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# MCP Client Configuration with Azure App Configuration
## Bridging the Development-Production Gap
Developers predominantly work with MCP servers locally today using tools like Claude Desktop or VSCode. While these environments are excellent for experimentation and development, transitioning MCP-powered applications to production environments presents significant challenges:
- **Configuration Management**: Local configurations (like VSCode's mcp.json) don't translate seamlessly to production environments
- **Scalability Concerns**: Production deployments introduce configuration sprawl when MCP settings must be duplicated across every service instance, creating maintenance overhead and inconsistency risks
- **Security Requirements**: Moving beyond local development necessitates proper authentication and authorization
- **Operational Flexibility**: The ability to update configurations without redeployment becomes critical
## The ConfiguredMcpClient Solution
The ConfiguredMcpClient implementation addresses these challenges by:
- **Centralizing Configuration**: Storing all MCP server configurations in Azure App Configuration
- **Enabling Dynamic Update**s: Allowing changes to MCP servers without application redeployment
- **Supporting Environment-Specific Setups**: Maintaining separate configurations for development, testing, and production
- **Facilitating Deployment Strategies**: Enabling blue-green deployments, canary releases, and A/B testing of different model configurations
### Key Capabilities
- **Configuration Abstraction**: Write your application once and connect to different MCP servers based on environment
- **Auto-Refresh Mechanism** Configurations update automatically at configurable intervals
- **Seamless Authentication**: Integration with Microsoft Entra ID for secure access to Azure resources
- **Deployment Flexibility**: Support for various MCP server types (stdio, sse, etc.) with environment-specific parameters
## Setup Azure App Configuration
1. Create an Azure App Configuration store in the Azure Portal
2. Add your MCP server configurations as key-value pairs:
Example: Azure MCP Server (stdio type)
Key: MCP:AzureMCPServer
Value:
```json
{
"name": "Azure MCP Server",
"type": "stdio",
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"@azure/mcp@latest",
"server",
"start"
]
}
```
Example: Remote SSE Server
Key: MCP:Fetch
Value:
```json
{
"name": "Fetch",
"type": "sse",
"url": "https://remote.mcpservers.org/fetch"
}
```
## Implementation Best Practices
1. **Environment-Specific Configurations**:
- Use labels in Azure App Configuration to separate dev/test/prod environments
- Example: `MCP:AzureMCPServer;env=production` vs `MCP:AzureMCPServer;env=development`
2. **Monitoring and Observability**:
- Add telemetry to track model performance in production
- Use configuration to enable/disable detailed logging
3. **Rollback Strategy**:
- Maintain previous working configurations with version labels
- Implement quick rollback procedures for production issues
4. **Configuration Validation**:
- Validate new configurations before applying them to production
- Implement circuit breakers to prevent cascading failures
MCP Store
