TL;DR
Once a Hyper-V server is onboarded to Azure Arc, you can manage it from the Azure portal like a native Azure resource, covering updates, monitoring, automation, and compliance.
- Run guest OS update assessments and apply patches from the Updates menu
- Get unified health and performance monitoring, billed by data ingested and retention settings
- Apply best-practice configuration profiles automatically with Azure Arc-enabled Automanage
- Enable change tracking (requires a Log Analytics Workspace and Automation account)
- Build automation tasks, such as scheduled cost reports, using built-in templates
In one of the previous posts, we looked at how to onboard servers into Azure Arc using the Microsoft-provided script. The process is straightforward and quickly brings the server under Azure management using the script. Once we have a server onboarded with Azure Arc, we can manage many aspects of the on-premises server using Arc. Let’s look at managing a Hyper-V server with Azure Arc and see our capabilities with the Arc-enabled server.
Azure Arc management features
Many features, capabilities, and management tools are available in the Azure Arc portal when managing an on-premises server with Azure Arc tools. For example, when you connect your on-premises server resources using Azure Arc, you can perform many operational functions like any other native Azure resource.
Azure Arc-supported operations
You can perform many supported cloud operations on your Azure Arc-enabled servers when connected to Azure Arc. What do these operations include? You can:
- Govern – The governance capabilities included with Azure Arc allow auditing settings inside the Arc-enabled machine. It uses Azure Policy’s machine configuration feature to provide this feature as a native capability, including auditing and configuring the guest operating system settings. You can use the feature directly, infrastructure as code, or the Azure Policy solution to manage Arc-enabled devices at scale. In addition, it provides the benefits of:
- Configuration management – manage a server as code in source control, using a modern infrastructure as code approach. In this way, you can configure a server using “desired state,” where you define what you want the server to “look like.” Then, the code implements the configurations needed to make this happen.
- Compliance – If Arc-enabled resources are in-scope for compliance, you can audit or deploy settings needed to bring resources into compliance proactively.
- Protect – using Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, and Microsoft Sentinel, admins, have the resources through Azure Arc-enabled resources to protect non-Azure servers. These cloud-based tools help admins to protect resources, no matter where these are located and if they are on-premises or cloud-based.
- Configure – Admins can use Azure Automation to perform tedious and manual tasks in an automated manner. For example, they can use powerful scripting languages like PowerShell and Python to configure Azure Arc-enabled endpoints. In addition, they can record changes made in the environment for installed software, Windows registry and files, Microsoft services, and even changes made to Linux hosts.
- From the machine or server hosting the Azure Automation Runbook worker, you can run runbooks directly against Arc-enabled resources
- Monitor – Monitoring has always been a vital part of operations. With Arc-enabled resources, you can monitor operating system performance and discover dependencies and other processes using the VM insights tool
- VM Insights monitors the performance and health of virtual machines and virtual machine scale sets. It supports Windows and Linux virtual machines connected with Azure Arc
- You can use a Log Analytics agent and Log Analytics workloads
Managing a Hyper-V server with Azure Arc
Let’s consider a few highlights of the Azure Arc solution and how it allows effective management of your Hyper-V host from the Azure portal.
Updates
First, if you navigate to the Updates menu in the Azure Arc portal, you will see the ability to apply Guest OS Updates from the Updates menu.
Here, you can trigger an assessment of your Arc-enabled server. Running the assessment will scan the server for missing updates, including recommended and critical updates needed on the server.
Monitoring
No matter where these are located, monitoring resources is a vital aspect of operations. By onboarding resources using Azure Arc, you can have unified monitoring of resources. In addition, azure Arc enables health and performance monitoring of your Arc resource, providing insights into performance and dependencies. Customers are billed based on the amount of data ingested and your data retention settings with performance and analytics data.
Automanage
With Azure Arc-enabled Automanage, you can easily apply machine best practices to your Arc-enabled servers with a simple wizard approach. Automanage will automatically configure best practice recommendations for your servers to comply with configuration profiles. It includes setting up monitoring, backups, and other best practices using Azure services like Azure Backup.
Change tracking
With Azure Arc, you can enable change tracking for your resource that allows consistent control and compliance of your Azure Arc resources. The service requires a Log Analytics Workspace and an Automation account to enable. However, you can use an existing workspace if you have already configured one.
Automation tasks
You can add automation tasks to automate various aspects of your Azure Arc-enabled infrastructure using Azure Arc-enabled resources. For example, you can use the built-in templates to send your monthly cost for a resource.
Azure Arc management FAQs
What is the benefit of managing your server with Azure Arc?
First, it allows consolidating your management workflows and tooling using the same cloud-based management accessible from anywhere. It also provides Azure tooling that automates, updates, monitors, analyzes, and provides configuration management from the cloud.
How much does Azure Arc cost?
Azure Arc is priced based on the Azure Arc-enabled resource. Different Azure Arc resources are priced differently. You can find the official pricing from Microsoft here: Pricing – Azure Arc | Microsoft Azure
What resources can be Arc-enabled?
With Microsoft Azure Arc, you can onboard servers, Kubernetes clusters, data services, VMware vSphere, and Azure Stack HCI to name a few.
Wrapping Up
As shown in the post, there are many benefits to Arc-enabling resources. With Microsoft Azure Arc, organizations can streamline the management of resources no matter where these exist and bring them under the same security and compliance guardrails. Microsoft has made the onboarding of Azure Arc-enabled resources straightforward with preconfigured scripts that install the agent and onboard the resource. Once onboarded, you can manage these resources as if they are native Azure resources. Microsoft continues to expand the Azure Arc offering by adding new solutions that can be Arc-enabled, recently adding VMware vSphere and Azure Arc-enabled virtual machines.
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FAQ
1) What is the benefit of managing a Hyper-V server with Azure Arc?
It consolidates management workflows into a single cloud-based console accessible from anywhere. Azure Arc brings Azure tooling for automation, updates, monitoring, analysis, and configuration management to an on-premises Hyper-V host.
2) How much does Azure Arc cost?
Pricing varies by the type of Azure Arc-enabled resource, since different resource types are priced differently. Microsoft publishes official rates on its Azure Arc pricing page.
3) What resources besides Hyper-V servers can be Arc-enabled?
Azure Arc supports onboarding servers, Kubernetes clusters, data services, VMware vSphere, and Azure Stack HCI, in addition to Hyper-V hosts.
4) What operations can you perform on an Arc-enabled Hyper-V server?
Azure Arc groups capabilities into four areas: Govern (auditing and configuration via Azure Policy), Protect (Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Defender for Cloud, and Sentinel), Configure (Azure Automation with PowerShell or Python), and Monitor (VM Insights and Log Analytics).
5) How do you check for missing updates on an Arc-enabled Hyper-V server?
From the Updates menu in the Azure Arc portal, you can trigger an assessment that scans the server for missing updates, including both recommended and critical patches.
6) What does Azure Arc-enabled Automanage do?
Automanage applies best-practice configuration profiles to an Arc-enabled server through a wizard, automatically setting up monitoring, backups, and other recommended practices using Azure services like Azure Backup.
7) What’s required to enable change tracking on an Arc-enabled server?
Change tracking requires a Log Analytics Workspace and an Automation account. An existing workspace can be reused if one is already configured.
8) Can you automate recurring tasks on Arc-enabled Hyper-V infrastructure?
Yes. Azure Arc supports automation tasks built from templates, such as automatically sending a monthly cost report for a resource.
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