What is Azure Arc and what problem does it solve?

Answer

Azure Arc extends Azure management and services to on-premises, multi-cloud, and edge environments. It solves the problem of managing heterogeneous infrastructure consistently. Arc-enabled servers: connect on-premises Linux/Windows VMs to Azure — they appear in the Azure portal, can be governed with Azure Policy, monitored with Azure Monitor, and secured with Defender for Cloud. Arc-enabled Kubernetes: manage on-premises or other-cloud Kubernetes clusters using the same Azure tools as AKS. Arc-enabled SQL: apply Azure SQL management features to on-premises SQL instances. Arc-enabled data services: run Azure SQL Managed Instance and PostgreSQL on any infrastructure. Azure Arc enables a single control plane — the Azure portal — for resources regardless of where they run.