Azure Cosmos DB Persistence

The Azure Cosmos DB persister uses the Azure Cosmos DB NoSQL database service for storage.

Persistence at a glance

For a description of each feature, see the persistence at a glance legend.

Usage

Add a NuGet package reference to NServiceBus.Persistence.CosmosDB. Configure the endpoint to use the persister through the following configuration API:

endpointConfiguration.UsePersistence<CosmosPersistence>()
    .CosmosClient(new CosmosClient("ConnectionString"));

Token credentials

Using a TokenCredential enables the usage of Microsoft Entra ID authentication such as managed identities for Azure resources instead of the requiring a shared secret in the connection string.

A TokenCredential can be provided by using the corresponding CosmosClient constructor overload when creating the client passed to the persister.

Customizing the database used

By default, the persister will store records in a database named NServiceBus and use a container per endpoint, using the endpoint name as the name of the container.

The database name can be customized using the following configuration API:

endpointConfiguration.UsePersistence<CosmosPersistence>()
    .CosmosClient(new CosmosClient("ConnectionString"))
    .DatabaseName("DatabaseName");

Customizing the container used

The default container can be set by using the following configuration API:

endpointConfiguration.UsePersistence<CosmosPersistence>()
    .CosmosClient(new CosmosClient("ConnectionString"))
    .DefaultContainer(
        containerName: "ContainerName",
        partitionKeyPath: "/partition/key/path");

The container that is used by default for all incoming messages is specified via DefaultContainer(..). When installers are enabled, this (default) container will be created if it doesn't exist.

To opt out of creating the default container, either disable the installers or use:

endpointConfiguration.UsePersistence<CosmosPersistence>()
    .CosmosClient(new CosmosClient("ConnectionString"))
    .DefaultContainer(
        containerName: "ContainerName",
        partitionKeyPath: "/partition/key/path")
    .DisableContainerCreation();

Any other containers that are resolved by extracting partition information from incoming messages need to be manually created in Azure.

Customizing the CosmosClient provider

When the CosmosClient is configured and used via dependency injection, a custom provider can be implemented:

class CustomCosmosClientProvider
    : IProvideCosmosClient
{
    // get fully configured via DI
    public CustomCosmosClientProvider(CosmosClient cosmosClient)
    {
        Client = cosmosClient;
    }
    public CosmosClient Client { get; }
}

and registered on the container:

endpointConfiguration.RegisterComponents(c => c.AddTransient<IProvideCosmosClient, CustomCosmosClientProvider>());

Provisioned throughput rate-limiting

When using provisioned throughput, it is possible for the CosmosDB service to rate-limit usage, resulting in "request rate too large" exceptions indicated by a 429 status code.

The Cosmos DB SDK provides a mechanism to automatically retry collection operations when rate-limiting occurs. Besides changing the provisioned RUs or switching to the serverless tier, those settings can be adjusted to help prevent messages from failing during spikes in message volume.

These settings may be set when initializing the CosmosClient via the CosmosClientOptions MaxRetryAttemptsOnRateLimitedRequests and MaxRetryWaitTimeOnRateLimitedRequests properties:

endpointConfiguration.UsePersistence<CosmosPersistence>()
    .CosmosClient(new CosmosClient("ConnectionString", new CosmosClientOptions
    {
        MaxRetryWaitTimeOnRateLimitedRequests = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(30),
        MaxRetryAttemptsOnRateLimitedRequests = 9
    }));

They may also be set when using a CosmosClientBuilder via the WithThrottlingRetryOptions method:

var cosmosClientBuilder = new CosmosClientBuilder("ConnectionString")
   .WithThrottlingRetryOptions(
       maxRetryWaitTimeOnThrottledRequests: TimeSpan.FromSeconds(30),
       maxRetryAttemptsOnThrottledRequests: 9
   );

endpointConfiguration.UsePersistence<CosmosPersistence>()
    .CosmosClient(cosmosClientBuilder.Build());

Transactions

The Cosmos DB persister supports using the Cosmos DB transactional batch API. However, Cosmos DB only allows operations to be batched if all operations are performed within the same logical partition key. This is due to the distributed nature of the Cosmos DB service, which does not support distributed transactions.

The transactions documentation provides additional details on how to configure NServiceBus to resolve the incoming message to a specific partition key to take advantage of this Cosmos DB feature.

Outbox

Storage format

Outbox cleanup

When the outbox is enabled, the deduplication data is kept for seven days by default. To customize this time frame, use the following API:

var outbox = endpointConfiguration.EnableOutbox();
outbox.TimeToKeepOutboxDeduplicationData(TimeSpan.FromDays(7));

Outbox cleanup depends on the Cosmos DB time-to-live feature. Failure to remove the expired outbox records is caused by a misconfigured collection that has time-to-live disabled. Refer to the Cosmos DB documentation to configure the collection correctly.