Azure Automanage

Overview

Effortless IT automation of cloud and on-premises infrastructure

Azure Automanage offers a unified solution to simplify IT management. With point-and-click simplicity, automate operations and apply consistent best practices across the entire lifecycle of Windows Server and Linux servers in Azure or in hybrid environments enabled by Azure Arc.

Quickly configure Windows and Linux servers with automatic deployment of Azure services such as Azure Monitor, Azure Backup, and Microsoft Defender for Cloud, and familiar tools such as Windows Admin Center.
Choose from predefined, best-practice dev/test and production profiles or create custom configuration profiles of your own.
Configure your Windows and Linux servers in Azure or hybrid environments through Azure Arc.
Learn more about supported services
Reduce risk by automating frequent, error-prone tasks such as applying the Microsoft server security baseline to efficiently maintain operational security.
Improve workload uptime by proactively detecting and automatically remediating drift if machines diverge from the desired configuration state.
Discover how to create custom preferences
Patch without rebooting your Windows Server virtual machines with Hotpatch, only on Azure.
Easily migrate your workloads to Azure by extending on-premises IP subnets and preserving the original private IP addresses.
Securely access files when working remotely without a VPN using built-in SMB over QUIC, a secure file-serving protocol.
Learn more about Automanage for Windows Server

Features

Automated management for Azure and hybrid virtual machines

Pricing

Automanage is free

There are no charges specifically for Automanage. Azure services that are onboarded through Automanage will be billed individually.

Resources

Automanage resources and documentation

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Automanage enrolls, configures, and monitors the entire lifecycle of dev/test and production VMs for products, services, and features such as Azure Security Center, update management, change tracking, IT automation, VM inventory, desired state configuration, guest configuration, automation accounts, and log analytics.

In addition, Automanage configures Azure Backup and VM insights monitoring when using the Azure Virtual Machine Best Practices–Production configuration profile.

During the Automanage preview, Microsoft Antimalware for Azure Cloud Services and Virtual Machines—as well as security baselines—is included for Windows Server VMs through desired state configuration and guest configuration. Linux VMs will not have Microsoft Antimalware for Azure or auto-remediation, and the security baseline will be audit-only.
You can customize settings for specific services, like Azure Backup. For the full list of settings that can be changed, see the documentation.
Yes. Automanage is compatible with both Linux and Windows VMs.
Azure Automanage is free to use. Azure services that are onboarded through Azure Automanage will be billed individually. Learn more about pricing for Azure services.
You can enable Automanage with point-and-click simplicity on selected new and existing VMs, and disable it at any time.
Linux VMs don't have Microsoft Antimalware for Azure enabled via best practices. Windows VMs do.

Automanage will apply the Linux security baseline via guest configuration, though the baseline for Linux VMs will be audit-only. Auto-remediation is not yet supported for Linux VMs that drift from the configured baseline.