Can the consumer be on premise for an Azure Service Bus application?

Question

Quick question around Azure Service Bus. We want to avoid setting up local queue or use another service bus framework therefore have been looking into Azure Service Bus.

Assuming that there is full connectivity from on prem to Azure with something like expressroute or VPN then, can applications hosted on premise make use of Azure service bus?

Sending might be OK but how does the listening/subscription work. Has anyone encountered any problems or do the APIs handle the networking issues, latency etc well?

Basically, I am trying to ask if it is a good idea to have on premise applications that make use of Azure Service Bus.

Regards Amar

Answer 1

You can have an on-premises processes communicating over Azure Service Bus with other processes either in Azure or on-premises as well. Distance from the data centers will introduce a substantial latency, therefore expect lower throughput as oppose to that in data center deployment.

Another aspect to take into consideration will be intermittent failures. Which you'll need to handle and retry, when appropriate, in addition to the built-in retries in the client itself.

Basically, I am trying to ask if it is a good idea to have on premise applications that make use of Azure Service Bus.

In the end this depends on your business case. If you're in a hybrid scenario, yes, it makes sense to do so. If you'll be using Service Bus for mostly communicating on-premises, I would look into a hybrid transport/messaging option.