Azure Arc is a new series of Microsoft hybrid cloud technologies controlled through Azure Portal that extends Azure Cloud’s control plane/resource security and management abilities to any infrastructure implemented across on-premises, edge, and multi-cloud environments. In this article, we will go through benefits, Azure Arc Pricing, and top feature of Azure Arc.
Top benefits of Azure Arc for organizations
Azure Arc enables organizations to take a significant step ahead in their efforts to promote more contemporary application architectures while retaining a hybrid and/or multi-cloud environment. Given below are the benefits of Azure Arc for your organization:
- Businesses may use the same consolidated, cloud-native management interface to operate public cloud services both within and outside of Microsoft Azure.
- Businesses may use Azure Security Centers‘ security and compliance abilities for any Azure Arc-registered cloud resources, whether internal or external. Patching, rules, tags, and other features may be applied to all of your virtual machines seamlessly.
- Businesses may use Azure Monitor’s comprehensive monitoring and analytics for any cloud-based resources associated with Azure Arc, whether or not they are in Azure.
- Businesses may utilize ARM templates and all of their advantages for VMs outside of Azure, including role-based access control (RBAC), rules, and tags, as well as universal resource governance with Azure Policy.
- With Azure Arc, businesses can create containerized apps with whichever tools they choose, then deploy, configure, and manage them with GitOps.
- Businesses may use Azure data services across environments, taking advantage of elastic scaling based on capacity and the flexibility to install and change in seconds, as well as simplify billing for on-premises operations to further reduce ongoing expenses.
Azure Arc Pricing Structure model of Azure Arc
Azure Prices are simply estimations and therefore are not supposed to be used as genuine prices. The actual cost is subject to change depending on the Microsoft agreement type, date of purchase, and currency exchange rate. Prices are determined in US dollars and converted using Thomson Reuters benchmark rates, which are updated on the first of each month.
Servers with Azure Arc support
Azure Update Management, in addition to the bundled features, is available for non-Azure servers at no extra cost. When Azure Arc enabled servers are activated, additional Azure management services (Azure Policy guest configuration, Azure Monitor, Azure Defender, and so on) are billed.
Azure Policy’s guest configuration feature
The guest configuration component of Azure Policy manages operating system adherence and configuration.
The number of servers associated with the service that have one or more guest configurations allocated to them determines the billing. Billing is done on an hourly basis. Offline machines are not invoiced, such as those that are unplugged or switched down for the full hour.
In the following Azure Arc Pricing circumstances, Azure Arc resources handled by guest configuration are not billed.
Azure Automation
- If the machine is already handled by Azure Automation’s state configuration or change tracking tools, guest configuration assignments are not invoiced.
- Azure Security Center
- The Azure Security Benchmark Initiative’s Azure Policy assignment provides a configuration assignment.
- Configuration assignment is created when a built-in policy initiative in the “Regulatory Compliance” category is assigned to Azure Policy.
- Configuration assignment is created by assigning an Azure Policy to a custom policy initiative developed in Azure Security Centre.
| Azure Resource | Azure Arc Resource | |
| Azure Control Plane Functionality | Free | Free |
| Azure Policy guest configuration | Free | $6/Server/Month |
Any additional Azure services that are connected, such as Azure Defender or Azure Monitor, will be paid according to their price.
Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes
Customers can use Azure Arc enabled Kubernetes to integrate and manage Kubernetes clusters throughout customer data centers, edge sites, and multi-cloud. Any number of Kubernetes clusters can be joined and arranged on the Azure Portal at no incremental expense. Like Arc-enabled servers, add-on Azure management services, such as Kubernetes Configuration, are charged when activated.
Kubernetes Configuration
Kubernetes Configuration uses GitOps to provide configuration management and application deployment. Cluster administrators may use Git to specify their cluster configuration and applications.
Azure Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance – General purpose
Customers may host Azure SQL and Azure PostgreSQL (still in public preview) databases on-premises and in multi-cloud settings on the infrastructure of their choosing using Azure Arc-enabled data services. Customers would receive access to Azure innovations and cloud advantages, such as a cloud pricing model that aids with cost management.
| 1 vCore/Month | Pay as you go | 1 year reserved | 3 years reserved |
| License included | $153.30 | $112.997 | $93.002 |
| Azure Hybrid Benefit | $80.30 | $39.997 | $20.002 |
What are the top features of Azure Arc?
Now that we have covered Azure Arc Pricing, now let’s see some of Azure Arc’s key features:
- Ensure that your servers have uniform inventory, administration, governance, and security throughout your whole environment.
- Use Azure management services to monitor, safeguard, and upgrade your servers by configuring Azure VM extensions.
- At scale, monitor and regulate Kubernetes clusters.
- Use GitOps to distribute settings from Git repositories across one or more clusters.
- Using Azure Policy, you can achieve zero-touch compliance and setup for your Kubernetes clusters.
- Use Azure data services in any Kubernetes environment as if it were an Azure environment. Use elastic scaling to apply changes to your application without causing any downtime, even if you don’t have seamless connectivity to Azure.
- On top of your Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes clusters, create custom locations to use as targeted areas for deploying Azure services units. Install Azure service cluster extensions for Azure Arc-enabled Data Services, Azure Arc App Services (including web, function, and logic applications), and Kubernetes Event Grid.
- Whether you’re using the Azure portal, the Azure CLI, Azure PowerShell, or the Azure REST API, you’ll have a unified experience accessing your Azure Arc-enabled resources.
What areAzure Arc-enabled Services?
Azure Arc makes it feasible to run Azure information benefits on-premises, at the edge, and in public clouds utilizing Kubernetes and your preferred infrastructure.
At present, the accompanying Azure Arc-enabled data services are accessible:
- SQL Managed Instance
- PostgreSQL Hyperscale (review)
What is Azure Arc–enabled infrastructure?
By providing a unified multi-cloud and on-premises management platform, Azure Arc streamlines governance and management. You can use Azure Arc to:
- By integrating your existing non-Azure, on-premises, or other-cloud resources into Azure Resource Manager, you can control your whole system with a single point of access.
- Handle virtual machines, Kubernetes clusters, and databases in Azure as if they were Azure resources.
- Irrespective of where they are located, use standard Azure services and administration features.
- Use traditional IT operations while incorporating DevOps approaches to enable new cloud-native patterns in your environment.
- Use Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes clusters; cluster connects, and cluster extensions to configure Custom Locations as an abstraction layer.
What are the use cases of Azure Arc?
Manage a large number of IT assets
Manage, control, and safeguard Windows and Linux servers, SQL Server clusters, and Kubernetes clusters in data centers, the edge, and multi-cloud settings with ease. Both traditional and cloud applications can benefit from Azure features like Azure Policy and Azure Resource Graph.
Ensure that deployments and configurations are consistent
Using GitHub and Azure Policy, you can deploy and administer Kubernetes apps. Ascertain that apps and clusters are deployed and configured appropriately at scale using source control.
Comply with data sovereignty and regulatory standards
To achieve data governance and safety standards while controlling costs, automate and enforce policies. For data operations that operate across hybrid infrastructure, get the latest cloud innovations and automation, flexible scalability, and streamlined management.
Understanding Azure Arc enabled Kubernetes
Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes chains industry-standard SSL to safeguard data in transit. For the linked clusters, data at rest is stowed encrypted in an Azure Cosmos DB database to ensure data discretion.
Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes supports the following scenarios for the connected clusters:
- Integrate Kubernetes operating outside of Azure for inventories, classification, and tagging.
- Use GitOps-based configuration management to deploy applications and adjust the configuration.
- Use Azure Monitor for containers to observe and supervise your clusters.
- Use Microsoft Defender for Kubernetes to implement protection against threats.
- Use Azure Policy for Kubernetes to apply policy constraints.
- For authorization and authentication tests on your cluster, deploy Azure Active Directory.
- Using Cluster Connect, you can safely access your Kubernetes cluster from almost anywhere without opening an inbound port on your firewall.
- Install Open Service Mesh on top of your cluster for service-to-service visibility and policy regulation.
- Leverage machine learning workloads for Kubernetes clusters using Azure Machine Learning.
EPCGroup as your Azure consulting Partner for Azure Arc
EPCGroup Azure consultants understand how to reduce your Azure migration and progression endeavors while also optimizing your Azure infrastructure and Azure Arc Pricing.
What Are the Advantages of EPCGroup’s Azure Consulting?
- The expense of migration – To save development expenses, we build a practical Azure migration approach.
- Costs of cloud usage – To cut cloud usage expenses, we automate resource orchestration and choose Azure services.
- Costs and pace of cloud development – We assist with the setup of Azure services to save development time and the building of CI/CD pipelines to accelerate development.
- Performance of the app – To ensure app stability and excellent performance, we built up auto-scaling algorithms and designed performance testing processes.
- Reliability – We provide fail-safe Azure-based apps with app performance management methods to allow troubleshooting without interruptions and to recommend app recovery techniques.
- Security– Our advisors assist you with adjusting Identity and Access Management (IAM) and component-level security via Azure Active Directory.
