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Azure Arc Blog
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Bring Azure to your System Center environment: Announcing GA of SCVMM enabled by Azure Arc

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Karthik_KR07
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Nov 15, 2023

At Microsoft, we're committed to providing our customers with the tools they need to succeed wherever they are. By extending Azure services to the customer's preferred environments like System Center, we empower customers with access to Azure’s potential along with a consistent experience across their hybrid estate.  

Today we’re excited to deliver on that commitment as we announce that System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) enabled by Azure Arc is now generally available to manage SCVMM resources in Azure. 

With SCVMM enabled by Azure Arc, you can: 

  • Enable Azure services at scale for your entire SCVMM managed on-premises estate 
  • Enable self-service access and management to SCVMM resources for developers and end users 

 

Enable Azure services at scale 

 

Customers can discover their entire SCVMM managed estate, install Azure Arc agents at scale directly from Azure, and easily leverage Azure management services for their SCVMM machines. Customers can use services like Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Azure Monitor, Azure Update Manager, and more to enhance the security, monitoring, and governance of their SCVMM machines. Customers can also enable Extended Security Updates on all Windows Server 2012/R2 and SQL Server 2012 machines managed by SCVMM, ensuring that end-of-life workloads are protected. 

 

In SCVMM inventory view, select all the VMs and click on enable guest management to install Arc agents at scale. 

 

Create an Extended Security License and apply to eligible machines to get ESUs. 

 

Enable self-service access and management to SCVMM resources for developers and end users 

 

IT administrators can use Azure RBAC to set up self-serve access to SCVMM resources for developers and end users. End users can provision virtual machines with ease on SCVMM using Azure portal, ARM and bicep templates. They can perform virtual hardware operations like start, stop, restart, resize, add and manage disks on SCVMM managed machines from Azure.   

 

Create VMs from Azure on your SCVMM managed estate 

 

Getting started 

 

To get started with SCVMM enabled by Azure Arc, check out our documentation and watch this walkthrough video by John Savill. 

 
There aren’t any additional charges to connect your SCVMM resources in Azure by enabling them with Azure Arc. Azure Arc provides select inventory and VM provisioning capabilities for free. There are charges for additional Azure services like security, management, data services, observability, and more. Learn more on the Azure Arc pricing page 

 

We look forward to hearing your feedback! Write to us at arc-vmm-feedback@microsoft.com. 

 

Azure Arc: https://aka.ms/arc 

 

YouTube video by John Savill: Azure Arc-Enabled System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) Walkthrough 

Updated Nov 17, 2023
Version 5.0

1 Comment

  • Dear Molish

     

    great to hear from you again. Thanks to everyone for this awesome addition! 

     

    Do you believe it would be a good idea, or is it possible to create SCVMM as a PaaS including its licensing via CSP, same as we can for SQL?

    The usecase would be

    - customers with existing SCVMM being able to migrate this service to Azure

    - new customers with Azure Stack HCI, that need sophisticated VM management capabilities beyond Arc Bridge.

    - Or customers migrating to Azure Stack HCI, and want to keep SCVMM because of reasons.