Question

My Azure app hosts multiple ZeroMQ Sockets which bind to several tcp ports.
It worked fine when I developed it locally, but they weren’t accessible once uploaded to Azure.
Unfortunately, after adding the ports to the Azure ServiceDefinition (to allow access once uploaded to azure) every time I am starting the app locally, it complains about the ports being already in use. I guess it has to do with the (debug/local) load balancer mirroring the azure behavior.
Did I do something wrong or is this expected behavior? If the latter is true, how does one handle this kind of situation? I guess I could use different ports for the sockets and specify them as private ports in the endpoints but that feels more like a workaround.

Thanks & Regards

Answer 1

The endpoints you add (in your case tcp) are exposed externally with the port number you specify. You can forcibly map these endpoints to specific ports, or you can let them be assigned dynamically, which requires you to then ask the RoleEnvironment for the assigned internal-use port.

If, for example, you created an Input endpoint called “ZeroMQ,” you’d discover the port to use with something like this, whether the ports were forcibly mapped or you simply let them get dynamically mapped:

var zeromqPort = RoleEnvironment.CurrentRoleInstance.InstanceEndpoints["ZeroMQ"].IPEndpoint.Port;