Azure cloud-based Service Fabric clusters are managed and upgraded by the Service Fabric Resource Provider (SFRP). The SFRP calls into a cluster through the HTTP gateway port on the management endpoint to get information about nodes and applications in the cluster. SFRP also serves the cluster information that is available to you in the Azure Management Portal. The HTTP Gateway ports is also used by the Service Fabric Explorer to browse and manage your cluster. The SFRP is an Azure-only service and is not available in the local development environment or any other infrastructure, such as Windows Server.

The upgrade service coordinates upgrading the Service Fabric itself with the SFRP.