Azure Service Bus Access connection information dialog missing ACS section

Question

I am missing the ACS section in the Azure Service Bus Access connection information dialog on my version of Azure. Does anyone know why my version does not have the ACS section? I need the Default Issuer and Default Key values from the ACS section to configure the Azure Service Bus Relay Token element. Or, I need to know another way to configure it. This is the element I am referring to:

        <tokenProvider>
          <sharedSecret issuerName="owner" issuerSecret="flP8expI9H978Tw/RzbjTUNVJpQVaaavbNIIm4sPGk4=" />
        </tokenProvider>

The next print screen shows my Access connection information dialog and the subsequent shows one with the ACS section.

Answer 1

Around the Time when ServiceBus Service was introduced on Azure, ACS was the only Security mechanism available (ACS is another Windows Azure Service for access control). So, to provide a Secure default experience to Customers - Service Bus service used to - Create an ACS Namespace for every ServiceBus namespace created.

Days passed by and ServiceBus evolved and now, ServiceBus have one other AccessControl mechanism called SaS (Shared Access Signature, runs inside the same azure roles as where Service Bus Service runs; originally implemented by Azure Storage team and adapted by Service Bus). As a result - recently (from August 2014 onwards), Service Bus removed the dependency on ACS Namespace Creation - for every ServiceBus Namespace created in Azure Portal. The goal here was to remove the extra dependency (extra Hop) on ACS Namespace creation for the users who are using only SaS Authentication.

As said above this should help creating ACS Namespace: Azure service bus ACS issuer and key is missing

This is how to get started to manage Azure accounts using Powershell: http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/install-configure-powershell/

Hope it helps! Sree

Answer 2

Hello and thanks for your feedback. ACS connection strings are still supported for backward compatibility, but the recommended security practice now is to use Shared Access Signature (SAS) tokens.

Check out this section for more info: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn155925.aspx, specifically this topic: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn170477.aspx. There's also a pretty good blog post on the subject here: https://brentdacodemonkey.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/shared-access-signatures-with-azure-service-bus.

Again, thanks for writing.

--Seth Manheim

Microsoft Azure Documentation Team

Answer 3

Please refer to this question. You need to use powershell to create the ACS namespace for a new SB namespace.