Introducing Azure Arc
Simplify complex and distributed environments across on-premises, edge and multi-cloud. Azure Arc helps you extend Azure management to any infrastructure and enables deployment of Azure data services anywhere.
Download Azure Arc infographic (PDF)See what customers are doing with Azure Arc
Calvin Karundu, Software Engineer, Africa’s Talking"With Azure Arc, we can centrally manage multiple edge locations and help our customers grow and expand across the continent, creating more jobs and economic opportunities along the way."
Thomas Gossler, Chief Architect for teamplay at Siemens Healthineers"Azure Arc is the key enabling technology for us to deliver software as a service to the edge within our customers' local on-premises networks."
Aram Lauxtermann, Director, Cloud, KPMG"With Azure Arc we are able to distribute solutions and workloads across multiple clouds and data centers to support our clients that would have otherwise been bound to a data center."
Kristina Melo, SQL Database Administrator at Ferguson Enterprises"For me, the main benefit is that my managers do not have to go to three different places to see the health of our database environment. I want to reinforce this over and over again because that's what's driving us."
Mike DeLuca, Global Lead for Hybrid, Avanade"Azure is already trusted and proven by our customers. Azure Arc uses the same APIs and the same control plane as Azure, providing consistency across the hybrid infrastructure, which increases productivity and reduces risk."
Stijn Callebaut, CTO, DexMach"Azure Arc's clear focus on standardization, interoperability, and compliance allows both us and our customers to gain insights and better management capabilities using the central Azure control plane."
Azure Arc use cases
Organise and govern across environments
Get sprawling Windows and Linux servers and Kubernetes clusters under control by centrally organising and governing from Azure – across clouds, data centres and edge.
Manage Kubernetes apps at scale
Deploy and manage Kubernetes applications with GitHub and Azure Policy. Ensure that applications are consistently deployed and configured at scale from source control.
Run Azure Arc data services anywhere
Get the latest cloud innovation and automation, elastic scale and unified management for data workloads that are running across hybrid infrastructure. Ensure consistency in data governance and security and manage costs efficiently.
Extend Azure management across your environments
- Organize resources such as Windows and Linux Servers, Kubernetes clusters, and Azure data services.
- Manage and govern resources at scale with powerful scripting tools, the Azure portal and APIs, and Azure Lighthouse.
- Enforce organization standards and assess compliance at scale for all your resources, anywhere, with Azure Policy.
- Modernise on-premises and multi-cloud operations through a plethora of Azure management and governance services.
Adopt cloud practices on premises
- Deploy applications using a consistent approach across all your Kubernetes clusters, on any infrastructure.
- Standardise change control with declarative configuration management systems such as GitOps, and govern configurations on all your Kubernetes clusters, at scale, with Azure Policy.
- Easily adopt DevOps techniques, such as infrastructure as code, and empower developers with self-service and a selection of tools.
- Use the container platform of your choice with out-of-the-box support for most CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation)-certified Kubernetes distributions and with cloud service providers such as RedHat OpenShift, Canonical Kubernetes and Rancher Labs.
Run Azure data services anywhere
- Stay current with the latest innovations from Azure.
- Achieve elastic scale based on capacity, with the ability to deploy in seconds.
- Support both disconnected and connected use cases.
- Deploy Azure Arc enabled SQL Managed Instance and Azure Arc enabled PostgreSQL Hyperscale on any Kubernetes cluster.
Bring Azure security anywhere
- Quickly strengthen your security posture and protect against threats by turning on Azure Security Center.
- Centrally manage access and security policies for resources, using role-based access control.
- Detect, investigate and mitigate security incidents with the power of a cloud-native SIEM, using Azure Sentinel.
Azure Arc pricing
Azure Arc is offered at no additional cost when managing Azure Arc enabled servers. Add-on Azure management services (Azure Monitor, etc.) may be charged differently for Azure VMs or Azure Arc enabled servers. Service by service pricing is available on the Azure Arc pricing page. Azure Arc enabled Kubernetes clusters and Azure Arc enabled data services are in preview and are offered at no additional cost at this time. We will provide pricing details closer to general availability.
Azure Arc capabilities and features
- Organise and inventory assets through a variety of Azure scopes, such as management groups, subscriptions and resource groups.
- Tag resources for custom organisation.
- Quickly search your global resource portfolio with Azure Resource Graph.
- Apply and enforce policies and view compliance for any infrastructure, anywhere.
- Standardised role-based access control across systems and resources.
- Delegate remediation of incidents and problems to service teams without IT intervention.
- Integrated with GitHub, Azure Monitor, Azure Update and other familiar tools.
- Developer tooling-agnostic – use the tools that you want.
- Common templating for automating configuration and infrastructure as code, for repeatable deployments.
Get a consistent view of your assets, wherever they are, through:
- The Azure portal
- Any API
- Any SDK
- Any CLI
- PowerShell
Flexibility
- Works for both Linux and Windows
- Works with virtual machines (VMs), bare-metal servers and other clouds
- Domain-agnostic – works across multiple domains at the same time
Management
- Searchable inventory at scale
- Same server management experience across environments
- Consistent VM extensions for agent management
Governance and security
- Built-in Azure policies for servers
- Server security baselines
- Ability to view and search for non-compliant servers across environments
- Advanced data security
Role-Based Access Control
- Central IT-based, at-scale operations
- Management by workload owner, based on access privileges
- Integrated with Azure Lighthouse for managed service providers (MSPs)
Flexibility
- Container platform of your choice with out-of-the-box support for most CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation)–certified Kubernetes
- Use across Dev, Test and Production Kubernetes clusters in your environment
Management
- Inventory, organize and tag Kubernetes clusters
- Deploy apps and configuration as code using GitOps
- Monitor and Manage at scale with policy-based deployment
Governance and security
- Built in Kubernetes Gatekeeper policies
- Apply consistent security configuration at scale
Role-Based Access Control
- Central IT based at-scale operations
- Management by workload owner based on access privileges
Flexibility
- Unmatched flexibility across VMs and bare-metal servers
- SQL Server capabilities across on-premises and multi-cloud scenarios
Management
- Searchable global inventory of SQL servers
- Free ongoing SQL assessment
Governance and security
- Ability to drive governance standards across infrastructures with Azure Policy
- Advanced data security to protect your SQL footprint
Azure Arc updates, blogs and announcements
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UPDATE
Public preview: Zone redundant configuration for Azure SQL DB general purpose tier
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UPDATE
Azure Policy for Key Vault now supports keys, secrets, and certificates
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UPDATE
T-digest extension for Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Hyperscale (Citus)
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UPDATE
Distributed database transactions spanning multiple Azure SQL Managed Instances
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UPDATE
Machine Learning open sourcing for R and Python Custom Runtime
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UPDATE
Azure IoT Edge 1.0.10 release is now available
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UPDATE
Azure Repos adds a default branch at the org-level
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UPDATE
Reserved capacity on Azure SQL Database Hyperscale is now available
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UPDATE
Azure Security Center—News and updates for September 2020
Frequently asked questions about Azure Arc
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Azure Arc is a software solution that enables you to project your on-premises and other cloud resources, such as virtual or physical servers and Kubernetes clusters, into Azure Resource Manager. This enables you to manage your resources as if they’re running in Azure, using a single pane for managing across your estate. Azure Stack is a hardware solution that enables you to run an Azure environment on-premises.
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Azure Arc is offered at no additional cost when managing Azure Arc-enabled servers and Kubernetes. Add-on services are charged according to their respective pricing in Azure.
Azure Arc-enabled data services are in preview and offered at no additional cost at this time.
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Learn more and get started with how-to guides.
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The Azure Arc roadmap includes connecting additional infrastructure resources, such as servers and Kubernetes clusters, and bringing additional Azure services to on-premises Kubernetes environments. We will publish new capabilities as they become available.
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Download a list of specialised partners.
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Azure Arc supports servers running anywhere – on-premises and in any cloud. These include Windows and Linux, physical and virtual, domain-joined and non-domain-joined servers. See a list of supported Windows versions and Linux distributions. Learn more about Azure Arc-enabled servers.
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See a list of supported Kubernetes distributions.