Hybrid Cloud Architectures Mature with Azure Arc
Microsoft's Azure Arc is enabling more mature hybrid cloud solutions for enterprise IoT across on-premise, edge, and public cloud environments. A new guide outlines best practices for using Arc to orchestrate workloads like real-time inventory and AI analytics. Key features highlighted include a unified control plane for managing distributed resources, consistent policy enforcement, and support for low-latency operations in warehouses and stores.
- Azure Arc extends Azure's management plane to any infrastructure by installing agents on external resources, "projecting" them into Azure. This allows for the management of Windows and Linux servers, Kubernetes clusters, and databases as if they were native to Azure, regardless of their location on-premises, at the edge, or in other clouds like AWS and Google Cloud. - For AI and machine learning workloads, Azure Arc enables users to train and deploy models using Azure Machine Learning in hybrid and multi-cloud environments. This allows data to be processed locally on-premises or at the edge, which is crucial for latency-sensitive applications and data sovereignty requirements. A catalog of pre-tested AI models, including Phi-3.5 Mini and Mistral 7B, can be deployed to the edge via Azure Arc. - In the context of retail and supply chain, companies like Wolverine and Greggs use Azure Arc to analyze data from manufacturing and e-commerce operations and to gain visibility across their on-premises and cloud assets. Azure IoT Operations, an extension within Azure Arc, supports industrial protocols like OPC-UA and MQTT, enabling local processing of machine learning models in factories and warehouses. - First announced in November 2019, Azure Arc's capabilities have expanded significantly. Support for servers and Kubernetes became generally available in 2020 and 2021, followed by integrations with GitOps, Azure Policy, and Azure Monitor. Arc-enabled data services, including SQL Managed Instance, offer automated updates and patching, eliminating end-of-support issues for on-premises databases. - Azure Arc is a key component of Microsoft's hybrid cloud strategy, competing with offerings like Google Anthos and AWS Outposts. Unlike AWS Outposts, which requires proprietary hardware, Azure Arc is a software-based solution that works with existing infrastructure. While similar to Google Anthos in its use of Kubernetes, Azure Arc also provides management for traditional virtual machines and physical servers. - The core of Azure Arc's architecture is the Azure Resource Manager (ARM), which acts as the control plane. By connecting external resources to ARM, organizations can apply consistent governance and security policies, such as Azure Policy and role-based access control (RBAC), across their entire hybrid environment. - For Kubernetes management, Azure Arc allows any Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) certified cluster to be connected and configured. This enables centralized inventory management, monitoring with Azure Monitor, and the application of security policies through Microsoft Defender for Cloud across all connected clusters. - A key use case for Azure Arc is modernizing legacy systems without requiring a full migration. For example, SQL Server 2012, which is out of support, can be brought back into compliance with extended security updates by connecting it to Azure Arc. This allows enterprises to apply modern governance and security to older, on-premises assets.
