This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Production deployments of Kubernetes continue to soar as customers increasingly containerize their applications. With the growth in application modernization customers are looking to rapidly scale their Kubernetes deployments by building very large clusters or adopting a multi-cluster strategy. They expect instantaneous connectivity when spinning up and scaling out application instances. Specialized applications, such as gaming apps, expect superior data path throughput for rich application experience. The increased east-west traffic flows necessitate fine-grained monitoring and tracing for troubleshooting. Network Security is another important aspect as customers wish to implement common L4 and L7 security controls for their cloud-native applications and need solutions that are more tailored for Kubernetes and containers.
These requirements call for a robust platform that scales seamlessly to provide networking for millions of containers, a rich set of security controls and hooks into rich traffic metrics and logs for network visibility, without compromising on the performance.
Azure Container Network Interface (CNI) Powered by Cilium is the next-generation networking platform that meets all these requirements by combining two powerful technologies, viz. Azure CNI that provides a scalable and flexible Pod networking control plane integrated with the Azure Virtual Network stack and Cilium open-source project, a pioneer in providing eBPF-powered data plane for networking, security, and observability in Kubernetes.
We are proud to announce the availability of Azure CNI Powered by Cilium natively in Azure Kubernetes Service to provide scalable and high-performance Pod networking and Kubernetes Network Policies.
About Cilium eBPF
eBPF is a revolutionary technology that allows the insertion of sandboxed programs into the Linux kernel to greatly enhance the traffic processing capabilities in the operating system runtime. eBPF programs today enable a rich set of networking, security, observability, and application tracing use cases at very high performance.
Cilium offers the next generation dataplane for Kubernetes that builds on top of eBPF technology to address these use cases for cloud native workloads. Cilium provides rich functionalities such as high-performance data path for Kubernetes services, efficient load-balancing, extensive network security features and rich monitoring. Besides the traditional Kubernetes network-level security Cilium also enables security based on application protocol context, DNS FQDNs, and service identity.
About Azure CNI
Azure CNI provides network provisioning for Kubernetes Pods in AKS. It functions in one of the following two modes which is configured at the time of AKS cluster creation.
VNET Mode: In VNET mode Azure CNI assigns IPs to Pods from a Vnet subnet making Pods first-class citizens in a Vnet. Pods have direct connectivity to each other and to other resources in the VNET and on-premises. You can choose to dynamically assign IP addresses to Pods from a separate Pod subnet that is different from the cluster subnet. This provides better utilization of VNET IP space, and the ability to configure separate Vnet policies for Pods
Overlay Mode: In Overlay mode only the cluster nodes are deployed into a VNET whereas Pods are assigned IP addresses from a private address space that is logically different from the VNET hosting the nodes. This mode significantly reduces the amount of Vnet IP addresses consumed by AKS clusters allowing limitless cluster scale. The Pod address space can be re-used on multiple clusters in the same VNET, greatly simplifying IP address planning. Overlay addressing does not require provisioning of custom routes or usage of encapsulation for Pod-Pod connectivity offering data path performance at par with connectivity between VMs in a VNET.
What does Azure CNI Powered by Cilium provide?
Azure CNI powered by Cilium integrates the scalable and flexible Azure IPAM control plane with the robust dataplane offered by Cilium OSS to create a modern container networking stack that meets the demands of cloud native workloads.
Azure CNI Powered by Cilium
Azure CNI Powered by Cilium offers the following benefits today and provides the ideal platform for future innovations.
Scalable and performant Networking
The Cilium powered CNI supports both Vnet and Overlay modes. The socket-based load-balancing for Kubernetes services in Cilium replaces the inefficient load-balancing based on IPTable rules in KubeProxy to provide superior data path performance at par with direct connectivity to service backend Pod. The performance is deterministic irrespective of the number of services deployed in the cluster.
Kubernetes Network
The Cilium powered CNI comes with built-in support for the basic Kubernetes Network Policies. There is no need to install a separate solution on top. The solution offers significant improvement in scale and performance by eliminating usage of IPTables for network filtering.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
You’ve done all the work to build confidence in your data with great data quality, availability and reliability. But how do you know if your data has been tampered with or otherwise experienced an unplanned change? Now SQL Server and Azure SQL Database can answer that question for you. In this episode of Data Exposed: MVP Edition with Anna Hoffman and Karen Lopez, you’ll go through a couple of quick demos about Ledger Databases and Tables to see if you can trust your data.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Sensor Data Intelligence, a new feature of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, helps you drive business processes based on automated IoT (Internet of Things) signals from machines and equipment on the production floor. With Sensor Data Intelligence, you can:
Drive predictive maintenance with details collected from machines and equipment.
Use a simple onboarding wizard instead of manually installing and configuring components in Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services (LCS).
Configure, scale, and extend the solution as business logic running on your own Azure subscription.
Sensor Data Intelligence supports a variety of automated IoT scenarios
Sensor Data Intelligence supports several specific business scenarios, each with its own set of configuration options:
Asset downtime: Accurately track the efficiency of machine assets by using sensor data to track machine downtime.
Asset maintenance: Minimize maintenance cost and extend asset life by improving maintenance plans based on sensor readings of critical control points.
Machine status: Ensure operation efficiency by using sensor readings to notify planners about machine outages and provide options for mitigating potential delays.
Product quality: Ensure the quality of product batches by comparing sensor readings for properties of each product batch, such as moisture, temperature, or custom-defined quality metrics. The system notifies operators when deviations occur.
Production delays: Use sensor readings to compare actual cycle time to planned cycle time, and notify supervisors when production isn’t on schedule.
Custom scenarios: The architecture of Sensor Data Intelligence allows you to customize the out-of-box scenarios and even create new automated IoT scenarios to meet your unique business needs.
Fit equipment with automatic sensors for real-time monitoring and decision-making
You can fit your organization’s assets with a variety of automated IoT sensors, each designed to provide information for a specific purpose. For example, you might fit a metal stamping machine with a sensor that counts each stroke. You could then configure your system to receive a signal from that counter and set a threshold (for example, 40,000 strokes) at which Supply Chain Management should automatically generate a maintenance work order.
Enjoy fast, wizard-based setup for automated IoT scenarios
Sensor Data Intelligence is simple to onboard. Deploy a template of resources (including an Azure IoT hub and Azure stream analytics) by walking through a few steps in a wizard.
It’s just as fast and easy to add a new sensor to your system. Choose a scenario, identify the new sensor, and map it to the required system functionality.
Flexible and extendible Azure architecture lets you fine-tune the system
Because everything is deployed on your own Azure subscription, the solution is easy to scale and configure to your own requirements.
The following architectural diagram provides an overview of Sensor Data Intelligence and its components:
Learn more
Sensor Data Intelligence is a public preview feature of Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. For more information, check out the Dynamics 365 release plan and the documentation.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Sellers rely on email to reach out to contacts when working on deals. The new email address validation feature in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales flags email addresses in your customer relationship management (CRM) system that are in the wrong format or have an expired or fictitious domain. That lets your sellers connect with subscribers and boost their conversion rates without wasting time and energy trying to communicate with uninterested or non-existent customers.
Improve lead quality with email address validation
Email address validation in Dynamics 365 Sales finds and removes non-working email addresses in your CRM. This lets your sellers prioritize leads that have a valid email address for lower email bounce rates, improved engagement, and a better return on their time.
Email address validation looks for the following errors:
Incorrect syntax: An address that does not have both a username and an email domain
Disposable domain: An address that has a known disposable or temporary email domain
Test or spam address: An address that has known indicators of a test or spam address in the email header or metadata, IP address, HTML code, and email content and formatting
Expired address: An email account that has expired and can no longer receive or send email
Address with unregistered domain: A domain that does not appear in the domain registry
You can view flagged email addresses on primary entity and sales insights forms as well as on the Up next widget and work list items.
If you try to send an email to a flagged address, a notification gives you the reason the system marked the address as not valid.
If you know the email address is correct, select Mark valid. The system marks the address as valid and removes the alert.
If you don’t know the email address is correct but you still want to send the email, select Compose anyway.
More data hygiene improvements in Dynamics 365 Sales
In addition to email address validation, we have also implemented duplicate detection for leads. Dynamics 365 Sales uses AI and “fuzzy” matching algorithms to detect duplicate leads. By “fuzzy,” we mean that the system identifies as duplicates not only records that have exactly matching field values, but also records that have approximately matching field values. This helps sellers focus on the records that truly matter and clears out any “noise” that they would otherwise have to spend time manually reducing.
On top of that, we are continuously working on even more improvements to data hygiene in Dynamics 365 Sales to help your sellers be more focused and productive.
Next steps
Increasing your sales team’s productivity could be as simple as eliminating leads with incomplete, non-working, or spam email addressesand Dynamics 365 Sales makes it easy.
To get started with email address validation, read the documentation:
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
As part of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, explore the solutions that Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection provides to help keep your organization’s data protected. Use the resources on Microsoft Learn to discover methods of supporting data security within your organization, whether you’re a functional consultant, a business user, a data analyst, or a developer. Learn how Fraud Protection helps safeguard customer accounts and build customer trust. Sandra Feinberg, Microsoft Principal Program Manager, offers insight on the subject. She observes that any enterprise using a Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection solution should consider that its high-quality data can be used not only to thwart fraud but also to make good decisions about customers while decreasing false positives. As she explains, “It’s not just about stopping bad transactions, but it’s uplifting those good transactions.”
What is Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection?
Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection helps you know your customers, decrease fraud costs, and improve the customer experience. Adaptive AI is an exciting technology that Fraud Prevention uses to learn fraud patterns as they continuously evolve and to prevent payment and account-creation fraud. For example, who is making the purchase? Is it a person? Sandra notes that businesses use this technology to help protect their accounts, saying, “Adaptive AI learns and adapts to patterns of legitimate and fraudulent account activities.” Importantly, she also points out, “Fraud protection is not just about knowing who the bad guys are, it’s about using the data to know who the good guys are, as well.”
To get an in-depth look at the innovative and advanced capabilities that Fraud Protection uses to help safeguard your data, explore the recently updated documentation, starting with Overview of Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection. For a deeper dive into Fraud Protection, work through these modules on Microsoft Learn:
If your organization already uses Dynamics 365 Commerce to deliver unified buying experiences for customers, the good news is that it’s easily integrated with Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection. Additionally, DFP is purpose built for Enterprise Retail, Gaming, Financial Institutions and Payment Service Providers. We are focused on building up our retail customer base to scale into new geographies.
Explore a collection to discover more cybersecurity content
The documentation and other resources, such as learning paths and modules, on Microsoft Learn are helpful for gaining a basic understanding of Fraud Protection and other security offerings. Check out the Cybersecurity Awareness: Fraud Protection collection, which offers a variety of articles and training opportunities that can help you and your team learn about Fraud Protection capabilities.
Earn a Microsoft Certification
If Fraud Prevention is part of your Dynamics 365 toolkit, you can explore many pathways for validating your technical skills and earning recognition with globally recognized, industry-endorsed Microsoft Certifications. If you’re a seasoned data analyst, functional consultant, or solution architect, or if you work for a Microsoft Partner in one of these roles, a certification can help you advance in your career and build customer trust.
Keep building your Fraud Protection knowledge
To help keep your organization and customers secure, Sandra reiterates, “It’s really important to understand fraud and payments.” She recommends taking a Fraud 101 class, saying, “The broad Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection customer acquisition team will do those classes for our account teams.”
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