Generally available: Windows Admin Center for Azure Virtual Machines
Published date: October 13, 2022
Windows Admin Center for Azure Virtual Machines is now generally available. Windows Admin Center lets you manage the Windows Server Operating System of your Azure Virtual Machines, natively in the Azure Portal. You can perform maintenance and troubleshooting tasks such as managing your files, viewing your events, monitoring your performance, getting an in-browser RDP and PowerShell session, and much more, all within Azure. We expect this to reduce the need for you to remote desktop into your virtual machine for administration, simplifying your experience as you deploy and maintain virtual machines with or without a graphical user interface (GUI).
Unlike Windows Admin Center on-premises, Windows Admin Center in Azure features single sign-on using Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) authentication to bring you an end-to-end identity experience in the Azure portal. Regardless of whether your virtual machine is on-premises Active Directory joined, Azure AD joined, or not joined to any domain, Windows Admin Center and Azure AD provide a single sign-on experience. Just add your Azure AD identity to the Windows Admin Center Administrator Login Azure role-based access control (RBAC) role and get access to the full suite of management capabilities that we provide in the Azure Portal. This reduces the reliance on local administrator accounts when managing Windows Server machines in Azure.
Windows Admin Center in Azure is available to all Windows Server customers on Azure running Windows Server 2016 or higher in the public cloud. Create a new virtual machine today or deploy Windows Admin Center on your existing infrastructure. You can begin managing your virtual machines in Azure using Windows Admin Center by navigating to the Windows Admin Center blade under Settings in the Virtual Machine Azure portal UI.