Hello everyone,
Now that the Azure Arc gateway is GA is announced, we are super happy to also announce the General Availability of the Arc Gateway for Azure Local! This launch represents a major leap forward in how organizations can securely and efficiently connect their on-premises and edge environments to Azure.
Arc Gateway revolutionizes Azure Local connectivity to Azure
If you’ve ever tried to connect on-premises resources to Azure, you know the challenges: dozens (sometimes hundreds!) of outbound firewall rules, complex configurations, and ongoing security concerns. It’s a lot to manage, and frankly, it’s not the experience we want for our customers or partners.
Arc Gateway changes the game. With a single, centralized HTTPS egress point for all Azure-bound traffic from your Azure Local instances and workloads, you dramatically reduce complexity and risk. Instead of managing countless endpoints, you only need to allow a small, well-defined set—making your environment more secure and much easier to operate.
What Makes Arc Gateway for Azure Local to Stand Out?
Let me highlight what makes Arc Gateway stand out:
- Unified and secure Azure Traffic Management: All HTTPS traffic from your Azure Local instances flows through one front door—the Arc Gateway. No more sprawling firewall rules or wildcards.
- Significantly Fewer Endpoints: We’ve reduced the number of required endpoints from over 100 to fewer than 28. This means less guess work and a much simpler security posture.
- Comprehensive Integration for your workloads: Arc Gateway isn’t just for infrastructure endpoints. It also fully supports Azure Local VMs with Arc gateway, and AKS clusters in preview mode, streamlining connectivity across your entire hybrid estate.
- Seamless Enterprise Proxy Integration: Already using an enterprise proxy? Arc Gateway fits right in, routing outbound traffic through your existing proxy before heading to Azure.
For a deeper technical dive, I encourage you to check out our detailed article: Azure Local – Arc gateway outbound connectivity deep dive
FAQs:
Is it possible to enable Arc gateway on my existing Azure local clusters?
- We are working hard to enable this feature in a future release of Azure Local.
Can I enable Arc gateway on my existing Azure Local VMs if it was not enabled for the infrastructure during deployment?
- Using Arc gateway for your Azure Local VMs is possible regardless of the infrastructure. If you have a working Arc gateway resource you can deploy new Azure Local VMs or attach existing Azure Local VMs if guest management is enabled.
Can I enable Arc gateway on my existing Azure Local AKS Clusters?
- If you enabled Arc gateway during deployment for the Azure Local infrastructure, AKS Clusters will implicitly leverage the Arc gateway running on the hosts. AKS Clusters running in Azure Local with Arc gateway will remain in Public Preview until GA is released in the future.
Getting Started:
To get started with Arc gateway for Azure Local, visit our documentation and deployment guides. We encourage you to explore the new capabilities and share your feedback with the team.
Arc gateway in Azure Local overview
Overview of Azure Arc gateway for Azure Local - Azure Local | Microsoft Learn
How to deploy Azure Local using Arc gateway.
Register Azure Local using Arc gateway - Azure Local | Microsoft Learn
How to deploy Azure Local VMs using Arc gateway.
Create Azure Local virtual machines using Arc gateway - Azure Local | Microsoft Learn
How to deploy AKS Clusters on Azure Local using Arc gateway.
Create AKS cluster in Azure Local with Arc gateway | Microsoft Learn
Cristian Edwards, Azure Local Principal Product Manager
Microsoft