Azure Event Hubs: Scalable Data Streaming

Azure Event Hubs is a highly scalable data streaming platform and event ingestion service. It can receive and process millions of events per second. This documentation provides comprehensive guidance on understanding, using, and managing Azure Event Hubs.

What is Event Hubs?

Event Hubs is designed for high-throughput scenarios where massive amounts of data need to be ingested and processed in near real-time. It acts as a distributed log and publish-subscribe service for streaming data.

Key Features

Massive Scalability: Handle millions of events per second with configurable throughput units (TUs) or processing units (PUs).
Low Latency: Process events with minimal delay, essential for real-time analytics and applications.
Durable Storage: Events can be retained for a configurable period, allowing for reprocessing or batch analytics.
Partitioning: Data is partitioned to enable parallel processing and load balancing across consumers.
Consumer Groups: Multiple applications or services can consume data independently from the same Event Hub.
Geo-Disaster Recovery: Built-in support for replicating data across regions for high availability.
Integration: Seamless integration with other Azure services like Azure Functions, Azure Stream Analytics, Azure Databricks, and Azure Synapse Analytics.

Common Use Cases

Telemetry and Diagnostics: Collecting high-volume telemetry from devices, applications, and infrastructure.
Log Collection: Aggregating logs from distributed systems for analysis and monitoring.
Real-time Analytics: Feeding data into analytics engines for immediate insights into user behavior, system performance, or IoT data.
Event-Driven Architectures: Building reactive systems where services communicate via events.
Data Ingestion for Big Data: Acting as a powerful ingestion point for big data pipelines.

Getting Started

To start using Azure Event Hubs, you'll typically need to:

Create an Azure Event Hubs namespace in the Azure portal.
Create an Event Hub within your namespace.
Obtain connection strings for your applications.
Use one of the available SDKs (e.g., .NET, Java, Python, Node.js) to send and receive events.

For detailed instructions, please refer to the Getting Started guide.

Pro Tip

When designing your Event Hubs solution, consider the partitioning strategy carefully. The partition key influences how events are distributed and can impact consumption patterns.

Core Concepts

Understanding the fundamental concepts is crucial for effective Event Hubs usage:

Namespace: A container for Event Hubs instances. Provides a unique DNS name and scope for management.
Event Hub: The actual entity that receives and stores events.
Partition: Event Hubs are divided into partitions. Events sent to a specific partition are ordered within that partition.
Producer: An application that sends events to an Event Hub.
Consumer: An application that reads events from an Event Hub.
Consumer Group: A named view of an Event Hub. Each consumer group allows independent consumption of the event stream.
Offset: A unique identifier for an event within a partition. Consumers track their position using offsets.
Checkpointing: The process by which a consumer group records its progress (offset) in processing events.

Explore these concepts in more detail in the Core Concepts section.

This documentation aims to be your primary resource for all things Azure Event Hubs. Navigate the sidebar to explore different sections and deepen your understanding.