Announcing Jumpstart ArcBox - a complete Azure Arc sandbox environment
Published May 25 2021 08:00 AM 11.6K Views
Microsoft

It’s been a tremendous year for the Azure Arc Jumpstart project, boasting over 70 Azure Arc technical scenarios, a dedicated YouTube channel for video demos, and thousands of unique monthly visitors. Despite the growth, the Jumpstart team isn’t content to kick back and relax just yet!

Today, we are pleased to present to you the newest project in the Jumpstart family: Jumpstart ArcBox!

 

arcbox.png

 

ArcBox is a sandbox environment that allows users to explore all the major capabilities of Azure Arc. Deploying ArcBox is simple and fully automated, and the only prerequisite is an Azure subscription. Once deployed, users have a ready-to-go sandbox for exploring Azure Arc enabled servers, Kubernetes, data services, and more.

ArcBox also comes with a set of pre-installed tools to make it easy to explore Azure Arc capabilities quickly and without hassle. With one simple deployment, users have everything they need to play with Azure Arc. 

arcboxarch.png

 

We designed ArcBox to be packed with technology like Kubernetes Cluster API, Windows, SQL, Rancher K3s, PostgreSQL and more. ArcBox is really about giving you a sandbox with everything you need to play with Azure Arc, because at the end of the day who doesn’t like toys?!

We’d love to hear more about your experience with ArcBox and how you are using it with partners and customers. Some of the use cases we have seen for ArcBox include:

  • Sandbox environment for getting hands-on with Azure Arc technologies
  • Accelerator for Proof-of-concepts or pilots
  • Training tool for Azure Arc skills development
  • Demo environment for customer presentations or events
  • Rapid integration testing platform

As part of the Jumpstart family, ArcBox is fully open sourced, and we welcome your ideas and feedback submitted to GitHub.

 

Want to learn more about ArcBox? Check out the episode of Azure Unblogged I recorded with @thomasmaurer

 

 

Thirsty for more Azure Arc goodness? Stay tuned for our Azure Hybrid Digital Event coming up next month where we will share exciting news on Azure Arc. Register here for the event. You can also check out these other Azure Arc blogs and announcements:

Thanks everyone, and happy ArcBoxing!

9 Comments
Microsoft

What a great resource to get up to speed on Azure Arc. Great work to you and the team for making this available to the community!

Copper Contributor

Looks good, but while trying out discovered the prerequisites: Azure subscription with at least 52 Regional CPUs. My VS Studio Enterprise subscriptions has  a limit of 20 in every region. And my Company Dev/Test subscription does not allow me create the Service Principal needed. Am I missing something here? Because if not, this is useless to me for practical purposes.

Copper Contributor

Hello Jumpstart Team,

 

Could you provide a monthly cost estimate for ArcBox in the East US region? I assume it's not free:)

Microsoft

@the_one_and_only 

ArcBox currently generates about $20 per day of Azure consumption charges. Be advised this is subject to change based on preview features potentially moving to GA. 

Microsoft

@MonteChristo 

Sorry to hear that, but ArcBox is designed to include a complete sandbox environment that showcases many Azure Arc capabilities. As such, the number of cores needed is higher than a basic demo scenario. There are ways you could tailor ArcBox to use somewhat less cores, and we do have plans on our roadmap to make this even easier for environments/subscriptions with limited quota. 

 

In the meantime, I would suggest looking at other scenarios in the Azure Arc Jumpstart (azurearcjumpstart.io) to explore Azure Arc functionality. 

Copper Contributor

So ArcBox is really cool and I like the idea - however I'm experiencing some issues in that when spinning up the IT Pro version in an MSDN Subscription via Terraform. I have to use Eastus or eastus2 despite being in the UK as on the MSDN subscriptions only AMD processors are available so no support for nested Hyper-V

 

1. Doesn't create the Azure Bastion - in fact as far as I can see the Terraform code doesn't have reference to Azure Bastion

2 . The Linux Servers aren't added to AzureArc

3. Something is strange with the way the update management is setup - it picks up that patches are missing yet the update agent readiness is Not configured on all the Windows boxes

If you look at the Automation Account and Update Management it selects creating a Log Analytics workspace and enabling the solution.

However I can see the solution is enabled in Log Analytics and the Servers are connected.

Yet due to agent not being connected you can't schedule/install any updates via Arc or Automation it either errors out or is not available.

 

Please let me know if I'm missing something?

 

N.B. I've also tried via the Portal and hit the same errors.

 

Thanks

Paul

 

**** UPDATE **** 

Figured out the issue the scripted Log Analytics is created in the same region this needs to be recreated in the linked location so eastus2 to eastus etc.

Automation account pointed to the new log analytics and solutions installed.

The the clients need to be repointed to the new workspace then it works

Copper Contributor

With regards to cost estimates for ArcBox, where may I find a list of consumables utilized by the Full and ITS-Pro versions??

Brass Contributor

Hi All,

 

We have onboarded Win. servers using Arc onboarding script.

Now to do it at scale we are using GPO and need to have an encrypted/ masked SP secret key rather than clear text. I'm looking for alternatives to be able to encrypt/mask the SP secret key so we can securely use it in GPO and avoid rotation of keys on periodic basis to avoid manual change request process. Any quick feedbacks solutions are appreciated.

Microsoft

@ps12 to use keys or secrets securely you should look into using Azure Key Vault.

 

Quickstart - Set & retrieve a secret from Key Vault using PowerShell | Microsoft Docs

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