Evolution? You bet. One of the biggest announcements to come from Ignite 2019 was Azure Arc, a new solution that lets users manage their on-premises, multi-cloud and even edge deployments.
In other words, they can take their Microsoft cloud to virtually any other platform, including immediate competition like AWS and Google Cloud Platform.
The service, now in preview, allows users to utilize Azure management tools and data services on practically any Linux and Windows server, with centralized role-based access control and security policies. It can also run Kubernetes clusters on any infrastructure.
Announcing Azure Arc in a blog post, Microsoft Azure corporate vice president, Julia White explained how the new service can help speed up deployment:
“With Azure Arc, customers can now realize the benefits of cloud innovation, including always up-to-date data capabilities, deployment in seconds (rather than hours), and dynamic scalability on any infrastructure. Customers now have the flexibility to deploy Azure SQL Database and Azure Database for PostgreSQL Hyperscale where they need it, on any Kubernetes cluster. From the Azure portal, customers get a unified and consistent view of all their Azure data services running across on-premises and clouds and can apply consistent policy, security and governance of data across environments. Customers can get limitless scale by seamlessly spinning up additional Kubernetes clusters in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) if they run out of capacity on-premises.”
That’s the gist of it.
Arc bears similarities to Anthos, a Google cloud solution that launched in April.
Basically, Azure Arc can be termed as the evolution of the Azure Stack, in how it brings Azure products and management to multiple clouds, edge devices, and datacenters on any infrastructure. This unifies both orchestration and governance.
Resources served through Arc look and feel like they’re practically native, which allows developers to take advantage of Azure tools of their choice. On top of that, you also get solid auditing and compliance, via role-based access and security settings that are designed to scale.
Remains to be seen whether there is an audience for Arc, but on paper this seems like a good idea.
