Azure Event Hubs is a fully managed, real-time data ingestion service capable of receiving and processing millions of events per second. It serves as a big data streaming platform and event ingestion service, making it essential for Azure Developer Associate certification.
**Key Components:**
1. …Azure Event Hubs is a fully managed, real-time data ingestion service capable of receiving and processing millions of events per second. It serves as a big data streaming platform and event ingestion service, making it essential for Azure Developer Associate certification.
**Key Components:**
1. **Namespace**: A container for Event Hubs that provides a unique scoping container with DNS integration and management features.
2. **Event Hub**: The actual entity where events are published. Each Event Hub can have multiple partitions for parallel processing.
3. **Partitions**: Ordered sequences of events held in an Event Hub. They enable parallel processing and increase throughput.
4. **Consumer Groups**: Views of the entire Event Hub that enable consuming applications to read the event stream at their own pace.
**Implementation Steps:**
1. **Create Event Hub Namespace**: Provision through Azure Portal, CLI, or ARM templates. Choose appropriate pricing tier (Basic, Standard, or Premium).
2. **Create Event Hub**: Define partition count and message retention period based on requirements.
3. **Send Events**: Use the Azure.Messaging.EventHubs SDK. Create an EventHubProducerClient with connection string and send EventData objects using SendAsync method.
4. **Receive Events**: Implement EventProcessorClient for scalable consumption. This handles partition ownership, checkpointing, and load balancing across multiple consumers.
**Best Practices:**
- Use batching when sending events to optimize throughput
- Implement proper error handling and retry logic
- Store checkpoints in Azure Blob Storage for reliable processing
- Configure appropriate partition counts based on expected throughput
- Use Shared Access Signatures (SAS) for secure access control
**Integration Scenarios:**
Event Hubs integrates with Azure Stream Analytics for real-time analytics, Azure Functions for serverless event processing, and Apache Kafka applications through the Kafka endpoint feature. This enables building comprehensive event-driven architectures for IoT telemetry, application logging, and real-time data pipelines.
Implement Solutions That Use Azure Event Hubs
Why Is This Important?
Azure Event Hubs is a critical service for the AZ-204 exam because it represents Microsoft's solution for big data streaming and event ingestion. Modern applications increasingly require real-time data processing capabilities, and Event Hubs enables developers to build scalable event-driven architectures. Understanding this service demonstrates your ability to design solutions that handle millions of events per second.
What Is Azure Event Hubs?
Azure Event Hubs is a fully managed, real-time data ingestion service that can receive and process millions of events per second. It acts as a front door for an event pipeline, often called an event ingestor. Key components include:
• Event Producers - Any entity that sends data to an Event Hub • Partitions - Ordered sequences of events held in an Event Hub for parallel processing • Consumer Groups - Views of the entire Event Hub that enable multiple consuming applications • Throughput Units (Standard) or Processing Units (Premium) - Pre-purchased units of capacity • Event Receivers - Entities that read event data from Event Hubs
How Does Azure Event Hubs Work?
1. Event Production: Producers send events using AMQP 1.0, HTTPS, or Apache Kafka protocols 2. Partitioning: Events are distributed across partitions using partition keys for ordering guarantees 3. Retention: Events are stored for a configurable retention period (1-90 days for Standard tier) 4. Consumption: Consumers read events using the Event Processor Client or EventHubConsumerClient 5. Checkpointing: Consumers mark their position in the partition to track progress
Key Features to Remember:
• Capture - Automatically captures streaming data to Azure Blob Storage or Azure Data Lake • Schema Registry - Central repository for schemas in event-driven applications • Geo-disaster recovery - Metadata replication between namespaces in different regions • Event Hubs for Apache Kafka - Kafka endpoint that enables Kafka applications to connect
Code Example - Sending Events:
var producerClient = new EventHubProducerClient(connectionString, eventHubName); using EventDataBatch eventBatch = await producerClient.CreateBatchAsync(); eventBatch.TryAdd(new EventData(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes("Event message"))); await producerClient.SendAsync(eventBatch);
Code Example - Receiving Events:
var processor = new EventProcessorClient(storageClient, consumerGroup, connectionString, eventHubName); processor.ProcessEventAsync += ProcessEventHandler; processor.ProcessErrorAsync += ProcessErrorHandler; await processor.StartProcessingAsync();
Exam Tips: Answering Questions on Azure Event Hubs
1. Know the Tiers: Basic tier lacks consumer groups (only $Default), Standard supports up to 20 consumer groups, Premium and Dedicated offer advanced features
2. Partition Strategy: Questions about ordering guarantees require understanding that ordering is only guaranteed within a single partition, not across partitions
3. Checkpointing: The EventProcessorClient uses Azure Blob Storage for checkpointing - remember this storage dependency
4. Capture Feature: When asked about storing raw event data for later analysis, Event Hubs Capture to Blob Storage or Data Lake is the answer
5. Kafka Compatibility: Event Hubs provides a Kafka endpoint - applications using Kafka can switch to Event Hubs with minimal code changes
6. Throughput Scaling: Standard tier uses Throughput Units (1 TU = 1 MB/s ingress, 2 MB/s egress). Auto-inflate can automatically scale up
7. Consumer Groups: Each consumer application should have its own consumer group to read the stream independently
8. Retention vs Capture: Retention keeps events in Event Hubs temporarily; Capture persists them permanently to storage
9. Connection Strings: Know the difference between namespace-level and Event Hub-level connection strings and Shared Access Policies
10. Compare with Service Bus: Event Hubs is for high-volume telemetry and streaming; Service Bus is for transactional messaging with advanced features like sessions and dead-lettering