What is Azure Appfabric Service Bus connection pack …?

Question

When we want a new Service Namespace for Access control and Service bus, it offers option for CONNECTION PACK SIZE as 0,5,25,100,500.

What does it indicate ie number of active connections ...? If that is the case...? How does the connection pack size of 0 work out...???

Answer 1

It is complicated, but this is how I understand it:

Azure AppFabric SB connections are per "average connection month". The way it's calculated is that on a daily basis, they take the maximum number of connections at any given time, and then average the daily maximum over the month.

If you buy a pack, you get the connections at a rate of around $2/connection/month, if you don't buy a pack, the connections are charged pro rated at around $4/connection/month.

For example. If you have no packs, and you create 40 connections in one hour of one day (say month end reporting) - even though it's only an hour you are charged $4 x 40 for the day, but that's averaged over the month so you pay $4 x 40 / 30.

Now to consider packs - even though you hit a peak of 40 connections your average is around 1.3 connections/month = ~$6, so even purchasing a 5 connection pack at $10 is unnecessary.