Azure Arc: The safe way to develop and operate applications

An adaptive cloud approach that unifies isolated teams, distributed sites, and sprawling systems into a single operation, security, and governance model can enable organizations to use cloud-native technologies and AI to work simultaneously in hybrid, multi-cloud, edge, and IoT environments.

While it may seem somewhat impossible, Azure Arc brings all those requirements together in a technology capable of revolutionizing the way Azure infrastructures, applications, and services are secured, developed, and operated anywhere. Here are all the details!

Azure Arc can be defined as a “bridge” that extends the Azure platform to help build applications and services with the flexibility to run in data center, edge, and multi-cloud environments.

It enables the development of cloud-native applications with a consistent development, operations, and security model.

Its main advantages are:  

• Ongoing development and operational experience to run cloud-native applications anywhere and on any Kubernetes platform.
• Deployment of data services such as SQL and PostgreSQL as cloud-native services in your preferred environment for data insights.
• Azure security and governance for applications, data, and infrastructure in diverse environments.
• Flexible connectivity and infrastructure options to meet regulatory and latency requirements.  

In addition to all these advantages, Azure Arc allows you to do more with less, leveraging your existing investments to modernize with cloud-native solutions.

Some of its main features:  

• Develop cloud-native applications and operate them anywhere: This enables you to build and modernize cloud-native applications on Kubernetes, as well as integrate monitoring, security, and compliance, or reduce errors and accelerate innovation with GitOps.
• Leverage data insights from the cloud to the edge: This facilitates rapid application creation by being an end-to-end solution for on-premises data collection, storage, and real-time analytics. It also reduces management overhead and risk exposure, improving operational efficiency through data awareness.
• Protect and control applications, data, and infrastructure across diverse environments: provides extended security updates to protect and patch Windows Server resources, as well as governance of disparate environments and centralized management of a wide range of resources.
• Meet regulatory and connectivity needs with flexibility: meets residency and sovereignty needs with a variety of infrastructure, as well as offering simplified edge infrastructure for low-latency applications.  

Azure Arc enables running AKS on supported customer-managed infrastructures and deploying Windows and Linux applications in containers in data centers and on the edge.

It also allows you to create GitOps configurations to keep Kubernetes clusters in sync and automate upgrades for new and existing deployments.

With Service Mesh, capabilities such as traffic management, resiliency, policy, security, strong identity, and observability are provided to workloads.  

The Azure Connected Machine Agent is a key component in VMware vSphere virtual machine (VM) management with Azure Arc. Its installation allows you to centrally manage VMs running outside of Azure, either in on-premises environments or in other clouds.

Its main components are: 

• Connection to Azure: Through the Hybrid Instance Metadata Service (HIMDS), the agent enables data identity synchronization with Azure.
• Compliance and configuration: the guest configuration agent can be used to assess and enforce machine compliance policies on Windows and Linux.
• Extension management: A specialized module makes installing, updating, and removing extensions on VMs easy.  

This agent is distributed as a Windows Installer (MSI) package, which can be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center. Installing the Connected Machine for Windows agent applies the following configuration changes system-wide:  

The best practices assessment tool constantly scans your Windows server to evaluate configurations against Windows server best practices.

These assessments can be scheduled to run automatically or initiated manually as needed. They focus on evaluating various aspects of the server environment, including server baselines, security, Hyper-V, failover clusters, and Internet Information Services (IIS). In addition, it collects and analyzes server data to generate a list of issues that require troubleshooting guidance and best practices for improving the performance of your server infrastructure, including application deployment, software upgrades, and operating systems.

This tool has three extensions for each device:  

• Assessment Platform: serves for future custom development, where new best practice assessment scenarios are introduced.
• Windows Server Assessment: Contains all the necessary information about the validation checks that need to be run on the appliance to provide the recommendations seen in the Azure portal.
• Azure Monitor Agent (AMA): collects and uploads the log file to the cloud log analysis workspace, making it easy to view the information in the Azure portal.  

To implement the best practice assessment, the following steps must be followed:  

1. Go to the Azure portal and select the Arc-enabled Windows Server device.
2. Navigate to an Arc-enabled Windows Server resource on Windows Server 2016 or later. This VM should be the Hyper-V host.
3. In the left pane, select “Best Practices Assessment.”
4. Select “Get Started” to access the tool configuration.
5. Indicate the resource group and Log Analytics workspace where the assessment results are saved and then to “Assess”.
6. Once the implementation is complete, select “Go to Resource”, “Best Practices Assessment” and then “Run Assessment”.  

This first evaluation can take up to 4 hours to run and provide results.  

Windows Server machines can be onboarded directly to Azure Arc through a graphical assistant included with Windows Server.

The assistant automates the onboarding process by verifying the prerequisites necessary for successful onboarding to Azure Arc and by obtaining and installing the latest version of the Azure Connected Machine (AzCM) agent. Once the assistant process is complete, you are directed to your Windows Server machine in the Azure portal, where it can be viewed and managed just like any other Azure Arc-enabled resource.

The Azure Arc setup assistant launches from a system tray icon at the bottom of the Windows Server machine when the Azure Arc setup feature is enabled. This feature is enabled by default. You can also launch the assistant from a pop-up window in Server Manager or the Windows Server Start menu. 

1. Select the Azure Arc system tray icon and then “Start Azure Arc Configuration”.
2. An explanation of the benefits will open there, and click “Next”.
3. The assistant will automatically check the prerequisites needed to install the Azure Connected Machine agent on your Windows Server machine. Once the process is complete and the agent is installed, select “Configure”.
4. When you are ready to begin configuration, select “Next”.
5. Sign in to Azure by selecting the appropriate Azure cloud and then “Sign in to Azure”.
6. Give the resource details on how your machine will work within Azure Arc, such as subscription and resource pool, and then “Next”.
7. Once the setup is complete and the machine is onboarded, select “Finish”.
8. Go to the server manager and select “Local Server” to view the status of the machine in the “Azure Arc Administration” field.