Azure Event Hubs Developer's Guide

Creating an Event Hub

This section guides you through the process of creating an Azure Event Hub, a fundamental component for real-time data streaming on Azure.

Prerequisites

• An Azure subscription. If you don't have one, you can create a free account.
• An Azure Event Hubs namespace. If you don't have one, follow the guide on Getting Started to create it.

Steps to Create an Event Hub

Method 1: Using the Azure Portal

The Azure portal provides a user-friendly interface for managing your Event Hubs resources.

1. Navigate to your Event Hubs namespace in the Azure portal.
2. In the left-hand menu, under "Entities", click on "Event Hubs".
3. Click the + Event Hub button at the top of the page.
4. In the "Create Event Hub" pane, enter a name for your Event Hub. The name must be unique within the namespace.
5. Configure the following optional settings:
   • Message Retention: The number of days events are stored. Defaults to 1 day.
   • Partition Count: The number of partitions for the Event Hub. This affects throughput and parallelism. Defaults to 4.
   • Capture: Enable this to automatically save events to an Azure Blob Storage container or Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 account.
6. Click Create.

Method 2: Using Azure CLI

You can automate Event Hub creation using the Azure Command-Line Interface.

First, log in to your Azure account:

az login

Then, create the Event Hub:

az eventhubs event-hub create --resource-group  --namespace-name  --name  --partition-count  --message-retention-in-days 

Replace the placeholders with your actual values. For example:

az eventhubs event-hub create --resource-group MyResourceGroup --namespace-name MyEventHubsNamespace --name OrdersEventHub --partition-count 8 --message-retention-in-days 7

Method 3: Using Azure SDKs

For programmatic creation within your applications, use the Azure SDKs. Here's a conceptual example using the .NET SDK:

using Azure.ResourceManager.EventHubs.Models;
using Azure.ResourceManager.Resources;
using Azure.Identity;

// Assuming you have a ResourceGroupResource and EventHubsNamespaceResource objects

string eventHubName = "MyNewEventHub";
int partitionCount = 12;
int retentionDays = 3;

// Example using Azure.ResourceManager.EventHubs.Models.EventHub
// The exact method signature might vary based on the SDK version and specific client used.

// This is a conceptual representation.
// Actual SDK usage would involve creating a client and calling a specific create method.

/*
var eventHubProperties = new EventHubData
{
    PartitionCount = partitionCount,
    MessageRetentionInDays = retentionDays
};

// Assuming 'eventHubsOperations' is an instance of EventHubCollection or similar
var newEventHub = await eventHubsOperations.CreateOrUpdateAsync(WaitUntil.Completed, eventHubName, eventHubProperties);

Console.WriteLine($"Event Hub '{newEventHub.Value.Data.Name}' created successfully.");
*/
            

Refer to the official Azure documentation for detailed SDK examples in various languages.

Understanding Key Concepts

When creating an Event Hub, consider the following:

• Partitions: Event Hubs partition data to allow for parallel processing. The number of partitions determines the maximum degree of parallelism for consumers. Choose a partition count that aligns with your expected throughput and consumer architecture.
• Message Retention: This setting determines how long events are stored in the Event Hub. It's crucial for replayability and disaster recovery scenarios.
• Capture: Enabling Capture automatically archives events to a storage service, enabling batch processing and analysis using other Azure services.

Once your Event Hub is created, you can proceed to sending data to it. Refer to the next section: Sending Data.