke actions when certain thresholds are exceeded, such as the number of failed builds or the duration of a deployment.

What are Azure DevOps Projects?

Azure DevOps Projects are a feature within the Azure DevOps platform that provide a streamlined and guided experience for creating and configuring DevOps pipelines and workflows. Azure DevOps Projects simplify the process of setting up CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment), source control, and other DevOps practices by offering pre-configured templates and workflows tailored to different types of applications and programming languages.

Key aspects of Azure DevOps Projects include:

1. Templates for Different Technologies: Azure DevOps Projects offer a variety of templates for different types of applications and technologies, such as .NET, Java, Node.js, Python, and more. These templates include predefined configurations for CI/CD pipelines, source control repositories, and other resources needed for building, testing, and deploying applications.
2. Guided Setup: Azure DevOps Projects provide a guided setup experience that walks users through the process of creating and configuring their DevOps pipelines. This helps streamline the onboarding process for teams new to DevOps practices and ensures consistency in setting up development workflows.
3. Integration with Azure Services: Azure DevOps Projects seamlessly integrate with various Azure services, allowing users to leverage additional capabilities such as Azure App Service for hosting web applications, Azure Functions for serverless computing, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) for container orchestration, and more. This integration enables end-to-end automation and management of the entire application lifecycle.
4. Built-in Dashboards and Monitoring: Azure DevOps Projects include built-in dashboards and monitoring tools that provide visibility into the status and health of CI/CD pipelines, build and release histories, test results, and application performance metrics. These insights help teams track progress, identify issues, and make data-driven decisions to improve their development processes.
5. Collaboration and Version Control: Azure DevOps Projects come with integrated version control using Azure Repos, allowing teams to collaborate on code development, review changes, and track version history. Teams can also leverage features such as pull requests, code reviews, and branch policies to ensure code quality and maintain code integrity.