Data is a critical asset for organizations, providing the insights needed to inform and accelerate business decisions. In today’s fast-paced environment, access to real-time data is increasingly essential. The data is generated across many areas of the business, including IoT device telemetry, application monitoring, and financial transactions. As the volume of real-time data continues to grow, protecting sensitive information becomes especially important—particularly in highly regulated industries such as banking, finance, and telecommunications, where strict security and compliance requirements are mandatory.
Real-Time Intelligence Eventstream is designed to ingest real-time data from a wide range of sources, apply transformations as needed, and efficiently route data to multiple destinations. The messaging streaming connectors service that underpins Eventstream plays a key role in acquiring data from these sources. When data sources reside in private network environments (such as cloud virtual networks or on-premises infrastructure) the messaging connectors service must use secure connectivity mechanisms to safely transfer data from these environments into Eventstream.
How it works: Secure bridge via Azure virtual network
Real-Time Intelligence thrives on timely access to operational data, yet many high-value sources reside in private networks (on-premises or cloud virtual network). Eventstream’s approach establishes a secure, managed bridge using your Azure virtual network and vNet injection, allowing streaming connectors to run inside your Azure virtual network and reach private sources without opening them to the public internet. Real-Time Intelligence thrives on timely access to operational data value sources reside in private networks.
To facilitate data transfer from a source within a private network to Eventstream, it is essential to configure an Azure virtual network as an intermediary bridge, as depicted in the following diagram. The Azure virtual network should be connected to the private network that hosts the data source using suitable connectivity options, such as VPN or ExpressRoute for on-premises environments, and private endpoints or network peering for Azure-based sources. Following this, the Eventstream streaming connector instance will be provisioned within this virtual network via vNet injection, ensuring secure communication between the connector and the data source inside the private network.
Figure: architecture illustration
To abstract the bridge Azure virtual network and subnet resource within Fabric, a new concept has been introduced: Streaming virtual network data gateways. This enables the bridge virtual network and subnet resource to be provided to Eventstream’s streaming connector service to inject connector into this bridge virtual network.
Getting started: What you need and how to begin
Get ready to implement secure, real-time data streaming with Fabric. Having reviewed the solution, you are now equipped to dive in. The following provides all necessary information and outlines the essential steps for enabling seamless and private network streaming using Fabric Eventstream connectors.
Prepare prerequisites
Before you begin in Fabric, make sure you have the following prerequisites in place:
- Azure subscription: You’ll need access to an Azure subscription with permission to create and manage virtual networks. This subscription should be in the same tenant as your Fabric account and have the ‘Microsoft.MessagingConnectors’ resource provider registered.
- Azure virtual network: Get the bridge Azure virtual network created with a subnet and delegate a subnet to ‘Microsoft.MessagingConnectors’.
- Souces’ private network types: Identify the private network types of the data sources you want to stream from, such as on-premises network, private network on third-party cloud services, or private network on Azure.
- Connectivity options: Ensure you have a way to connect your bridge Azure virtual network to your private network that hosts your sources. Supported options include VPN, ExpressRoute (for on-premises and third-party cloud), private endpoints, or network peering (for Azure-based sources).
Once you have selected an approach and established a connection between your source’s private network and the bridge Azure virtual network, you may validate the connectivity by deploying a virtual machine within the bridge Azure virtual network. If everything is set up properly, you’ll be able to access your source through this virtual machine.
Set up the private network streaming connector
Once the prerequisites are prepared, proceed with the following steps to enable secure private network streaming with Fabric Eventstream connectors in Fabric.
1. Create a streaming virtual network data gateway
To supply the bridge Azure virtual network resource to Eventstream streaming connector, a streaming virtual network data gateway needs to be created in Fabric. Select the source that you want to bring the data from to launch the Get events wizard. Select the Set up button to navigate to the Manage connections and gateways page to create it.
Figure: streaming virtual network data gateway
2. Create the connection with the data gateway
After the streaming virtual network data gateway is created, you can select it in Data gateway setting when creating the connection on the Get events wizard. The connection created with this gateway has a prefix ‘[vNet]’ to differentiate the normal connection that is used to connect the public accessible sources. You select this connection with gateway included for your source streaming connector use. By doing this, the bridge Azure virtual network resource is passed to the streaming connector service behind Eventstream.
Figure 3: streaming data gateway in Get-events wizard
3. Finish the source configurations and publish your eventstream
The subsequent steps adhere to the standard source configuration procedures. Complete all remaining configurations, then proceed to create or publish the eventstream. Once this is accomplished, the streaming connector will be integrated into the bridge Azure virtual network, enabling it to access the source within the private network by leveraging the established connection between the bridge network and the source’s private network.
Once everything is set up, you should be able to preview the data in your eventstream if your source contains data there. When real-time data from your private network source is securely brought into Fabric Eventstream, you can fully leverage the rich suite of real-time analytics tools available in Fabric Real-Time Intelligence (RTI) to power your real-time scenarios with an enterprise-grade security level.
After completing the setup, you should be able to preview data within your eventstream if the source contains data. When real-time data from your private network source is securely ingested into Fabric Eventstream, you can use Fabric Real-Time Intelligence (RTI)’s comprehensive analytics tools to support real-time applications, all while maintaining enterprise-grade security standards.
To help familiarize yourself with the end-to- end flow of the feature, check out this detailed demo on powering secure private network streaming to Fabric with Eventstream connectors. For more detailed instructions and advanced configuration scenarios, check out this detailed guide.
Next steps and resources
This feature is now available in Fabric Real-Time Intelligence Eventstream (Preview). Try it with your Fabric account. If you don’t have one, sign up for Power BI with a new Microsoft 365 trial and start a free Fabric trial capacity. Learn more about Eventstream.
We welcome your feedback through the community forum, idea submission, or via email.
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