What is Azure IoT Layered Network Management Preview?

Important

Azure IoT Operations Preview – enabled by Azure Arc is currently in PREVIEW. You shouldn't use this preview software in production environments.

See the Supplemental Terms of Use for Microsoft Azure Previews for legal terms that apply to Azure features that are in beta, preview, or otherwise not yet released into general availability.

Azure IoT Layered Network Management service is a component that facilitates the connection between Azure and clusters in isolated network environment. In industrial scenarios, the isolated network follows the ISA-95/Purdue Network architecture. The Layered Network Management service can route the network traffic from a non-internet facing layer through an internet facing layer and then to Azure. This service is deployed and managed as a component of Azure IoT Operations Preview on Arc-enabled Kubernetes clusters. Review the network architecture of your solution and use the Layered Network Management service if it's applicable and necessary for your scenarios. If you integrated other mechanisms of controlling internet access for the isolated network, you should compare the functionality with Layered Network Management service and choose the one that fits your needs the best. Layered Network Management is an optional component and it's not a dependency for any feature of Azure IoT Operations Preview service.

Important

The network environments outlined in Layered Network Management documentation are examples for testing the Layered Network Management. It's not a recommendation of how you build your network and cluster topology for productional usage.

Although network isolation is a security topic, the Layered Network Management service isn't designed for increasing the security of your solution. It's designed for maintaining the security level of your original design as much as possible while enabling the connection to Azure Arc.

Layered Network Management provides several benefits including:

• Kubernetes-based configuration and compatibility with IP and NIC mapping for crossing levels
• Ability to connect devices in isolated networks at scale to Azure Arc for application lifecycle management and configuration of previously isolated resources remotely from a single Azure control plane
• Security and governance across network levels for devices and services with URL allowlists and connection auditing for deterministic network configurations
• Kubernetes observability tooling for previously isolated devices and applications across levels
• Default compatibility with all Azure IoT Operations service connections

Isolated network environment for deploying Layered Network Management Preview

There are several ways to configure Layered Network Management to bridge the connection between clusters in the isolated network and services on Azure. The following lists example network environments and cluster scenarios for Layered Network Management.

• A simplified virtual machine and network - This scenario uses an Azure AKS cluster and an Azure Linux VM. You need an Azure subscription the following resources:
  • An AKS cluster for layer 4 and 5.
  • An Azure Linux VM for layer 3.
• A simplified physically isolated network - Requires at least two physical devices (IoT/PC/server) and a wireless access point. This setup simulates a simple two-layer network (level 3 and level 4). Level 3 is the isolated cluster and is the target for deploying the Azure IoT Operations.
  • The wireless access point is used for setting up a local network and doesn't provide internet access.
  • Level 4 cluster - A single node cluster hosted on a dual NIC physical machine, connects to internet and the local network. Layered Network Management should be deployed to this cluster.
  • Level 3 cluster - Another single node cluster hosted on a physical machine. This device cluster only connects to the local network.
  • Custom DNS - A DNS server setup in the local network or CoreDNS configuration on the level 3 cluster. It provides custom domain name resolution and points the network request to the IP of level 4 cluster.
• ISA-95 network - You should try deploying Layered Network Management to an ISA-95 network or a preproduction environment.

Key features

Layered Network Management supports the Azure IoT Operations components in an isolated network environment. The following table summarizes supported features and integration:

Layered Network Management features	Status
Forward TLS traffic	Public preview
Traffic Auditing - Basic: Source/destination IP addresses and header values	Public preview
Allowlist management through Kubernetes Custom Resource	Public preview
Installation: Integrated install experience of Layered Network Management and other Azure IoT Operations components	Public preview
Reverse Proxy for OSI Layer 4 (TCP)	Public preview
Support East-West traffic forwarding for Azure IoT Operations components - manual setup	Public Preview
Installation: Layered Network Management deployed as an Arc extension	Public Preview

Next steps

• Learn How does Azure IoT Operations Preview work in layered network?
• Set up Layered Network Management in a simplified virtual machine and network environment to try a simple example with Azure virtual resources. It's the quickest way to see how Layered Network Management works without having to set up physical machines and Purdue Network.