What Is Azure Arc?

Businesses that once solely relied on single-cloud or on-premises environments are embracing hybrid and multicloud approaches in ever-growing numbers. Our 2030 IT Blueprint report found that 78% of IT decision-makers are investing in “hybrid-by-design” or “cloud-smart” strategies, making flexibility and intentional workload placement their top priorities.

With IT environments growing more complex, it’s more important than ever for organizations to simplify and unify their management, governance, and automation processes. For businesses that use Microsoft Azure, Azure Arc can provide a valuable connection that extends across all other environments.

This article will discuss what Azure Arc is, common use cases, key benefits, and how pricing works.

What Is Azure Arc?

Azure Arc is a unified management plane that brings resources running on-premises, at the edge, or in other clouds, such as AWS and Google Cloud Platform, into Azure Resource Manager (ARM). By representing these servers, Kubernetes clusters, and services as ARM resource objects, Arc lets you manage them as if they were native to Azure. This gives teams a single pane of glass for policy enforcement, security, and governance across your entire hybrid and multicloud estate.

Azure Local (formerly Azure Stack HCI) integrates natively with Azure Arc to deliver consistent hybrid cloud management. This provides a single control plane directly on your local infrastructure to apply governance policies, enforce role-based access, and deploy Azure services like AKS and Azure Virtual Desktop.

4 Types of Azure Arc-Enabled Resources

Azure Arc supports resources such as servers, virtual machines, and Kubernetes clusters on its centralized platform while extending management capabilities to external resources, including SQL Server instances.

1. Azure Arc-Enabled Servers and Virtual Machines

Azure Arc can connect physical servers (Windows and Linux), as well as virtual machines not hosted in Azure. This includes integration with infrastructure running in other public clouds like AWS and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), as well as private virtualization platforms such as VMware vSphere.

Once a connection is complete, the resource will appear in ARM, and you can apply Azure services to them through the Azure portal. These can include:

• Azure Monitor for unified visibility
• Microsoft Defender for proactive threat detection
• Azure Update Manager for centralized operating system updates

2. Kubernetes Clusters

Kubernetes clusters that are running anywhere can also be attached using Azure Arc, which offers support for different types of distributions, including Red Hat OpenShift, GKE, and EKS. Once these highly scalable, node-based clusters are Arc-enabled, configurations and applications can be deployed across multiple clusters using GitOps, producing consistent results. 

3. Azure Data Services

With Azure Arc, Azure data services, including Azure Database for PostgreSQL and Azure SQL Managed Instance, can run on your choice of infrastructure. These also bring cloud-native automations to your data centers. 

4. SQL Server Instances

Individual SQL Server instances that are currently running on physical or virtual machines can also be registered with Azure Arc. This makes it easier to manage a SQL environment across locations and can also enable SQL assessments and advanced security features.

How Does Azure Arc Work?

Azure Arc acts as a bridge between your diverse IT infrastructure and the cloud. Once a resource is connected, Azure Resource Manager serves as the control plane, and non-Azure resources are projected into the portal as if they were native to Azure.

The connection for servers and VMs is powered by the Azure Connected Machine agent, also commonly known as the Azure Arc agent. This agent forms an outbound-only, secure connection with Azure that enables extension for monitoring, automation, and security to be deployed. It also standardizes management so that a server in one location acts just like another in a completely different region and environment. 

Understanding Azure Arc Pricing

The Azure Arc control plane is free to use. This includes agent installation, ARM registration, and ongoing management from the portal. Every user also has access to:

• Inventory management capabilities, like tagging and querying through Azure Resource Graph
• VM self-service, including lifecycle management and power cycle operations
• Administrative functions through SSH Arc, Run Command, and Custom Script Extension

Additional costs come from the Azure management services you choose to layer on top of the control plane, such as Azure Policy guest configuration and Microsoft Sentinel.

Organizations that already have Windows Server licenses may find that additional Azure services are included with their current license, including log ingestion, storage, and compute costs. For example, Extended Security Updates (ESUs) can be included through Software Assurance via Arc, and Azure Update Manager is free for Arc-enabled servers, unlocking significant cost savings.

Keep in mind that pricing models differ depending on what’s being Arc-enabled. Servers, Kubernetes, and data services each follow their own pricing model.

What Is Azure Arc Used For?

The overarching purpose of Azure Arc is to serve as a unified management plane for hybrid and multicloud environments. Here are specific use cases that show how businesses apply it:

• Multicloud management after M&A: After a merger or acquisition, a global enterprise may inherit workloads in AWS and GCP while already operating in Azure. If consolidation isn’t immediately feasible or desired, Azure Arc can increase visibility across their inventory, standardize processes, and ensure consistent multicloud security controls.
• Healthcare compliance in a hybrid environment: Highly regulated industries like healthcare often face strict legal requirements around how data is held and managed. With Azure Arc, a hospital can keep patient records on-premises to meet data sovereignty and HIPAA requirements. At the same time, their local resources are projected into an Azure environment for consistent enforcement of compliance policies.
• Factory edge computing: Manufacturing companies often depend on real-time quality control systems on the factory floor, where milliseconds matter. Azure Arc simplifies management of these edge workloads, ensuring a unified experience from Azure while helping manufacturers maintain low-latency operations.
• Multi-cluster Kubernetes in SaaS: A SaaS provider may operate hundreds of Kubernetes clusters across multiple clouds and customer locations. While manual configurations can be inefficient and error-prone, developers can use Azure Arc to push updates once to a repository, which rolls out to all clusters simultaneously.

What Are the Benefits of Using Azure Arc?

Azure Arc benefits businesses with hybrid or multicloud models by providing a centralized experience that improves consistency in policy implementation, greater scalability and flexibility, faster deployments, and automation of core processes.

Centralized Hybrid and Multicloud Management

Instead of having to jump between environments, Azure Arc allows for management in a unified location. This drives operational efficiency by making it easier to monitor resources, organize inventory with common tags and groups, search with greater ease, and implement global changes fast. 

Consistent Security Policies and Governance

No matter where resources live, businesses can implement Azure Policy and role-based access control (Azure RBAC) for them. All servers can be checked for compliance using the same standards, and Microsoft Defender can be extended to non-Azure servers to find threats.

Reduced Tooling Overhead

A centralized management platform also enables businesses to consolidate their toolkits. IT teams no longer need to maintain separate governance, security, and configuration tools for each environment. This simplifies the finances of complex environments, strengthening ROI and reducing multicloud and hybrid fragmentation.

More Flexibility and Scalability

Azure Arc lets organizations run data services, such as Azure SQL Managed Instance, on hardware to scale resources up or down. Since Azure can be used across clouds and local hardware environments, it also reduces risks associated with vendor lock-in. 

Faster Deployments and Automation

Automation is also easier with Azure Arc because external servers are treated like local Azure resources. This means that Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and GitOps can be used to automate processes and deploy changes more quickly. Kubernetes clusters, for example, can pull configurations from Git repositories and apply changes across environments. Tools like Azure Update Manager can schedule and push patching updates, cutting down on issues related to human errors.

Optimize Your Hybrid Environment with Azure Arc and Managed Azure Local Services

Implementing Azure Arc enables centralized governance, policy enforcement, and security management across your hybrid and multicloud infrastructure, right within the Azure platform. When integrated with Azure Local, it can also deliver a single control plane on your local infrastructure.

TierPoint’s Managed Azure Local Services can help you bring high-performance hardware, advanced security features, and scalable infrastructure to your business, whether you’re operating in public, private, or hybrid environments. Discover how our team of Microsoft-certified experts can help you optimize your hybrid infrastructure and workload placement today.

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