Azure Event Grid

In this article, we’ll learn about Azure Event Grid in brief and then go through a process to enable event grid resource provider in Azure. This is the first article on the Azure Event Grid article series. Here, we’ll learn about various concepts in Azure Event Grid and its different features. In the following series, we’ll learn about routing events, storage accounts and more with Azure Event Grid.

What is Azure Event Grid?

Azure Event Grid makes it possible to send the event data from a particular source to handlers. Basically, the Azure Event Grid helps to connect application to numerous other services. As the name says, the Azure Event Grid is a feature enabled by Azure which makes it possible for event-based architecture while building applications. Through the Azure Event Grid, all the incoming events such as resource groups and blob storage are supported. Furthermore, with the custom topics developer’s own events too are supported by the Azure Event Grid. Simply select the Azure Resource to subscribe to and all then we require to do is connect Webhook endpoint or the event handler to the event. Filters can be accessed in order to route certain events to various endpoints, multicast to the multiple endpoints making sure all the events are properly delivered.

As we’ve talked about Fault tolerance and business continuity in the previous article, Business Continuity And Disaster Recovery In Azure, the Azure Event Grid also supports high availability with natively being deployed to multiple fault domains in each region spread over different availability zones.

In the upcoming articles, we’ll learn the process to create and route the custom events with Azure Event Grid. It would be done in the process as follows. All of the event sources would be connected with the Event Handlers through the Azure Event Grid.

Source: Microsoft

Main Concepts in Azure Event Grid

The following are the main concepts in Azure Event Grid discussed in brief.

Event

The event is basically any occurrence in applications which reflect an answer to what happened.

Event Sources

The event sources are where the event has taken place. It is the source of the event.

Event Handlers

The event handlers are the ones who have the part in handling the outcome of the event. These are usually the services and application which react to the event that occurs.

Event Subscriptions

The event subscriptions can route events to one or more handlers. It is basically the built-in mechanism itself or the endpoint to route the events.

Topics

Topics are the endpoint where the events are sent by the publishers.

Features of Event Grid

Azure Event Grid has numerous features. Let us learn about them in brief.

Serverless Architecture

The Azure Event Grid enables the connections of data sources and event handlers with a complete serverless application architecture support. Using the Event Grid, we can trigger serverless function automatically. For instance, analyzing of any data – text or image when added to the Azure Blob Storage. Learn more about Blob Storage through the article, Azure Blob Storage.

Automation

Simplification of Policy enforcement and speed automation is supported by Azure Event Grid. For instance, when a database is created in Azure SQL or a Virtual Machine or a Blob Storage is created, we can use the event grid to notify the Azure Automation. This enables automatic checking of the service configuration compliancy, adding the metadata to operations tools and more.

Integration

The Azure Event Grid enables connection of our application with numerous other services. From using event grid with logic apps without having to write a line of code in order to process data to creating custom topics to send the event data of app to event grid in order to benefit from the advanced routing, delivery mechanism and integration with Azure – Azure Event Grid supports it all. Azure Event Grid makes it extremely easy to integrate applications and services.

Now, we’ve learned about the Azure Event Grid. Next, let us go through a tutorial to enable the event grid resource provider. This will be an integral step for the upcoming articles on Azure Event Grid.

Step 1

Login into the Azure Portal. The welcome page must look similar to the one below.

Step 2

Here, select the Subscriptions under Navigate.

Step 3

Here, you can see the subscription you are using. Mine is a Azure Sponsorship Pass. Click on the name of your subscription.

Step 4

Now, we’ll be taken to the Subscription page which will look similar to this below.

Step 5

On the left-hand side under the Settings, Select Resource Providers.

This will provide with the list of providers and its status.

Step 6

On the search tab for filtering, search for Microsoft.EventGrid

Here, you can see this provider is NotRegistered in the Status.

Step 7

Click on Microsoft.EventGrid and Select the Register Button.

Step 8

With this, the status will update to Registering and change to Registered as the process is done.

Remember, this is a crucial step for numerous usages of the Azure Event Grid. We’ll learn about it in the upcoming articles.

Conclusion

Thus, in this article, we learned about Azure Event Grid. We discussed about its various concepts and different features. Finally, we went through a step-by-step process to enable the event grid resource provider. This will be a pre-requisite in the upcoming article where we use the Azure Event Grid for various purposes such as routing of storage accounts, custom events and more.