Can two applications on the same device be connected to Azure IoT Hub at the same time?

[FaehnrichLE]

I have an application on a device that connects to Azure IoT Hub using the C SDK. This application will send messages to the cloud and interact via the device twin.

I also need to have the device receive updates. It seems like the Azure Device Update agent application is the way to do this, certainly for their support of things like swupdate.

So I have two applications connecting to Azure IoT Hub. What I'm seeing when I run both my application and the device update agent is they are interfering with each others connection. When they normally print out they're sending messages every few minutes, they alternate printing that they are resending a KEEPALIVE message every few seconds.

My question is can two applications connect to Azure IoT Hub? If so, is there something needed to be done so they don't step on each others toes? If not, then is the device update agent the way to go, and if it is how do you also interact with IoT Hub for something like device twins?

[jw-msft]

One can provision DU agent as module identity--see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/iot-hub-device-update/device-update-agent-provisioning#module-identity-vs-device-identity. Each module identity will have a separate connection to IotHub.