The Azure Relay service was one of the first core Azure services. Today’s announcement shows that it has grown up nicely with the times. For those familiar with the WCF Relay feature of Azure Relay rest assured it will continue to function, but its dependency on Windows Communication Foundation is not for everyone. The Hybrid Connections feature of Azure Relay sheds this dependency by utilizing open standards based protocols.
Hybrid Connections contains a lot of the same functionality as WCF Relay including:
- Secure connectivity of on-premises assets and the cloud
- Firewall friendliness as it utilizes common outbound ports
- Network management friendliness that won’t require a major reconfiguration of your network
The differences between the two are even better!
- Open standards based protocol and not proprietary! WebSockets vs. WCF
- Hybrid Connections is cross platform, using Windows, Linux or any platform that supports WebSockets
- Hybrid Connections supports .NET Core, JavaScript/Node.js, and multiple RPC programming models to achieve your objectives
Getting started with Azure Relay Hybrid Connections is simple and easy with steps here for .NET and Node.js.
If you want to try it and we hope you do, you can find out more about Hybrid Connections pricing and the Azure Relay offering.
