With Azure Arc you are able to manage and monitor your on-premise infrastructure from the Azure Portal. In other words, it will align day to day management for Azure resources with servers in your own network. Learn how to configure Azure Arc for Windows Server 2022.
Today we are using a Windows Server 2022 machine. It is still in preview, but works really well with Azure Arc. I am covering the configuring of Azure Policies and the setup of monitoring in a different post.
Software prerequisites
- Windows Server 2022 (With GUI or Core).
- NET Framework 4.6 or later.
- Windows PowerShell 5.1 is required.
Need help setting up a machine? Check out my post on how to Install a Domain Controller with Windows Server 2019 Core.
Azure prerequisites
- You are a member of the Azure Connected Machine Onboarding and Azure Connected Machine Resource Administrator roles so you can onboard and manage machines in Azure Arc.
- You are at least a Reader of the resource group you are deploying to.
Configure Azure Arc on the machine
All configuration is done on the Windows Server 2022 machine. Use the PowerShell ISE console (or whatever console you like) and run it as Administrator. Copy the script snippets found in the post below and you are good to go!
Register resource providers
Enable Azure resource providers to make sure we can use Azure Arc. Make sure to select the subscription you want to use, so that we won’t get errors in the next steps.
Download the agent and configure Azure Arc
Microsoft provides a module that we use to install the Azure Arc agent. There is no need for a custom script, which is nice! Since there is no proxy, the server directly talks with Azure.
Firstly, I am using West Europe as location. However, you can use other locations if you like. Secondly, change the name of the resource group to whatever you like.
Get-AzConnectedMachine : The Resource ‘Microsoft.HybridCompute/machines/my-machine-01’ under resource group ‘azure-arc’ was not found. For more details please
go to https://aka.ms/ARMResourceNotFoundFix
You might see an error that the resource could not be found in the resource group. But don’t worry, it will show in the portal!
Review results
Next, open the Azure Portal and log in. After that, go to Azure Arc and you will see a new entry in the overview. This means that your machine successfully onboarded into Azure Arc.
Click on the entry. You can now view different aspects of the machine in the portal. For example, click on Activity log to view information about the activity of the machine.
Azure Lighthouse
Managed Service Providers onboard customers to Azure Lighthouse. As a result, management within Azure gets really easy. But on-premise management lacks behind the ease and scalability of the Azure platform.
Now, with Azure Arc you can manage both Azure resources and resources in customer networks. Think about it, it might benefit your own needs.
Very interesting read Bjorn! Can I subscribe to your blogs?