Apologies if this is a silly question but for the last 2 hrs. I have been reading about the difference between built-in and managed connectors for Azure logic apps and it’s driving me crazy. Can someone please explain in simpler language? Initially, I thought built-in connectors are for Azure services like Azure function or table storage whereas managed are for Microsoft services like O365 & Sharepoint, but after going through the list of connectors on Microsoft documentation, its not true.
Is this tenant based? For example, built-in connector will only allow connecting to azure services in that tenant but if we need to connect to an Azure service in a different tenant, we need managed connector. Even if this is true, how can something like SMTP be an inbuilt connector?
Is the difference on the basis of authentication? The mechanism to authenticate is different for built-in / managed
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Answers
I think there are some differences between the two under the hood regarding how they are hosted, but I don’t know how much difference that makes for you as a user. You can read a bit more here.
However, the main difference that I have noticed and that makes me prefer the built-in connectors (when applicable) is how you can set up the authentication. Especially when trying to set up CI-CD for Logic Apps (and devloping locally in VS Code) this makes a big difference. For the managed connectors, a managed api connection is created in the portal and it’s a nightmare trying to parameterize that when developing in VS Code and incorporating that to Devops-pipelines.
Built-in connectors run in the same platform where your logic apps is hosted whereas Managed connectors are hosted in public cloud. When you use built-in connectors the information configured for the connector will not be sent to public cloud for processing it will run natively in your Logic Apps. This makes it more secured. There are many differences for example authentication method, api connection file, and many more.