Event Hubs

Azure in Germany–a complete EU cloud computing solution

May 18, 2017 .NET, Analytics, AppFabric, Azure, Azure in Germany, Azure IoT Suite, Cloud Computing, Cloud Services, Cloud Strategy, Cognitive Services, Computing, Data Analytics, Data Governance, Data Hubs, Data Warehouse, Emerging Technologies, Event Hubs, IaaS, Intelligent Edge, Internet of Things, IoT, IoT Central, IoT Hub, Machine Learning(ML), Media Services, Media Services & CDN, Messaging, Microsoft, Mobile Services, PaaS, SaaS, SQL Azure, Storage, Backup & Recovery, Stream Analytics, Virtual Machines, Windowz Azure No comments

With my earlier article Azure in China, it came in to my interest to look for any other country/region specific independent cloud data center requirements.  I came across Azure for US Govt(Similar to Amazon Govt Cloud) instance and Azure Germany data center.  For this article context I will be covering only Azure in Germany.

What is Azure Germany?

Just like regional regulatory requirements in China, Germany also wanted a completely locally owned/managed Azure Data Center for EU/EFTA/UK requirements. This is also to ensure stricter access control and data access policy measurements. This  approach is to enable organizations doing business in EU/EFTA and UK can better harness the power of cloud computing.

  • All customer data and related applications and hardware reside in Germany
  • Geo-replication between datacenters in Germany to support  business continuity
  • Highly secured datacenters provide 24×7 monitoring
  • It meets all Public sector or restricted industry requirements
  • Follows all Compliance requirements for EU/EFTA and UK.
  • Lower cost, locally accessible  within your business locations in Germany/EU.

“ Azure Germany is an isolated Azure instance in Germany, independent from other public clouds.”

Who controls it?

An independent data trustee controls access to all customer data in the Azure Germany datacenters. T-Systems International GmbH, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom and an experienced, well-respected IT provider incorporated in Germany, serves as trustee, protecting disclosure of data to third parties except as the customer directs or as required by German law.

** Even Microsoft does not have access to customer data or the datacenters without approval from and supervision by the German data trustee.

What Compliance?

Azure Germany has an ongoing commitment to maintaining the strictest data protection measures, so organizations can store and manage customer data in compliance with applicable German laws and regulations, as well as key international standards. Additional compliance standards and controls that address the unique role of the German data trustee will be audited over time. Refer to: Microsoft Trust Center compliance.

[Source : Microsoft Azure]

Useful Links:

Introducing Azure IoT Edge

May 13, 2017 .NET, Analytics, Artificial Intelligence(AI), Augmented Reality, Azure, Azure IoT Suite, Cloud Computing, Data Analytics, Edge Analytics, Embedded, Emerging Technologies, Event Hubs, Industrial Automation, Intelligent Cloud, Intelligent Edge, IoT, IoT Edge, IoT Hub, Linux, Mac OSX, Machine Learning(ML), Microsoft, Robotics, Self Driven Cars, Stream Analytics, Windows, Windowz Azure No comments

During Build! 2017 Microsoft has announced the availability of Azure IoT Edge, which would bring in some of the cloud capabilities to edge devices/networks within your Enterprise. This would enable industrial devices to utilize the capabilities of IoT in Azure within their constrained resources . 

With this Microsoft now makes it easier for developers to move some of their computing needs to these devices.  Edge devices are mostly having small foot print based to high end machines within your company network.

The essential capabilities to be supported by Azure IoT edge  include:

  • Perform Edge Analytics (a cut down version of Azure Stream Analytics)- Instead of doing analytics in cloud developer/implementer can move the basic cloud data processing and analytical capabilities to Edge Device. Run your machine learning algorithms in Edge device and take predictive analytics steps.
  • Perform Artificial Intelligence processing at edge device itself. Availability of Microsoft Cognitive Service on edge device would bring in whole lot of automation capabilities. Imagine Alexa/Siri working without internet connection, it should be able to provide you reminders etc.
  • Perform RealTime Decision making locally based on predefined rules.
  • Reduce bandwidth costs
  • Connect to other Edge devices and legacy devices within the constrained/corporate network.
  • Deploy IoT solutions to Edge Device from Cloud and provide updates as needed.
  • Operate offline without the need of real-time internet connectivity or intermittent connectivity. Doesn’t have to rely on Cloud to provide commands for processing, can do offline data capture and processing of information from other devices connected and take decisions without the need to rely on a connected cloud service.

Azure IoT Edge enables seamless deployment of cloud services such as:

Along with sharing the image represents Azure’s Enterprise Digital Vision, we will discuss about the same in later sessions:

Digital-Enterprise-Vision_png

Getting Started & More information:

IoT Hub vs Event Hub–A quick comparison

December 11, 2016 Azure, Cloud Computing, Cloud to Device, Communication Protocols, Connectivity, Contrained Networks/Devices, Data Hubs, Device Shadow, Device to Cloud, Device Twin, Emerging Technologies, Event Hubs, HTTP2, Identity of Things (IDoT), Intelligent Cloud, Internet of Things, Interoperability, IoT, IoT Hub, IoT Privacy, IoT Security, Messaging, Microsoft, Performance, Protocols, Reliability, Scalability, Tech-Trends No comments

With this article I am trying to provide you a birds eye view comparison of IoT Hub and Azure Event Hub, so that some of you may stop feeling that there is nothing new in IoT Hub.

For the interest of this article, I put together a table with side-by-side comparison of some important features/desired features from an IoT Hub like platform.

Feature IoT Hub Event Hub
Communication Supports both device-to-cloud and cloud-to-device bidirectional communication Supports only device-to-cloud communication
State Management Can maintain device state using Device Twins and query them whenever needed. Not Supported
Protocol Support AMQP 1.1, AMQP over Web Sockets, MQTT 3.2, MQTT over Web Sockets, HTTP 1.1, Web Sockets. AMQP 1.1, AMQP over Web Sockets, HTTP 11 , Web Sockets only
Protocol Extensions Provides IoT protocol gateway a customizable implementation for industrial protocol channelling. Not Supported
Security Provides identity to each device and easily revocable through IoT Hub Device Management portal. Shared access policies with limited revocation capabilities are provided.
Monitoring/ Operations Provides a rich set of features through Device Management capability. Includes individually enable/disable or provision new device. Change security keys as needed. View/identify individual device problems easily. Does not provide individual performance metrics. Can provide only a high level aggregated metrics only.
Scalability Scalable to thousands/millions of simultaneous devices Limited number of simultaneous connections up to 5000 connections per Azure Service Bus Quotas. Event Hub provides a capability to partition your message to channel it in to associated Service Bus quotas.
SDK Support/ Developer Support Provides very good Integration SDK and developer support. Both Azure IoT  Device SDK and IoT Gateway SDK are the most essential kits provided for almost all devices/OS platforms. It also support all the latest programming languages such as C#, Node.js, Java and Python.
Also provides  direct MQTT, AMQP and REST based HTTP APIs.
Very detail oriented documentation provided.		 .NET, Java and C apart from protocols such as AMQP, HTTP API interfaces.
Files/Images Upload Capability Supports IoT devices/solutions to upload files/images/snapshots to cloud and define a workflow for processing them. Not Available
Message Routing Very decent message routing capability is available out of the box. Up to 10 end points can be defined and Advanced Rules can be defined on how routing should occur. Requires additional programming and hosting to support as per the need.

From this comparison table, you can analyse that IoTHub is the right candidate for your IoT solution needs, as Event Hub lacking certain capabilities that are essential for an IoT Ingestion point. If you are only requiring to send messages to cloud and doesn’t require any fancy stuff as IoTHub provides, you can choose Event Hub.

Remember with more power comes more responsibility, that’s what IotHub intend to provide to you.

Hope this overview was helpful. Please feel free to comment or initiate a discussion any time. Please share your feedbacks on this article as well.

Azure: What are Event Hubs?

October 22, 2016 .NET, Azure, Event Hubs, Messaging, Microsoft, Windowz Azure No comments

Event Hubs is a feature within the Azure and is intended to help with the challenge of handling an event based messaging at huge scale.  To be specific it is a Highly scalable data streaming platform.

The idea is that if you have apps or devices publishing telemetry events then Event Hubs can be the ingestion point and your can send/push messages to Event Hub. Under the hood Event Hub will create a stream of all of these events which can be read at any time through different ways. This processing of events can happen through Stream processing or direct, and push them for Real-time Analytics or processed message can be stored in to Cold storage for doing historical analytics on your data.

  • Event Hubs can ingest and process messages at larger scale, such as millions of messages per second.
  • Provides Publish/Subscribe communication capabilities
  • Support for AMQP and HTTP protocols
  • SAS token based authentication to identify and authenticate event publisher.
  • Scalable Through-put units, purchased as needed.

To read more about Event Hubs visit here