Azure Arc: the solution for hybrid & multi-cloud management

Is your IT infrastructure made up of different cloud platforms? Or do you still have some on-prem servers running? Then Azure Arc is the perfect tool for you! It allows you to manage your entire hybrid or multi-cloud environment in the blink of an eye, from one central location. Want to find out exactly how it works? Thijs Hereygers, our Azure Arc specialist, highlights all the advantages for your business.

What is Azure Arc?

Azure Arc is a tool from Microsoft that allows you to easily manage all the servers in your entire IT environment, whether they are on Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, a private cloud or on-premises. That means you no longer have to switch between different platforms to update, manage or monitor your servers. And it allows you to have full control over all your resources at any time, no matter where they are in your environment.

And best of all? All our Azure and cloud services can be seamlessly applied to the rest of your hybrid infrastructure.

How does it work?

Azure Arc is the bridge (hence the name) between your Azure environment and everything outside of it. But what does that actually mean? When you enable Azure Arc on your environment, you get a helpful overview of the virtual machines (VMs) of your on-prem, public and private cloud environment in the Azure Resource Manager (ARM).

And that opens up a lot of possibilities, of course.

What are the benefits?

1. Simpler, centralized management

You can easily add your on-prem data centers, virtual servers at other cloud providers or edge locations to Azure Arc. And manage them all from a single dashboard, just as if they were Azure resources. This not only gives you a better overview of your entire cloud environment, but also allows you to update and monitor them in a more unified way.

2. Streamlined security infrastructure

Through Azure Arc, you can easily deploy your security solutions across your entire IT environment. And push updates to all your virtual machines in the snap of a finger, regardless of whether they're running on-prem, in a private cloud or another public cloud. So, Azure Arc provides you with a unified solution to handle auditing, compliance and role-based access management in your hybrid environment.

Additionally, you're able use the security tools that are available in Azure. And deploy them seamlessly across your entire environment.

3. More scalability and flexibility

Azure Arc is not only convenient as a centralized management tool for your hybrid environment. It also offers a lot of additional scalability options. Whether it's on-prem data centers, virtual machines in the public cloud or containerized applications, with Azure Arc you can seamlessly scale them up and down according to your business needs.

That way, you'll enjoy tons of extra flexibility and make your environment a lot more cost-efficient.

4. Smooth monitoring and control

Because Azure Arc makes your security infrastructure completely unified, you'll have better control over your entire hybrid cloud environment. You can, for example, take advantage of Azure's built-in monitoring and compliance features. And fully extend the Azure Governance best practices to your entire infrastructure.

On top of that, you'll also have access to the detailed reports in Azure, offering the necessary visibility into the performance and status of your resources.

More info about Azure Arc?

Our experts are happy to take a closer look at your cloud infrastructure. And explore, together with you, whether Azure Arc could prove to be a suitable solution for your organization.