Govern every server and cluster from one Azure control plane
Azure Arc projects your on-premises, multicloud, and edge infrastructure into Azure Resource Manager, so your team manages it with the same RBAC, policy, and monitoring tools already running your Azure workloads.
Talk to an Expert →Bring existing infrastructure under Azure governance
Azure Arc projects your non-Azure resources, physical and virtual servers, Kubernetes clusters, and SQL Server instances, into Azure Resource Manager. Nothing migrates. Your team applies the same tags, RBAC assignments, and Resource Graph queries it already uses for native Azure resources, now across data centers, other clouds, and edge sites.
Connectivity matters here. Every Arc-managed resource needs an active connection back to Azure, and Microsoft retired indirectly connected mode in September 2025. We plan for direct connectivity, a proxy, or the Azure Arc Gateway before enrolling a fleet, especially in regulated or air-gapped environments.
What Azure Arc manages
Servers and VMs
- Windows and Linux physical servers and VMs running outside Azure, discovered and inventoried in one view
- VM lifecycle operations (create, resize, delete, start, stop) on Azure Local, VMware vCenter, and System Center Virtual Machine Manager estates, with RBAC-delegated self-service for app teams
Kubernetes clusters
- Any distribution, any location, attached and governed from a single pane
- GitOps via Flux deploys and audits cluster configuration straight from your Git repos
- Azure Policy enforces compliance across clusters with zero-touch controls
Data services
- SQL Managed Instance and PostgreSQL run as cloud-native services on the Kubernetes infrastructure you choose
- Elastic scale and updates apply without application downtime, even without a continuous Azure connection
SQL Server
- Defender for Cloud, Azure Monitor, and Update Manager extend to SQL Server instances hosted outside Azure
- Licensing and patch visibility stay centralized alongside the rest of your Arc-enabled estate
What's free and what you pay for
The Azure Arc control plane costs nothing: resource organization through management groups and tags, search through Azure Resource Graph, RBAC, and automation through templates and extensions are included. You pay standard rates only for the Azure services you run on top, like Defender for Cloud or Azure Monitor. Arc-enabled VMware vSphere and System Center Virtual Machine Manager add free inventory discovery plus VM lifecycle and power operations, managed through the portal, CLI, REST API, or infrastructure-as-code tools like Terraform and Bicep.
If your organization holds active Software Assurance or subscription licensing for Windows Server, Windows Server Management enabled by Azure Arc bundles in Update Manager, Change Tracking and Inventory, Machine Configuration, Windows Admin Center, Remote Support, and Best Practices Assessment at no extra cost beyond networking, storage, and log ingestion. It's a way to get more governance out of licenses you already own before spending on new tooling.
How we get you running
We start with a maturity audit: which servers, clusters, and databases live outside Azure today, what connectivity they support, and what already-owned licensing, Software Assurance or Windows Server pay-as-you-go, is worth activating before it goes to waste.
From there we design the enrollment strategy, connection method, and RBAC and policy structure, then move resources into Arc in stages, starting with the lowest-risk group so your team can validate the model before the rest of the estate follows. Once you're enrolled, we tune policy assignments, extension usage, and cost allocation so the platform keeps paying for itself instead of becoming another console to babysit.
Start Your Azure Arc Rollout
Tell us what's running outside Azure today. We'll scope which resources to enroll first and the connectivity model that fits your environment.
Talk to an Expert →