Azure Arc Enhances Hybrid Deployments

• Azure Arc is a set of capabilities for using Azure to work with deployments hosted outside of Azure.
• Arc could simplify managing a combination of services hosted in Azure, on-premises, and in other clouds, such as Amazon Web Services.
• Three scenarios are initially supported: managing VMs, managing Kubernetes clusters, and hosting certain Azure database services outside of Azure.
• Arc is in early preview, costs have not been announced, and it creates an Azure dependency for customers.

Azure Arc, available as a preview beginning in Nov. 2019, aims to unify management processes for customers with hybrid deployments in which resources are hosted both within and outside of Azure.

Service Overview

Arc extends the Azure Resource Manager management framework to enable the creation of Azure resources for VMs and Kubernetes clusters hosted outside of Azure so that they can be managed in the Azure portal and other Azure management tools. Thus, non-Azure deployments can be managed alongside Azure deployments using the same user interfaces and services, such as tags and policies. Azure has previously been capable of managing non-Azure VMs, but they were not represented as Azure resources before Arc, which prevented them from working with other Azure management features.