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Microsoft

Azure Arc

Extends Azure management to servers outside Azure: inventory, policy, updates and monitoring for on-premises and multicloud estates.

Overview

Azure Arc in practice

Azure Arc pulls servers, Kubernetes clusters and databases that run outside Azure into the Azure control plane: on premises, in a service provider's datacentre or at another cloud provider. One agent on the machine is enough; from then on resource groups, tags, Azure Policy, RBAC and Resource Graph apply as though the server were an Azure resource.

The control plane itself carries no extra charge — you pay only for the services you consume, such as Defender for Servers or Azure Monitor. Microsoft states no cap on how many Arc-enabled servers a resource group, subscription or tenant may hold. A practical side effect on Windows Server 2025: hotpatching enabled through Arc delivers security updates without a restart for eight months of the year; only the four baseline months of January, April, July and October require a reboot. For Azure Local compatible clusters of the kind Alendris designs, Arc is the route that brings on-premises systems and Azure resources under one consistent management plane.

References

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