Unified Management with Azure Arc for Hybrid Cloud

Modern IT environments are rarely homogenous. Most organizations run a mix of on-premises servers, maybe some resources in AWS or Google Cloud, and cloud-native services in Azure. Managing this sprawl can be complex: different tools for different environments, inconsistent security postures, and fragmented monitoring. Enter Azure Arc. Azure Arc is Microsoft’s answer to unified hybrid and multi-cloud management – essentially extending the Azure management plane to any infrastructure. In Day 5’s post, under the banner of Operational Excellence, we’ll explore how Azure Arc can bring your disparate resources into Azure’s fold. With Arc, you can govern and automate everything from one place, using the same Azure tools and practices across on-prem and other clouds. This not only simplifies operations (less swivel-chair management, more consistency) but also enables advanced scenarios like deploying Azure services outside Azure. Let’s dive into what Azure Arc is and how it can help achieve operational excellence in hybrid scenarios.

What is Azure Arc?
Azure Arc is a framework and set of technologies that allow you to connect infrastructure outside of Azure to Azure’s control plane. Once connected (via the Arc agent or integration), these resources appear in Azure Portal and CLI just like native Azure resources. There are a few key Arc capabilities:

• Arc for Servers: You can onboard both physical servers and VMs (Windows or Linux) that are on-premises or in other clouds. Each machine gets an “Azure Arc” resource ID, sits in a Resource Group, and can have tags, RBAC, and policy applied. The Arc Connected Machine agent handles communication to Azure.

• Arc for Kubernetes: You can connect Kubernetes clusters (such as AKS on Azure Stack HCI, or EKS, or an on-prem k8s) to Azure. Once connected, you can see them in Azure Portal, deploy applications via GitOps, apply policies (using Azure Policy for Kubernetes), and monitor them with Azure Monitor.

• Arc for Data Services: This provides an on-premises or edge deployment of Azure PaaS data services like Azure SQL Managed Instance and Azure PostgreSQL Hyperscale. It runs on top of Kubernetes (you need an Arc-enabled K8s cluster) and allows you to have these database services with features like automated updates, scaling, and Azure management – but running where you need them (e.g., in your own data center for low latency or data sovereignty).

• Arc for other Azure services (in preview): Microsoft is expanding Arc to allow running more Azure services on any infrastructure. For example, Arc-enabled App Services or Functions, which means you could run Azure App Service on an Arc-connected K8s cluster on-prem.

• Arc for VMware vCenter (preview): Azure Arc can connect to your VMware vCenter and allow you to manage VMs via Azure (even creating VMs through ARM templates). This is huge for a unified VM lifecycle across Azure and on-prem vSphere.

In essence, Azure Arc is about treating external resources as first-class citizens in Azure.

Unified Inventory and Organization
One immediate operational benefit: single-pane inventory of all your systems. Instead of maintaining separate CMDBs or lists for on-prem and cloud, Arc consolidates them. In Azure Portal, you could create a Resource Group “Prod-Servers” and have within it: 10 Azure VMs and 5 Arc-connected on-prem servers. To an admin, they’re all listed together with the same tags and naming conventions. This makes it easier to track what you have and where, improving visibility (a key aspect of operational excellence is knowing your assets).

Tags can be applied uniformly. For instance, tag everything with Environment=Production or Owner=FinanceDept regardless of location. Later, cost management or reports can group by these tags (note: Arc-connected resources themselves don’t incur Azure compute costs, but if you send logs or enable services on them there could be costs). Still, from an ops perspective, you can run queries in Azure Resource Graph to find “All VMs with tag Project=X” and results will include Arc machines too.

Governance with Azure Policy and Security
Azure Arc really shines by extending Azure Policy and Azure Security Center/Defender to all your connected resources:

• Azure Policy for Arc: You can assign Azure Policies to Arc-enabled servers or Kubernetes clusters. For example, you might have a policy that ensures “Azure Monitor Agent is installed” or “Firewall enabled” on all servers. With Arc, that policy will evaluate and enforce on your on-prem servers just like Azure VMs. Azure provides built-in Arc policy initiatives for common compliance needs. If something drifts (say someone disables a required service on an on-prem server), Azure Policy can flag it as non-compliant and even initiate remediation (Arc can run a script to fix it, if configured).

  For Kubernetes, Azure Policy can ensure certain pod security policies or forbidden configurations across all your clusters, Arc or AKS. Instead of manually managing admission controllers on each cluster, Azure Policy [Arc] does it centrally.

• Microsoft Defender for Cloud (formerly Azure Security Center): Once a server is Arc-connected and if you enable Defender for Cloud, that on-prem server gets assessed for security just like an Azure VM. You’ll get recommendations (e.g., “Apply latest OS patches” or “Encrypt volumes”) in the Azure Portal for those machines. It folds into your Secure Score. If you have Arc-enabled SQL Server instances, Defender for SQL can monitor them for vulnerabilities and threats too.

  This unify security monitoring – one dashboard shows you security posture of 50 Azure VMs and 50 on-prem VMs together. You can drill in and see, for example, “Critical: 5 machines have endpoint protection not installed” – some might be Azure, some Arc – and you can remediate (Defender can deploy Log Analytics agent or ATP agent to Arc machines as well).

• RBAC and Control: Arc resources integrate with Azure Role-Based Access Control. That means you could grant a user “Virtual Machine Contributor” on a Resource Group and they can manage Arc servers in that RG (install extensions, view config) but not others. You no longer need separate credential systems for on-prem vs cloud, you can manage access via Azure AD. Also, if you use Azure Lighthouse for MSP scenarios, you can even manage customers’ on-prem via Arc under a unified access model.

Using Azure Services on Arc
One of the transformative promises of Arc is “Azure services anywhere”. Let’s take Arc-enabled Data Services as an example:

• If you deploy Azure Arc Data Controller on, say, a Kubernetes cluster on-prem, you can then deploy Azure SQL Managed Instance on your hardware. This MI “thinks” it’s in Azure in the sense it shows up in Azure Portal, you can scale it, update it, have automated backups, etc. It’s billed on Azure subscription (by cores used). The advantage is you get cloud-style PaaS DB benefits locally – good for cases where data must stay on-prem (compliance) or need low latency to on-prem apps.

• Another example: Arc-enabled Machine Learning – run Azure ML inference on Arc-connected Kubernetes at the edge.

• For many companies, this hybrid deployment means you can standardize on Azure services & APIs, even if not all workloads can run in Azure public cloud. Developers can request “Give me an Azure Postgres DB” and behind the scenes Arc can provide it on local infrastructure, but developers manage it like an Azure resource.

DevOps, Automation, and Configuration Management
From an operational excellence viewpoint, consistency and automation are key. Azure Arc helps with:

• Infrastructure as Code for everything: Since Arc projects resources into Azure Resource Manager (ARM), you can include them in ARM templates or Terraform scripts. For example, you could have an ARM template that deploys a Log Analytics workspace, and also deploys the Log Analytics extension to a set of Arc-enabled servers to connect them to that workspace. Or use Terraform to create policies that auto-install certain agents on any new server, Azure or Arc.

• GitOps for K8s: Azure Arc for Kubernetes supports GitOps – you can connect a Git repo (with Kubernetes manifests or Helm charts) to your cluster via Arc. Arc will ensure the cluster continuously applies what’s in Git. This is fantastic for achieving consistent configuration across multiple clusters. If you have say 5 on-prem k8s clusters, Arc can use GitOps to make sure each has the same baseline configs (logging agents, ingress controllers, etc.), reducing config drift.

• Update Management: While not native in Arc yet (as of writing, Azure Automation Update Management can manage Arc machines via some work), Microsoft introduced Azure Automanage and some Update capabilities for Arc. For instance, you can use Microsoft Update or WSUS on-prem as usual, but if you prefer Azure Update Management, you can onboard Arc servers to it similarly to Azure VMs. Azure Automation State Configuration (DSC) can also target Arc machines for desired state enforcement.

• Extensions: Azure Arc for servers uses the VM Extensions framework. So you can deploy extensions like Custom Script (to run a script), Log Analytics agent, Dependency agent, etc., to your on-prem servers from Azure. Think of it like executing runbooks or configuring things at scale. E.g., push a new monitoring agent by sending an extension install to all Arc servers in a RG. This unified tooling reduces manual work and chances of missing a server.

Centralized Monitoring and Inventory
Azure Arc allows funneling of monitoring data to Azure:

• Azure Monitor: Arc servers can have Log Analytics agent to send logs and performance metrics to Azure Monitor just like Azure VMs. So you can have one dashboard of CPU across all servers regardless of location. With Azure Monitor’s new Azure Monitor Agent (AMA), Arc is fully supported too. You can query logs from all environments in Kusto, set up alerts in one place (e.g., alert when any production server (Azure or not) goes CPU > 90%).

• Inventory and Change Tracking: If you enable these via Azure Automation/Monitor, Arc servers’ software inventory, services, etc., can be tracked. For example, see all installed applications on all Arc machines from Azure Portal, or track changes to registry/daemon configuration – something traditionally done with separate on-prem tools but now unified.

• Dashboards: Build an Azure Dashboard that includes tiles for on-prem server health, on-cloud VM health, etc. Or use Azure Workbooks to create a custom unified ops view.

Customer Scenario Example
Contoso (a mythical company) has: 50 Windows servers on-prem in a datacenter, 20 Linux servers on AWS, and 30 VMs in Azure. Before Arc, they used System Center for on-prem, some scripts for AWS, and Azure portal for Azure – lots of fragmentation. They onboard all on-prem and AWS machines to Azure Arc (installing the Arc agent). Now:

• All 100 servers appear in Azure under resource groups by environment. They apply an “Enterprise baseline” Azure Policy Initiative across all servers: checks for password policy, checks that Endpoint Protection is installed, etc. Immediately, they find 8 on-prem servers non-compliant (no anti-virus). They push a remediation task via Arc to install Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on those 8 – Arc executes a script on them to do so. Compliance goes to 100%.

• They set up Azure Monitor and enable the Dependency Agent via Arc on all machines. They can now see application maps that include interactions between on-prem and cloud servers in one graph (e.g., an on-prem web server calling an Azure SQL DB, visible thanks to dependency data). This helps in troubleshooting.

• Their ops team uses a single ITSM integration (Azure Monitor ITSM connector) to push alerts to ServiceNow for any server issue (regardless of location). They don’t have to juggle three monitoring systems.

• DevOps: They treat infrastructure as code using Terraform. Now developers can request a “VM” via Terraform and whether it’s an Azure VM or an on-prem VM, it gets tagged and tracked similarly. In fact, Contoso uses Arc’s vCenter integration to allow Terraform to deploy on-prem VMs using the same workflow as Azure – the developer just sets a flag “deployOnPrem: true” and the pipeline uses Arc to interface with vCenter.

• When an OS upgrade or critical patch comes, the ops team uses an Azure Automation Update deployment targeting a dynamic group of “All Windows servers with Environment=Prod” which through Arc includes on-prem ones. Patches are orchestrated in one go with consistency.

The result: operational consistency and efficiency soared. They reduced their management tool count, improved compliance (because Azure Policy doesn’t forget to audit any server), and can adopt cloud practices uniformly.

The Wrap up
Azure Arc is a game-changer for operational excellence in hybrid environments. It extends Azure’s robust management and automation capabilities beyond its own cloud boundaries. The core idea is consistency – you manage different environments in a consistent way, reducing error and effort. With Arc, you can impose Azure-level governance everywhere, use one set of automation runbooks and pipelines, and view everything through a unified lens. This dramatically cuts complexity, a known enemy of operational excellence.

For organizations embracing DevOps, Arc allows treating on-prem resources as cattle (not pets) similar to cloud VMs – you can rebuild, reconfigure them via code easily. For those in regulated industries, Arc offers the benefit of cloud innovation on-prem (e.g., cloud-style DBaaS locally with Arc data services).

Azure Arc helps you achieve operational excellence by simplifying and unifying management across your heterogeneous infrastructure. It’s one of those technologies that can drive cultural change too – breaking down silos between cloud and on-prem ops teams, because now there’s one approach. As we optimize our architectures, leveraging solutions like Arc ensures we maintain control, compliance, and efficiency no matter where our workloads run. That’s a big win for the Ops folks (and everyone, really).