What are the protocols supported by Azure IoT Operations ?

Question

Currently, looks like Azure IoT Operations supports only OPC-UA and MQTT for device communication. Please provide plans for support of other protocols - https, amqp, profibus, tcp/ip etc.

Answer 1

Hello Rose-M,

Welcome to the Microsoft Q&A and thank you for posting your questions here.

I understand that you would like to know the protocols supported by Azure IoT Operations.

As of now, Azure IoT Operations supports OPC-UA and MQTT for device communication - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/iot-operations/overview-iot-operations and https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/iot-operations/troubleshoot/iot-operations-faq These protocols are widely used in industrial and IoT applications for their reliability and efficiency.

Regarding future plans for supporting other protocols like HTTPS, AMQP, PROFIBUS, and TCP/IP, there hasn't been any official announcement yet. However, Azure IoT Hub, which is closely related to Azure IoT Operations, supports additional protocols such as HTTPS and AMQP - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/iot-hub/iot-hub-devguide-protocols). This might indicate potential future support for these protocols in Azure IoT Operations as well.

If you have specific requirements or use cases, it might be helpful to provide feedback directly to Microsoft through their official channels.

I hope this is helpful! Do not hesitate to let me know if you have any other questions.

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Answer 2

Hello @Rose-M,

welcome to this moderated Azure community forum.

Azure IoT operations supports OPC-UA via the Connector for OPC-UA and MQTT via the local MQTT broker.

Technically another protocol supported is ONVIF and RTSP but these are protocols are known for camera (media) feeds.

If you want to connect other protocols, you probably need to create a custom 'app' eg. based on the MQTT broker connectivity. You connect with protocol X and turn messages into MQTT and visa-versa.

An alternative is deploying a 3rd party Kubernetes app that can do the protocol transformations for you.

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Answer 3

An easy way to extend the number of supported protocols is to use 3rd Party components like HiveMQ Edge. HiveMQ Edge will give you ModBus, S7, etc connectors. And you can use my Helm chart for the deployment on Kubernetes.