Test Azure Service Bus locally without any subscription or login

Question

Is there a way to play with and discover Azure Service Bus on the local emulator without registering to the real Azure Services?

I was following a tutorial on the use of the Azure Service Bus but at a certain point a Namespace and an Issuer Name and Key is required. I don't have that data since I'm not registered to Azure Services and I don't want to do it now (I will get my trial when I will feel ready to develop/test something real).

Answer 1

Unfortunately there is not an emulated Azure Service Bus you can run locally. The Azure Service Bus requires an active Azure Subscription. You will need a trial, MSDN subscription, or pay for a pay-as-you go subscription. The relay itself is extremely cheap - $0.01 per 10,000 messages. Dive in and start experimenting with your Azure 90 day trial. If you run out of trial, I'm sure MS would work with you if you could justify the extension.

One of the reasons I expect that it doesn't work without a subscription is that the service bus requires Azure ACS for authentication (this is the source of the Issuer Name and Key you are looking for) which also lacks emulation to my knowledge.

Answer 2

If you want to use the Brokered Messaging capabilities (Queues, Topics and Subscriptions) then you can install Service Bus for Windows Server, which will allow you to test locally.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj193022(v=azure.10).aspx

For relayed messaging you will have to use an Azure account. The costs of using the relay service for development and testing are minimal, so it may be worth creating a pay-as-you-go subscription for this.