Azure Service Bus relay guidance

Question

We are building a web and mobile application that will be hosted in Azure. We need this application to retrieve and update data in our on-premise database and our firewall restrictions prevent inbound firewall rules to be created.

I need convey the architecture to other technology divisions.

1. I downloaded the ServicveBusRelay training kit demo (https://github.com/WindowsAzure-TrainingKit/Demo-ServiceBusRelay) and it worked but the "sb://name.servicebus.windows.net/Customer" relay it creates is removed when I close the console application, is this normal? I also can't see it listed in the Service Bus explorer, but I can see it in the Portal?

2. Relay doesn't use brokered messaging(queues, topics, subscriptions)?

3. What is the most secure method to authenticate (Symmetric Key, X.509 Cert, Password)?

4. What are the pro's and con's of different bindings (NetTCPRelayBinding, BasicHTTPRelayBinding, etc) for example security and performance?

5. How are the outbound connections kept alive?

Answer 1

1) That is because the relay endpoint that was created is dynamic. You can create persistent endpoints using the NamespaceManager. The endpoint will not go away when your console app closes.

2) Relay does not use brokered messaging -- it uses WCF

3) You can use WCF-level auth if you want, but with Relay you can use ACS or SaS keys to authenticate (both found on the portal).

4) It is the same trade-off for TCP vs HTTP connections.