Create an IoT hub using the Azure portal

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This article describes how to create and manage IoT hubs using the Azure portal.

To use the steps in this tutorial, you need an Azure subscription. If you don't have an Azure subscription, create a free account before you begin.

Create an IoT hub

This section describes how to create an IoT hub using the Azure portal.

  1. Log in to the Azure portal.

  2. Choose +Create a resource, then choose Internet of Things.

  3. Click Iot Hub from the list on the right. You see the first screen for creating an IoT hub.

    Screenshot showing creating a hub in the Azure portal

    Fill in the fields.

    Subscription: Select the subscription to use for your IoT hub.

    Resource Group: You can create a new resource group or use an existing one. To create a new one, click Create new and fill in the name you want to use. To use an existing resource group, click Use existing and select the resource group from the dropdown list. For more information, see Use resource groups to manage your Azure resources.

    Region: This is the region in which you want your hub to be located. Select the location closest to you from the dropdown list.

    IoT Hub Name: Put in the name for your IoT Hub. This name must be globally unique. If the name you enter is available, a green check mark appears.

    Important

    The IoT hub will be publicly discoverable as a DNS endpoint, so make sure to avoid any sensitive information while naming it.

  4. Click Next: Size and scale to continue creating your IoT hub.

    Screenshot showing setting size and scale for a new IoT hub using the Azure portal

    On this screen, you can take the defaults and just click Review + create at the bottom.

    Pricing and scale tier: You can choose from several tiers depending on how many features you want and how many messages you send through your solution per day. The free tier is intended for testing and evaluation. It allows 500 devices to be connected to the IoT hub and up to 8,000 messages per day. Each Azure subscription can create one IoT Hub in the free tier.

    IoT Hub units: The number of messages allowed per unit per day depends on your hub's pricing tier. For example, if you want the IoT hub to support ingress of 700,000 messages, you choose two S1 tier units.

    For details about the other tier options, see Choosing the right IoT Hub tier.

    Advanced / Device-to-cloud partitions: This property relates the device-to-cloud messages to the number of simultaneous readers of the messages. Most IoT hubs only need four partitions.

  5. Click Review + create to review your choices. You see something similar to this screen.

    Screenshot reviewing information for creating the new IoT hub

  6. Click Create to create your new IoT hub. Creating the hub takes a few minutes.

Change the settings of the IoT hub

You can change the settings of an existing IoT hub after it's created from the IoT Hub pane.

Screenshot showing the settings for the IoT hub

Here are some of the properties you can set for an IoT hub:

Pricing and scale: You can use this property to migrate to a different tier or set the number of IoT Hub units.

Operations monitoring: Turn the different monitoring categories on or off, such as logging for events related to device-to-cloud messages or cloud-to-device messages.

IP Filter: Specify a range of IP addresses that will be accepted or rejected by the IoT hub.

Properties: Provides the list of properties that you can copy and use elsewhere, such as the resource ID, resource group, location, and so on.

Shared access policies

You can also view or modify the list of shared access policies by clicking Shared access policies in the Settings section. These policies define the permissions for devices and services to connect to IoT Hub.

Click Add to open the Add a shared access policy blade. You can enter the new policy name and the permissions that you want to associate with this policy, as shown in the following figure:

Screenshot showing adding a shared access policy

  • The Registry read and Registry write policies grant read and write access rights to the identity registry. Choosing the write option automatically chooses the read option.

  • The Service connect policy grants permission to access service endpoints such as Receive device-to-cloud.

  • The Device connect policy grants permissions for sending and receiving messages using the IoT Hub device-side endpoints.

Click Create to add this newly created policy to the existing list.

Message Routing for an IoT hub

Click Message Routing under Messaging to see the Message Routing pane, where you define routes and custom endpoints for the hub. Message routing enables you to manage how data is sent from your devices to your endpoints. The first step is to add a new route. Then you can add an existing endpoint to the route, or create a new one of the types supported, such as blob storage.

Message routing pane

Routes

Routes is the first tab on the Message Routing pane. To add a new route, click +Add. You see the following screen.

Screenshot showing adding a new route

Name your hub. The name must be unique within the list of routes for that hub.

For Endpoint, you can select one from the dropdown list, or add a new one. In this example, a storage account and container are already available. To add them as an endpoint, click +Add next to the Endpoint dropdown and select Blob Storage. The following screen shows where the storage account and container are specified.

Screenshot showing adding a storage endpoint for the routing rule

Click Pick a container to select the storage account and container. When you have selected those fields, it returns to the Endpoint pane. Use the defaults for the rest of the fields and Create to create the endpoint for the storage account and add it to the routing rules.

For Data source, select Device Telemetry Messages.

Next, add a routing query. In this example, the messages that have an application property called level with a value equal to critical are routed to the storage account.

Screenshot showing saving a new routing rule

Click Save to save the routing rule. You return to the Message Routing pane, and your new routing rule is displayed.

Custom endpoints

Click the Custom endpoints tab. You see any custom endpoints already created. From here, you can add new endpoints or delete existing endpoints.

Note

If you delete a route, it does not delete the endpoints assigned to that route. To delete an endpoint, click the Custom endpoints tab, select the endpoint you want to delete, and click Delete.

You can read more about custom endpoints in Reference - IoT hub endpoints.

You can define up to 10 custom endpoints for an IoT hub.

To see a full example of how to use custom endpoints with routing, see Message routing with IoT Hub.

Find a specific IoT hub

Here are two ways to find a specific IoT hub in your subscription:

  1. If you know the resource group to which the IoT hub belongs, click Resource groups, then select the resource group from the list. The resource group screen shows all of the resources in that group, including the IoT hubs. Click on the hub for which you're looking.

  2. Click All resources. On the All resources pane, there is a dropdown list that defaults to All types. Click on the dropdown list, uncheck Select all. Find IoT Hub and check it. Click on the dropdown list box to close it, and the entries will be filtered, showing only your IoT hubs.

Delete the IoT hub

To delete an Iot hub, find the IoT hub you want to delete, then click the Delete button below the IoT hub name.

Next steps

Follow these links to learn more about managing Azure IoT Hub: