What is Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes?

Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes allows you to attach and configure Kubernetes clusters running anywhere. You can connect your clusters running on other public cloud providers (such as GCP or AWS) or clusters running on your on-premises data center (such as VMware vSphere or Azure Stack HCI) to Azure Arc.

When you connect a Kubernetes cluster to Azure Arc, it will:

• Be represented in Azure Resource Manager by a unique ID
• Be placed in an Azure subscription and resource group
• Receive tags just like any other Azure resource

Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes supports industry-standard SSL to secure data in transit. For the connected clusters, cluster extensions, and custom locations, data at rest is stored encrypted in an Azure Cosmos DB database to ensure confidentiality.

Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes supports the following scenarios for connected clusters:

• Connect Kubernetes running outside of Azure for inventory, grouping, and tagging.

• Deploy applications and apply configuration using GitOps-based configuration management.

• View and monitor your clusters using Azure Monitor for containers.

• Enforce threat protection using Microsoft Defender for Kubernetes.

• Apply policy definitions using Azure Policy for Kubernetes.

• Use Azure Active Directory for authentication and authorization checks on your cluster.

• Securely access your Kubernetes cluster from anywhere without opening inbound port on firewall using Cluster Connect.

• Deploy Open Service Mesh on top of your cluster for observability and policy enforcement on service-to-service interactions

• Deploy machine learning workloads using Azure Machine Learning for Kubernetes clusters.

• Create custom locations as target locations for deploying Azure Arc-enabled Data Services (SQL Managed Instances, PostgreSQL Hyperscale.), App Services on Azure Arc (including web, function, and logic apps), and Event Grid on Kubernetes.

Note

This service supports Azure Lighthouse, which lets service providers sign in to their own tenant to manage subscriptions and resource groups that customers have delegated.

Supported Kubernetes distributions

Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes works with any Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) certified Kubernetes clusters. The Azure Arc team has worked with key industry partners to validate conformance of their Kubernetes distributions with Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes.

Next steps

Learn how to connect your existing Kubernetes cluster to Azure Arc.

Connect an existing Kubernetes cluster to Azure Arc