It is also critical to monitor a high-performing cluster to ensure it is meeting SLAs. Windows Admin Center with the Dell EMC OpenManage Integration extension provides local hardware and software monitoring in-band and completely agent-free. Since Azure Stack HCI is a service in Microsoft Azure, administrators can also take advantage of native integration with a host of Azure management and governance services such as Azure Monitor, Azure Security Center, and Azure Policy. This native integration is made possible in large part by Azure Arc.

Azure Arc enables administrators to simplify the management and governance of their on-premises workloads by projecting existing resources into Azure Resource Manager. Once onboarded to Azure Arc, VMs, Kubernetes clusters, and databases can be monitored and managed with the same familiar tools used for Azure resources. Tools include the Azure Portal and programmatic means such as PowerShell, Azure CLI, and the REST API.

Figure 13.          Azure Arc Overview blade in the Azure Portal

For more information about using Azure Arc to help manage and monitor our integrated system at scale, see the Azure Arc documentation. See also the Azure Monitor documentation to learn more about monitoring high-performance Azure Stack HCI clusters.