by Contributed | Oct 26, 2022 | Technology
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.
Using Azure CNI powered by Cilium
Azure CNI powered by Cilium is currently in preview in AKS. For detailed usage instructions refer to – https://aka.ms/aks/cillium-dataplane.
by Contributed | Oct 25, 2022 | Technology
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.
Resources:
Ledger overview
Configure a ledger database
Implement a secure environment for a database service
Azure SQL Security Playlist
by Contributed | Oct 24, 2022 | Technology
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.
To learn more about these integrations, read Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection integration with Dynamics 365 Commerce.
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.”
To learn more, discover blog posts, videos, events, and webinars—plus connect with peers and experts—join the Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection community.
by Contributed | Oct 23, 2022 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Dashboards tell a story through visualizations, and are an excellent way to view your data and see all of your most important insights at a glance. Azure Data Explorer dashboards in the web UI natively support the Kusto Query Language over data hosted in Azure Data Explorer. These dashboards will help you progress quickly from raw data to shared insights.
In the new module, you will create a dashboard from a query in Azure Data Explorer web UI. Add new tiles. Create dashboard parameters, and cross-filters for the parameters.
Create dashboards in Azure Data Explorer
More ADX MS Learn modules:
- MS Learn: Introduction to Azure Data Explorer ,
- MS Learn: Write your first query with Kusto Query Language
- MS Learn: Gain insights from your data by using Kusto Query Language
- MS Learn: Characterize an unfamiliar dataset with Azure Data Explorer – Training | Microsoft Learn
- MS Learn: Create dashboards in Azure Data Explorer – Training | Microsoft Learn
by Contributed | Oct 21, 2022 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
After seeing everyone in person at the San Francisco VMware Explore event, we are even more excited for Barcelona! If you want to know about Azure, the work we are doing with VMware, or just have a great conversation, we’d love to talk to you so stop by our booth! We will even have some cool stickers too.
This year we will have a bunch of sessions with Microsoft employees on stage, so if you’re building out your schedule check them out:
Microsoft Keynote: Transform your VMware Workloads with Microsoft Azure
Speaker: Jeff Woolsey, Principal PM Manager, Microsoft
Date/Time: Wednesday, November 9 @ 9:00 – 10:00 CET
Jeff will share how customers can transform their on-prem VMware environments using Microsoft Azure. Keynote attendees will learn how to:
- Address end of support for vSphere, Windows Server, and SQL Server
- Use familiar VMware skills to migrate or extend your VMware environment to the cloud, including hybrid cloud options with Azure VMware Solution and Azure Arc
- Modernize hybrid work with Azure Virtual Desktop and Horizon Cloud
In addition, here are some other Microsoft Azure-related sessions that we highly recommend for learning more about Azure + VMware:
Time, Topic
|
Session Title
|
Tuesday, November 8
11:00 – 12:00 CET
Azure VMware Solution
|
Migrate and Modernize with Cloud Solutions from Microsoft Azure VMware
|
Tuesday, November 8
11:15 – 12:45 CET
Azure VMware Solution
|
Instructor-led Hands-On Lab: Learn how to integrate Azure VMware Solution with Native Azure Services
|
Tuesday, November 8
11:45 – 12:15 CET
Azure VMware Solution
Azure Virtual Desktop
|
Hybrid, Multicloud, Windows Server & SQL Server 2012 End of Support
|
Tuesday, November 8
12:30 – 13:30 CET
Azure VMware Solution
|
What’s New in Azure VMware Solution
|
Wednesday, November 9
9:00 – 10:00 CET
Azure VMware Solution
Horizon Cloud on Azure
|
Microsoft Keynote: Transform your VMware Workloads with Microsoft Azure
|
Wednesday, November 9
10:30 – 11:30 CET
Azure VMware Solution
|
Automating Azure VMware Solution Onboarding and Configure NVA Networking Demo
|
Wednesday, November 9
12:00 – 13:00 CET
Azure Arc + vSphere
|
Bring Azure ARC to Your VMware vSphere Environments
|
Wednesday, November 9
13:00 – 13:30 CET
Azure VMware Solution
|
“Ask Me Anything” With Microsoft Azure VMware Solution Experts
|
Wednesday, November 9
13:30 – 14:30 CET
Azure Virtual Desktop
|
Maximizing Azure Virtual Desktop performance with Intel powered VM’s
|
Wednesday, November 9
15:00 – 16:00 CET
Azure VMware Solution
Azure Virtual Desktop
|
Hybrid & Multicloud Innovation with Microsoft
|
Wednesday, November 9
15:15 – 16:45 CET
Azure VMware Solution
|
Instructor-led Hands-On Lab: Learn how to integrate Azure VMware Solution with Native Azure Services
|
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