Management made easy with Azure Arc

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At Microsoft’s Virtual Ignite 2020 conference, a technology took a centre stage: Azure Arc. Part of the Azure Hybrid solution, Azure Arc is a concept and an agent technology, based on well understood Desired State Configuration (DSC) tools, that extends Azure management features to on-premises or other-cloud Windows and Linux computers. You can think of Azure Arc as a ‘management platform as a service’ solution, hosted by Microsoft as a free PaaS service.

Microsoft refers to the management layer where Azure Arc lives as the Control plane and it’s happy to share it with you. Azure Arc adds no additional cost to your Azure bill. For free you can use just the default Control plane functions such as tags and role-based access control (RBAC). However, the value from Azure Arc arises when you use Azure Policy to deploy other agents and services–like Azure Monitor, Azure Sentinel, and Backup—via Azure Arc. Below figure illustrates how Azure Arc provides free control plane services (left) and provides the delivery mechanism for à la carte services as you see fit (right). You’ll pay for the actual services you consume, and not pay for the “plumbing” to deliver the services.


While a seemingly small cog in the giant IT machine, Azure Arc seeks once and for all to end the dilemma that network owners and service providers have faced for decades: Managing multiple agents for multiple management services at scale. This article is a deep dive into using Azure Arc to get a big job done easily, specifically, we install an Azure Arc agent on a new non-Azure computer, then configure that Azure Arc computer to pull down other management agents and enable security policies, saving a lot of time and hassle.

The heart of Azure Arc is Azure Policy, which is a means to deploy DSC-like configuration settings in JSON format that can be associated with Azure objects. The global hyper-scale Azure cloud itself is managed by Azure Resource Manager, sometimes written as Azure RM or ARM. ARM is the technology within the Azure platform which is responsible for provisioning resources. ARM uses JSON format notation to do everything—it’s not inaccurate to view the entire Azure cloud as a giant living JSON document. 

How to customise your Azure?

The heart of Azure Arc is Azure Policy, which is a means to deploy DSC-like configuration settings in JSON format that can be associated with Azure objects. The global hyper-scale Azure cloud itself is managed by Azure Resource Manager, sometimes written as Azure RM or ARM. ARM is the technology within the Azure platform which is responsible for provisioning resources. ARM uses JSON format notation to do everything—it’s not inaccurate to view the entire Azure cloud as a giant living JSON document. Figure 2 shows you what an Azure policy looks like—a JSON-based definition, in this case one that deploys the Log Analytics agent to a Windows Azure Arc computer.

What are the uses cases for Azure Arc?
Whether it is a small business exploring cloud feasibility or large-scale enterprises with footprints across multiple clouds, Azure Arc capabilities extend to multiple use cases. 
  • Manage server configurations - Servers, whether it is physical or virtual machines, Linux or Windows are all supported by Azure Arc. These servers enable different configurations, management, and monitoring tasks, making it easier for the hybrid systems to have better resource management. When a hybrid machine is connected to Azure, it becomes a connected machine and is then considered as a resource of Azure. 
  • Self-service orchestration with Kubernetes - Azure Arc enables managing your Kubernetes clusters both inside and outside the Azure ecosystem. With this, anyone can use Arc to connect and configure any Kubernetes cluster across customer data center, multi-cloud, and edge locations.     
  • Run data services on any infrastructure - Keep the on-premise databases up to date while maintaining control with Azure Arc enabled data services. It also supports cloud-like elastic scale that can support a burst scenario that requires data in real-time. This capability also provides an additional boost to the companies to run their Azure data on any infrastructure.  
  • Azure Arc enabled SQL server - Arc also combines the SQL server database hosted outside of Azure either within your datacenter, on the edge, or in the multi-cloud environment. This service can be created on your choice of infrastructure that hosts the Arc enabled data services. 
  •  Unified management and simplified monitoring - All the data assets connected to Azure Arc are managed through a centralised platform of Azure. This allows easier integration with the existing automation tools and simplifies governance spanning across different clouds. 
 

What does Azure Arc Offers?
  • Arc enables the governance and management of resources that reside virtually anywhere. These resources can be virtual machines, servers, SQL databases, or even the Kubernetes clusters. You can use the familiar Azure services and management capabilities to manage data using Arc.  
  • Azure arc enables businesses to easily modernise multi-cloud and on-premise operations through a plethora of Azure managed and governed services.  
  • Arc allows organisations to extend the adoption of the consistent framework and toolset for identity, DevOps, security, and automation capabilities across the hybrid infrastructures.   
  • Arc allows enterprises to make the right decision about their cloud migrations saving significant time, effort, and migration costs.  
  • Arc also provides benefits of the cloud such as fast deployment and automation at scale. For example, by using Kubernetes orchestration, you can deploy a database in seconds by utilising tools.  
  • Arc enables a unified experience whether you are using Azure PowerShell, Azure portal, or Azure REST API. 
The growing demand for hybrid cloud platforms has ushered Microsoft to launch Azure Arc as a part of its cloud services.  

So, what does such an innovation mean for IT infrastructure? Well, with the ever-rising demands of a multi-cloud environment, this seems like more than a viable option. Simply because Arc enables organisations to jump into the hybrid cloud bandwagon regardless of whether they own older or a new version of operating systems. This strategy is a game changer as it helps to simplify complex systems across various environments like on-premise, multi-cloud, and edge. Additionally, Arc can also be deemed as a great choice for organisations that want to maintain a balance between traditional workloads and modernised container-based workloads.   

Prometix as a Microsoft Gold certified O365/Azure consultants (Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne & Perth) have delivered numerous Azure Data warehouse based solutions. If you need any assistance, please feel free to contact us via enquiries@prometix.com.au.

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