What is Azure Arc used for?

Azure Arc extends Azure management and services to on-premises, edge and multicloud environments through a single governance and security approach. It is a good fit for managing on-premises servers from Azure, applying consistent policy across clouds and running Azure services at edge locations.

How much does Azure Arc cost?

Azure Arc is a paid product with no free plan.

Is Azure Arc open source?

No. Azure Arc is proprietary (closed-source) software. Open-source alternatives to Azure Arc include KubeStellar, Claudie and Mist CE.

What are some alternatives to Azure Arc?

Azure Arc competes with Red Hat OpenShift, Nutanix and Platform9. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Azure Arc alternatives.

Azure Arc: features, pricing and alternatives

About Azure Arc

Azure Arc is a Microsoft service that brings Azure's management plane to resources running outside Azure, including data centers, edge sites and other clouds. The vendor positions it for hybrid and multicloud operations, with Azure services extended to any environment.

The core idea is a unified approach to governance and security, so servers, Kubernetes clusters and other infrastructure can be organized and managed alongside native Azure resources. The product page text available for this entry is mostly shared Azure navigation, so a detailed capability list is not given here, and the vendor's documentation covers supported resource types.

Azure Arc is a proprietary Azure service that connects your own infrastructure to the cloud. Pricing follows Azure's model and is described on Microsoft's pricing pages.

Key features

Hybrid and multicloud management from Azure
Extends Azure services to any environment
Unified governance across environments
Security controls spanning on-premises and cloud
Edge and data center support

Good fit for

→Managing on-premises servers from Azure
→Applying consistent policy across clouds
→Running Azure services at edge locations

Tags: hybrid-cloud; multicloud; azure; governance; edge; infrastructure-management; microsoft

Azure Arc: questions and answers

What is Azure Arc used for?: Azure Arc extends Azure management and services to on-premises, edge and multicloud environments through a single governance and security approach. It is a good fit for managing on-premises servers from Azure, applying consistent policy across clouds and running Azure services at edge locations.
How much does Azure Arc cost?: Azure Arc is a paid product with no free plan.
Is Azure Arc open source?: No. Azure Arc is proprietary (closed-source) software. Open-source alternatives to Azure Arc include KubeStellar, Claudie and Mist CE.
What are some alternatives to Azure Arc?: Azure Arc competes with Red Hat OpenShift, Nutanix and Platform9. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Azure Arc alternatives.