Manufacturers are facing unprecedented changes brought on by digital transformation. According to a recent McKinsey report, 92% of manufacturers are either piloting or scaling digital technologies to target cost reduction and increase their competitive advantage. Also, retailers are embracing a digital-first mindset and 72% of consumers now expect a personalized marketing experience.
Azure Arc architecture from Microsoft is revolutionizing the industry by enabling manufacturers and retailers to manage their heterogeneous IT environment, which consists of Azure, Azure Stack and other cloud technologies, in one unified platform.
Azure Arc breaks down traditional boundaries between on-premises, multi-cloud, and edge computing environments and provides a consistent way to manage, secure, and govern Azure resources from one unified platform.
In this blog, you will find:
Azure Arc-Enabled Data Services
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This blog will guide you through Azure Arc and discuss how Azure Arc can help you realize the efficiency of Azure without having to completely re-architect your existing IT infrastructure.
What is Microsoft Azure Arc?
Microsoft Solutions for Microsoft Azure Arc is an extension of the Azure platform that enables customers to centrally manage and govern their resources across multiple environments. It extends the power of Azure Resource Manager to external locations including on-premises, multi-cloud and edge computing environments.
Azure Arc Key Features and Benefits
Microsoft wanted to bring the value of cloud operations and architecture to any infrastructure, which makes customers’ cloud-to-edge ecosystem simple, flexible, and secure. This is why Microsoft built Azure Arc.
🌉 Azure Arc is a bridge that extends the Azure platform so customers can build applications and services with the flexibility to run across data centers, at the edge, and in multi-cloud environments.
🔒 Azure Arc runs a consistent development, operations, and security model for new and existing applications. Customers can use the same tools and security and governance technologies to create and manage application resources.
🤖 Azure Arc also provides a range of application, data, and AI services that you can use on new or existing hardware systems, virtualization platforms, Kubernetes clusters, IoT(Internet of Things) devices and integrated solutions.
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Azure Arc Pillars
Azure Arc helps customers to extend cloud technology across their distributed infrastructure, from the cloud to the edge. It provides a consistent set of tools and services that allow customers to manage resources, build and deploy cloud-native applications, and gain insights from their data, regardless of where their infrastructure is located. With Azure Arc, customers can take advantage of the benefits of cloud technology while maintaining control over their digital estate. Let's dive into the four key capabilities of Azure Arc that make this possible.
Innovate anywhere with Azure
Today, the future of apps is cloud-native, providing several benefits. Cloud-native applications are designed to leverage the latest innovations in public cloud technologies, such as containerization, microservices, and DevOps practices. They are intelligent and infused with AI, enabling advanced insights, and use open-source technology and libraries from the community.
With Azure Arc, building and modernizing cloud-native applications is now possible on any Kubernetes container using familiar tools and Azure services. Running cloud-native databases is also possible anywhere and provides real-time insights. You can implement consistent GitOps and policy-driven deployment and configuration across environments. Additionally, you can integrate Azure monitoring, security, and compliance into your DevOps toolkit for a complete end-to-end solution.
Harness Data Insights from Edge to Cloud
For various reasons, organizations are increasingly excited about extending Azure innovation and cloud benefits across their IT estate. Some want to leverage legacy applications and data in hybrid infrastructure to capture operational insights and explore new opportunities. Others are interested in using AI and machine learning to shift from reactive to proactive decision-making and gain faster insights.
Additionally, some implement IoT(Internet of Things) solutions to generate new business and operational insights by unlocking and interpreting signals and data from the physical world. Azure Arc is built to help customers harness data insights from the cloud to the edge, regardless of their specific needs.
With Azure Arc, you can accelerate innovation by leveraging cloud data and AI capabilities to build next-gen apps and gain fast, continuous insights. You can improve operational efficiency and reduce IT overhead through cloud automation and consistent management.
Furthermore, you can reduce risk exposure through integrated multi-layer security and data governance solutions. Azure Arc provides a comprehensive solution for organizations looking to streamline and optimize their IT operations while leveraging cutting-edge technologies like AI and IoT.
Secure and Govern across Environments
As customers scale their application services across diverse environments, the potential for security risks increases. This is especially challenging for organizations with on-premises infrastructure and multi-cloud environments. To address these challenges, it's important to implement a comprehensive security and governance strategy.
Azure Arc offers several solutions to these challenges. Firstly, customers can leverage cloud-native tools for security posture management, helping them understand their current security situation and take necessary actions to improve it.
Secondly, they can take advantage of cloud-based threat detection, response, and analytics specific to their workloads. Finally, Azure Arc enables central operation and governance of diverse environments, making it easy to adapt to changing requirements and compliance standards through dynamic visibility, compliance, and audit.
By leveraging Azure Arc, customers can ensure comprehensive security and governance across their hybrid environments.
Flexibly Meet Regulatory and Connectivity Needs
Two key motivators often drive hybrid needs: connectivity requirements and regulations. For instance, retailers must ensure that their Point of Sale system can operate without internet services. At the same time, hospitals require cloud-powered medical image processing and analysis that meets data residency regulations for patient medical data.
Whatever the specific requirements are, it's essential to make it easy for customers to address them when building hybrid environments.
Azure Arc provides various infrastructure and connectivity choices to help customers meet these needs. It enables customers to meet data residency and sovereignty requirements with different infrastructure options, simplifies edge computing infrastructure for low-latency applications, and supports fully or intermittently connected operations, even for extended periods.
With Azure Arc, customers can simplify their hybrid environments and ensure they meet connectivity and regulatory requirements.
Azure Arc-Enabled Servers
Azure Arc-enabled servers offer a powerful solution that enables customers to quickly onboard and manage a broad range of servers in Azure, regardless of their operating system or location. Whether running Windows, Linux, virtual machines, or bare-metal servers, customers can now seamlessly reach all these servers under the Azure Arc umbrella.
Once onboard, customers can effortlessly organize their servers into groups and apply governance policies across all of them. This feature enables customers to enforce compliance and security policies across their entire infrastructure, reducing risks and improving regulatory compliance.
With role-based access control, customers can now define access controls and policies for each server, ensuring that only authorized users can access specific resources. This feature enhances security and reduces the risks of data breaches or unauthorized access.
In addition, Azure Arc-enabled servers simplify the management of hybrid machines across on-premises, edge, and other cloud environments, allowing customers to deploy Azure VM extensions to non-Azure Windows and Linux VMs. This enables customers to leverage Azure management tools and processes, creating a consistent and unified management experience.
Azure Arc-Enabled Kubernetes
Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes provides an unparalleled capability to customers, empowering them to seamlessly oversee and govern their Kubernetes clusters from a single platform in the cloud. Azure Kubernates service offers tremendous freedom and accommodates various versions of Kubernetes - regardless of vendor or origin.
With Azure Arc enabled Kubernetes,
☑️ Customers can connect their Kubernetes clusters to Azure and start deploying applications using a GitOps (Git-based Operational Approaches) -based model. This Azure Kubernetes service allows for a streamlined and automated deployment process, reducing the time and effort required for manual deployments.
☑️ Customers can enable cluster health monitoring with Azure Monitor for Containers. This feature provides valuable insights into the health and performance of Kubernetes clusters, allowing customers to identify and troubleshoot issues quickly.
☑️ Customers can also leverage the integration with Azure Policy t o ensure compliance with their organization's security baselines. With Azure Policy, customers can define policies that govern the configuration and security of their Kubernetes clusters, reducing the risk of security breaches and non-compliance.
Azure Arc-Enabled Data Services
Azure Arc-enabled data services allow customers to run their data workloads anywhere, whether on-premises, at the edge, or in the cloud. This will enable customers to choose the deployment option that best fits their needs and take advantage of the unique capabilities of Azure data services, such as evergreen SQL(Structured Query Language) with no end-of-support through Azure SQL Database and hyper-scale deployment options of Azure Database for PostgreSQL.
With Arc-enabled data services, customers can enjoy benefits including:
- ☑️ Automated updates and upgrades ensure that data workloads are always up-to-date and secure.
- ☑️ Customers can leverage PaaS (Platform as a Service) offerings to automate HA/DR at scale, improving the reliability of their data workloads and reducing operational overhead.
- ☑️ Cloud elasticity allows customers to dynamically scale their data workloads up or down without application downtime, optimizing performance and cost.
- ☑️ Connecting to Azure enables unified management, allowing customers to manage their data services on-premises alongside those running in Azure through a single pane of glass.
- ☑️ Familiar tools like Azure Portal, Azure Data Studio, and Azure CLI make it easy to manage and monitor data workloads across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
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Content from: ProServeIT Academy 2022 Azure Course 4 by Bill Kastner
Edited by: Betty Quon & Hyun-Jin Im
