Feedback Edit

Create an IoT hub using the Azure portal

  • Article
  • 9 minutes to read

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. Sign in to the Azure portal.

  2. On the Azure homepage, select the + Create a resource button.

  3. From the Categories menu, select Internet of Things then IoT Hub.

  4. On the Basics tab, complete the fields as follows:

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

    • Resource group: Select a resource group or create a new one. To create a new one, select Create new and fill in the name you want to use. To use an existing resource group, select that resource group. For more information, see Manage Azure Resource Manager resource groups.

    • Region: Select the region in which you want your hub to be located. Select the location closest to you. Some features, such as IoT Hub device streams, are only available in specific regions. For these limited features, you must select one of the supported regions.

    • IoT hub name: Enter a name for your hub. This name must be globally unique, with a length between 3 and 50 alphanumeric characters. The name can also include the dash ('-') character.

    Important

    Because the IoT hub will be publicly discoverable as a DNS endpoint, be sure to avoid entering any sensitive or personally identifiable information when you name it.

    Create a hub in the Azure portal.

  5. Select Next: Networking to continue creating your hub.

    Choose the endpoints that devices can use to connect to your IoT hub. You can select the default setting, Public access, or choose Private access. Accept the default setting for this example.

    Choose the endpoints that can connect.

  6. Select Next: Management to continue creating your hub.

    Set the size and scale for a new hub using the Azure portal.

    You can accept the default settings here. If desired, you can modify any of the following fields:

    • Pricing and scale tier: Your selected 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 hub and up to 8,000 messages per day. Each Azure subscription can create one IoT hub in the free tier.

      If you are working through a quickstart, select 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 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.

    • Microsoft Defender for IoT: Turn this on to add an extra layer of threat protection to IoT and your devices. This option is not available for hubs in the free tier. Learn more about security recommendations for IoT Hub in Defender for IoT.

    • Role-based access control: Choose how access to the IoT hub is managed, whether shared access policies are allowed or only role-based access control is supported. For more information, see Control access to IoT Hub by using Azure Active Directory.

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

  7. Select Next: Tags to continue to the next screen.

    Tags are name/value pairs. You can assign the same tag to multiple resources and resource groups to categorize resources and consolidate billing. In this document, you won't be adding any tags. For more information, see Use tags to organize your Azure resources.

    Assign tags for the hub using the Azure portal.

  8. Select Next: Review + create to review your choices. You see something similar to this screen, but with the values you selected when creating the hub.

    Review information for creating the new hub.

  9. Select Create to start the deployment of your new hub. Your deployment will be in progress a few minutes while the hub is being created. Once the deployment is complete, select Go to resource to open the new hub.

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. 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.

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 Security settings section. These policies define the permissions for devices and services to connect to IoT Hub.

Click Add shared access policy to open the Add 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. These permissions are used by back-end cloud services to manage device identities. Choosing the write option automatically chooses the read option.

  • The Service Connect policy grants permission to access service endpoints. This permission is used by back-end cloud services to send and receive messages from devices as well as to update and read device twin and module twin data.

  • The Device Connect policy grants permissions for sending and receiving messages using the IoT Hub device-side endpoints. This permission is used by devices to send and receive messages from an IoT hub, update and read device twin and module twin data, and perform file uploads.

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

For more detailed information about the access granted by specific permissions, see IoT Hub permissions.

Register a new device in the IoT hub

In this section, you create a device identity in the identity registry in your IoT hub. A device cannot connect to a hub unless it has an entry in the identity registry. For more information, see the IoT Hub developer guide.

  1. In your IoT hub navigation menu, open Devices, then select Add Device to add a device in your IoT hub.

    Screen capture that shows how to create a device identity in the portal

  2. In Create a device, provide a name for your new device, such as myDeviceId, and select Save. This action creates a device identity for your IoT hub. Leave Auto-generate keys checked so that the primary and secondary keys will be generated automatically.

    Screen capture that shows how to add a new device

    Important

    The device ID may be visible in the logs collected for customer support and troubleshooting, so make sure to avoid any sensitive information while naming it.

  3. After the device is created, open the device from the list in the Devices pane. Copy the Primary Connection String. This connection string is used by device code to communicate with the hub.

    By default, the keys and connection strings are masked as they are sensitive information. If you click the eye icon, they are revealed. It is not necessary to reveal them to copy them with the copy button.

    Screen capture that shows the device connection string

Note

The IoT Hub identity registry only stores device identities to enable secure access to the IoT hub. It stores device IDs and keys to use as security credentials, and an enabled/disabled flag that you can use to disable access for an individual device. If your application needs to store other device-specific metadata, it should use an application-specific store. For more information, see IoT Hub developer guide.

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 route. The route 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: