Microsoft Azure Arc: New capabilities

Azure Arc simplifies governance and management by delivering a consistent multi-cloud and on-premise management platform. It is suitable for companies that struggle to control and govern complex environments that include data centers, multi-cloud environments and MS edge.

What arc can do for your organization

• Manage virtual machines, Kubernetes clusters, and databases.
• Manage your entire environment, with a single pane of glass, by projecting your existing non-Azure, on-premise, or other-cloud resources into Azure Resource Manager.
• Use familiar Azure services and management capabilities, regardless of their location.
• Continue using traditional ITOps, while introducing DevOps practices to support new cloud native patterns in your environment.
• Configure Custom Locations as an abstraction layer on top of Azure Arc enabled Kubernetes cluster, cluster connect, and cluster extensions.

Key features and benefits

Implement consistent inventory, management, governance, and security for servers across your environment.

Configure Azure VM extensions to use Azure management services to monitor, secure, and update your servers.

Manage and govern Kubernetes clusters at scale.

Use GitOps to deploy configuration across one or more clusters from Git repositories.

Zero-touch compliance and configuration for Kubernetes clusters using Azure Policy.

Run Azure data services on any Kubernetes environment as if it runs in Azure (specifically Azure SQL Managed Instance and Azure Database for PostgreSQL Hyperscale, with benefits such as upgrades, updates, security, and monitoring).

Use elastic scale and apply updates without any application downtime, even without continuous connection to Azure.

Create custom locations on top of your Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes clusters, using them as target locations for deploying Azure services instances.

Deploy your Azure service cluster extensions for Azure Arc-enabled Data Services, App Services on Azure Arc (including web, function, and logic apps) and Event Grid on Kubernetes.

A unified experience viewing your Azure Arc-enabled resources, whether you are using the Azure portal, the Azure CLI, Azure PowerShell, or Azure REST API.

(Source: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-arc/overview)

What’s New with Azure Arc

At its Ignite 2021 virtual conference, Microsoft announced updates across Azure Arc and made Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes generally available besides introducing a new offering, Azure Arc-enabled Machine Learning.

With the new services, companies can deploy Kubernetes clusters and build machine learning models where data lives, while leveraging existing infrastructure investments. Additionally, it also manages applications and models from a single dashboard.

The benefits from the new functionalities are – reduce data movement and network latency while meeting security and compliance requirements. In one click, data scientists can now use familiar tools to build machine learning models consistently and reliably across on-premises, multi-cloud, and edge.

ML and Kubernetes opens up many new possibilities to developers and opens up the option for using other cloud platforms next to Azure.

To get started with Azure Arc and its various functionalities, get in touch with our Azure experts today at sales@infobeans.com