Getting started#

What you need#

• An Azure subscription that can buy Microsoft Marketplace SaaS offers (pay-as-you-go, Enterprise Agreement or Microsoft Customer Agreement; sponsored and free-credit subscriptions cannot buy).
• A work or school account (Microsoft Entra ID) in the organization that buys. Personal Microsoft accounts can buy, but they cannot connect a Foundry, because the connection is made in your organization's Entra tenant.
• An Azure AI Foundry, Azure AI Services or Azure OpenAI resource in that tenant, with at least one deployment.

1. Subscribe and activate#

1. Open DCAI Model Gateway on Microsoft Marketplace and choose a plan. Team is listed publicly; Partner Edition is offered privately, so contact us for it.
2. After the purchase, select Configure account now in the Azure portal. It opens the activation page at https://saas.dcassociatesgroup.com.
3. Sign in with your work account. The page shows the subscription, offer, plan and your tenant.
4. Accept the privacy notice, optionally tell us your organization's country, and select Activate.

The subscription shows Subscribed, and Microsoft starts billing the plan from that moment.

2. Connect your Foundry#

Follow Connect your Foundry. In short: add the DCA Model Gateway Connector to your tenant, give it the DCA Model Gateway Inference custom role (or the built-in Cognitive Services User role) on your Foundry resource, then enter your endpoint and deployments on the Connect your Foundry page and select Save and test.

Until a Foundry is connected, every request with your key is refused with 409 foundry_not_connected and nothing is forwarded anywhere.

3. Get your gateway key#

When activation finishes, the page shows your key once. Store it in your secret manager. If you missed it:

1. Open saas.dcassociatesgroup.com and select Subscriptions.
2. Open the subscription's menu and choose Regenerate gateway key.
3. Copy the new key from the banner. It is also shown only once.

Your endpoint is https://ai-gateway-east-us1.azure-api.net/gateway. This first key is the subscription's Default key.

More keys. Choose Tenant keys in the same menu to give each of your own customers or applications its own key, with its own budget and usage. See Tenant keys.

E-mail from us. You receive service e-mail about your subscription (activation, keys, billing, security notices). Product news is optional: the checkbox at activation, and preferences in the portal header, where you can allow or withdraw it at any time per subscription. Withdrawals take effect immediately and are kept in your consent record.

Rotating a key. Choose Regenerate gateway key again (or Regenerate next to any key on the Tenant keys page). The new key works immediately and the previous key stops working at the same moment, so update your applications first if you need a seamless switch.

4. Send your first request#

export DCA_GATEWAY_KEY="<your gateway key>"
curl https://ai-gateway-east-us1.azure-api.net/gateway/openai/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "api-key: $DCA_GATEWAY_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"messages":[{"role":"user","content":"Hello"}]}'

The response headers tell you what happened:

Next: API reference for routes, the data boundary and every header.

Changing plan or cancelling#

• Change plan: on saas.dcassociatesgroup.com open the subscription's menu, or use the SaaS resource in the Azure portal. Your keys and your Foundry connection stay the same; the new plan's limits apply at once.
• Cancel: in the Azure portal, open the SaaS resource and cancel the subscription. All of its keys stop working, and the Foundry connection is deleted within an hour. Remove the connector's role assignment in your Azure subscription as well if you no longer need it.