Finding ways to combine hybrid and multicloud services is a challenge made easier with Azure Arc, where the Azure portal becomes a single-window dashboard for managing a range of IT resources, wherever they are running.
As an Azure Expert MSP, Ergo is at the forefront of cloud management, recognising that more organisations are pursuing hybrid, multicloud and edge strategies. They present a challenge for IT departments used to running infrastructure and applications from data centres or a single cloud provider.
What is Azure Arc?
Azure Arc simplifies governance and management by offering a unified platform for consistent management across multicloud and on-premises environments. Currently, it allows managing the following workload types, hosted outside of Microsoft Azure:
Windows and Linux physical servers
Kubernetes clusters
Azure data services
SQL Server Instances, including legacy SQL Server 2012/R2
Virtual machines based on VMware vSphere or Azure Stack HCI, such as Dell APEX cloud platform for Azure.
Source: Microsoft
IT departments can now bring centralised management to complex hybrid-cloud systems that use physical and virtual Kubernetes clusters as well as VMware by Broadcom instances . Because both technologies are regularly chosen to run other infrastructures, Azure Arc broadens the scope of Azure’s management capabilities. When Kubernetes clusters connect to Azure Arc, or when VMware VMs become Azure Arc-enabled servers, existing Azure tools and services can now be used to run them.
To enable seamless and optimised Azure hybrid experience, Microsoft and Dell collaboratively designed Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Azure. It empowers organizations to innovate consistently across IT environments, including on-premises data centres. The platform provides native integration of Dell’s infrastructure platforms and management software with Azure Arc and Arc-enabled services, such as Azure Stack HCI and Azure Kubernetes Solution, for a unified experience from cloud to edge. Ergo stands out as a trusted advisor for hybrid cloud solutions, uniquely positioned due to our strategic partnerships with both Microsoft and Dell.
All of these are good news for the many companies that run business critical parts of their IT estate on premise. Working at the coalface of business technology, Ergo has always recognised that not every application and service will migrate to the cloud, and that a management layer will always be needed to provide oversite and consistency across both your public and private cloud environments. Microsoft clearly recognises the same reality with Azure Arc and is committing to accommodating organisations who use different technologies, including Linux, by enabling all of them all to be plugged into Azure.
Our goal is to give clients a seamless IT experience with as much choice and flexibility as their organisation needs. Key to this is a unified management experience that extends across physical premises as well as public and private clouds. IT administrators and operators benefit from a single view of heterogeneous environments and the ability to govern and manage multiple technologies in a consistent way. And there’s no risk of compromising security, because Azure Arc can also be used to manage Azure Monitor, Azure Defender and Azure Sentinel.
Benefits of Azure Arc
Aside from management efficiencies, the other big win with Azure Arc is that it encourages users to be more innovative. It enables faster app development by allowing developers to focus on the capabilities of cloud-native applications rather than the infrastructure environment.
Database analysts and data scientist can become similarly task focused, empowered by an environment that has powerful automation features and built-in capabilities. Among them is Arc-enabled machine learning , which will allow AI teams to train models on any Kubernetes cluster in Azure.
The good news for organisations using System Centre to manage their estate is that Microsoft is working to integrate it with Azure Arc, where it makes sense. One example is when onboarding servers to Azure Arc at scale, where the onboarding script can be deployed through System Centre Configuration Manager.
Last but not least, governance and compliance teams will be impressed by the new addition to the Azure family. Azure Arc allows for policies and compliance rules to be enforced across all environments, providing a consistent level of governance across multiple environments. It also integrates with Role-Based Access Controls (RBAC), which means only authorised personnel can manage updates across your infrastructure.
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