What is Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes?

Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes allows you to attach Kubernetes clusters running anywhere so that you can manage and configure them in Azure. By managing all of your Kubernetes resources in a single control plane, you can enable a more consistent development and operation experience to run cloud-native apps anywhere and on any Kubernetes platform.

When the Azure Arc agents are deployed to the cluster, an outbound connection to Azure is initiated, using industry-standard SSL to secure data in transit.

Once clusters are connected to Azure, they're represented as their own resources in Azure Resource Manager, and they can be organized using resource groups and tagging.

Supported Kubernetes distributions

Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes works with any Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) certified Kubernetes clusters. This includes clusters running on other public cloud providers (such as GCP or AWS) and clusters running on your on-premises data center (such as VMware vSphere or Azure Stack HCI).

The Azure Arc team has worked with key industry partners to validate conformance of their Kubernetes distributions with Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes.

Scenarios and enhanced functionality

Once your Kubernetes clusters are connected to Azure, at scale you can: