Prerequisites for Azure Event Hubs

Before you can start using Azure Event Hubs to ingest and process high volumes of streaming data, you need to ensure you have the necessary resources and configurations in place. This guide outlines the essential prerequisites.

1. Azure Subscription

An active Azure subscription is required to create and manage Azure resources, including Event Hubs. If you don't have one, you can:

Create a free account: Visit the Azure free account page to get started with a free trial.
Sign in to an existing account: If you already have an Azure account, you can log in via the Azure portal.

2. Azure Resource Group

A resource group is a logical container that holds related Azure resources for an Azure solution. It's good practice to create a dedicated resource group for your Event Hubs-related resources.

You can create a resource group in the Azure portal, Azure CLI, or Azure PowerShell.

# Example using Azure CLI
az group create --name MyEventHubsResourceGroup --location eastus

3. Azure Event Hubs Namespace

An Event Hubs namespace is a unique scoping container for Event Hubs accessible via the AMQP or HTTPS protocols. All Event Hubs instances reside within a namespace.

When you create an Event Hubs namespace, you need to choose:

Pricing Tier: Basic, Standard, or Premium. The Standard tier is recommended for most use cases due to its features and scalability.
Throughput Units (TUs) or Processing Units (PUs): These define the capacity for ingress and egress traffic. You can scale these up or down as needed.

You can create an Event Hubs namespace via:

4. Event Hub

Within your Event Hubs namespace, you create one or more Event Hubs. An Event Hub is the actual entity that accepts messages.

When creating an Event Hub, you configure:

Partition Count: Determines the degree of parallelism for consumers.
Message Retention: How long messages are stored.

5. Authorization

To send or receive messages, your application needs proper authorization. Event Hubs supports several authentication and authorization mechanisms:

Access Policies: Shared Access Signatures (SAS) are commonly used. You'll need a connection string with the appropriate send or listen permissions.
Azure Active Directory (Azure AD): For more robust security, consider integrating with Azure AD.

You can generate SAS connection strings from the Azure portal under your Event Hubs namespace's "Shared access policies" section.

Security Best Practice: Avoid hardcoding connection strings directly in your application code. Use Azure Key Vault or environment variables to manage secrets securely.

6. Development Tools and SDKs

Depending on your application's programming language and platform, you'll need to install the appropriate Azure Event Hubs SDK:

.NET: Install the Azure.Messaging.EventHubs NuGet package.
Java: Use the azure-messaging-eventhubs Maven dependency.
Python: Install the azure-eventhubs package using pip.
JavaScript/TypeScript: Install the @azure/event-hubs npm package.
Go: Use the github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-go/sdk/messaging/azeventhubs package.

Refer to the SDK Reference for detailed installation instructions.

7. Network Connectivity

Ensure that your application can establish network connections to Azure Event Hubs. If you are running in a corporate network or behind a firewall, you may need to configure firewall rules to allow outbound access to the Event Hubs endpoints (typically on port 443 for HTTPS).

Once these prerequisites are met, you are ready to start sending and receiving data with Azure Event Hubs!