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Available extensions for Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes clusters

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Cluster extensions for Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes provide an Azure Resource Manager-driven experience for installation and lifecycle management of different Azure capabilities on top of your cluster. These extensions can be deployed to your clusters to enable different scenarios and improve cluster management.

The following extensions are currently available for use with Arc-enabled Kubernetes clusters. All of these extensions are cluster-scoped, except for Azure API Management on Azure Arc, which is namespace-scoped.

Azure Monitor Container Insights

  • Supported distributions: All Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) certified Kubernetes clusters

Azure Monitor Container Insights provides visibility into the performance of workloads deployed on the Kubernetes cluster. Use this extension to collect memory and CPU utilization metrics from controllers, nodes, and containers.

For more information, see Azure Monitor Container Insights for Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes clusters.

Azure Policy

Azure Policy extends Gatekeeper, an admission controller webhook for Open Policy Agent (OPA), to apply at-scale enforcements and safeguards on your clusters in a centralized, consistent manner.

For more information, see Understand Azure Policy for Kubernetes clusters.

Azure Key Vault Secrets Provider

  • Supported distributions: AKS on Azure Stack HCI, AKS enabled by Azure Arc, Cluster API Azure, Google Kubernetes Engine, Canonical Kubernetes Distribution, OpenShift Kubernetes Distribution, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service, VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid

The Azure Key Vault Provider for Secrets Store CSI Driver allows for the integration of Azure Key Vault as a secrets store with a Kubernetes cluster via a CSI volume. For Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes clusters, you can install the Azure Key Vault Secrets Provider extension to fetch secrets.

For more information, see Use the Azure Key Vault Secrets Provider extension to fetch secrets into Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes clusters.

Microsoft Defender for Containers

  • Supported distributions: AKS enabled by Azure Arc, Cluster API Azure, Azure Red Hat OpenShift, Red Hat OpenShift (version 4.6 or newer), Google Kubernetes Engine Standard, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service, VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, Rancher Kubernetes Engine, Canonical Kubernetes Distribution

Microsoft Defender for Containers is the cloud-native solution that is used to secure your containers so you can improve, monitor, and maintain the security of your clusters, containers, and their applications. It gathers information related to security like audit log data from the Kubernetes cluster, and provides recommendations and threat alerts based on gathered data.

For more information, see Enable Microsoft Defender for Containers.

Important

Defender for Containers support for Arc-enabled Kubernetes clusters is currently in public preview. See the Supplemental Terms of Use for Microsoft Azure Previews for legal terms that apply to Azure features that are in beta, preview, or otherwise not yet released into general availability.

Azure Arc-enabled Open Service Mesh

  • Supported distributions: AKS, AKS on Azure Stack HCI, AKS enabled by Azure Arc, Cluster API Azure, Google Kubernetes Engine, Canonical Kubernetes Distribution, Rancher Kubernetes Engine, OpenShift Kubernetes Distribution, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service, VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid

Open Service Mesh (OSM) is a lightweight, extensible, Cloud Native service mesh that allows users to uniformly manage, secure, and get out-of-the-box observability features for highly dynamic microservice environments.

For more information, see Azure Arc-enabled Open Service Mesh.

Azure Arc-enabled Data Services

  • Supported distributions: AKS, AKS on Azure Stack HCI, Azure Red Hat OpenShift, Google Kubernetes Engine, Canonical Kubernetes Distribution, OpenShift Container Platform, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service

Makes it possible for you to run Azure data services on-premises, at the edge, and in public clouds using Kubernetes and the infrastructure of your choice. This extension enables the custom locations feature, providing a way to configure Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes clusters as target locations for deploying instances of Azure offerings.

For more information, see Azure Arc-enabled Data Services and Create custom locations.

Azure App Service on Azure Arc

  • Supported distributions: AKS, AKS on Azure Stack HCI, Azure Red Hat OpenShift, Google Kubernetes Engine, OpenShift Container Platform

Allows you to provision an App Service Kubernetes environment on top of Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes clusters.

For more information, see App Service, Functions, and Logic Apps on Azure Arc (Preview).

Important

App Service on Azure Arc is currently in public preview. Review the public preview limitations for App Service Kubernetes environments before deploying this extension. See the Supplemental Terms of Use for Microsoft Azure Previews for legal terms that apply to Azure features that are in beta, preview, or otherwise not yet released into general availability.

Azure Event Grid on Kubernetes

  • Supported distributions: AKS, Red Hat OpenShift

Event Grid is an event broker used to integrate workloads that use event-driven architectures. This extension lets you create and manage Event Grid resources such as topics and event subscriptions on top of Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes clusters.

For more information, see Event Grid on Kubernetes with Azure Arc (Preview).

Important

Event Grid on Kubernetes with Azure Arc is currently in public preview. See the Supplemental Terms of Use for Microsoft Azure Previews for legal terms that apply to Azure features that are in beta, preview, or otherwise not yet released into general availability.

Azure API Management on Azure Arc

  • Supported distributions: All Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) certified Kubernetes clusters.

With the integration between Azure API Management and Azure Arc on Kubernetes, you can deploy the API Management gateway component as an extension in an Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes cluster. This extension is namespace-scoped, not cluster-scoped.

For more information, see Deploy an Azure API Management gateway on Azure Arc (preview).

Important

API Management self-hosted gateway on Azure Arc is currently in public preview. See the Supplemental Terms of Use for Microsoft Azure Previews for legal terms that apply to Azure features that are in beta, preview, or otherwise not yet released into general availability.

Azure Arc-enabled Machine Learning

  • Supported distributions: All Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) certified Kubernetes clusters. Not currently supported for ARM 64.

The Azure Machine Learning extension lets you deploy and run Azure Machine Learning on Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes clusters.

For more information, see Introduction to Kubernetes compute target in Azure Machine Learning and Deploy Azure Machine Learning extension on AKS or Arc Kubernetes cluster.

Flux (GitOps)

  • Supported distributions: All Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) certified Kubernetes clusters.

GitOps on AKS and Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes uses Flux v2, a popular open-source tool set, to help manage cluster configuration and application deployment. GitOps is enabled in the cluster as a Microsoft.KubernetesConfiguration/extensions/microsoft.flux cluster extension resource.

For more information, see Tutorial: Deploy applications using GitOps with Flux v2.

The most recent version of the Flux v2 extension and the two previous versions (N-2) are supported. We generally recommend that you use the most recent version of the extension.

Important

Eventually, a major version update (v2.x.x) for the microsoft.flux extension will be released. When this happens, clusters won't be auto-upgraded to this version, since auto-upgrade is only supported for minor version releases. If you're still using an older API version when the next major version is released, you'll need to update your manifests to the latest API versions, perform any necessary testing, then upgrade your extension manually. For more information about the new API versions (breaking changes) and how to update your manifests, see the Flux v2 release notes.

Note

When a new version of the microsoft.flux extension is released, it may take several days for the new version to become available in all regions.

1.8.3 (March 2024)

Flux version: Release v2.1.2

  • source-controller: v1.1.2
  • kustomize-controller: v1.1.1
  • helm-controller: v0.36.2
  • notification-controller: v1.1.0
  • image-automation-controller: v0.36.1
  • image-reflector-controller: v0.30.0

Changes made for this version:

1.8.2 (February 2024)

Flux version: Release v2.1.2

  • source-controller: v1.1.2
  • kustomize-controller: v1.1.1
  • helm-controller: v0.36.2
  • notification-controller: v1.1.0
  • image-automation-controller: v0.36.1
  • image-reflector-controller: v0.30.0

Changes made for this version:

  • Improve the identity token generation logic to handle token generation failures

1.8.1 (November 2023)

Flux version: Release v2.1.2

  • source-controller: v1.1.2
  • kustomize-controller: v1.1.1
  • helm-controller: v0.36.2
  • notification-controller: v1.1.0
  • image-automation-controller: v0.36.1
  • image-reflector-controller: v0.30.0

Changes made for this version:

  • Upgrades Flux to v2.1.2
  • Updates to each fluxConfiguration status are now relayed back to Azure once every minute, provided there are any changes to report

Dapr extension for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Arc-enabled Kubernetes

Dapr is a portable, event-driven runtime that simplifies building resilient, stateless, and stateful applications that run on the cloud and edge and embrace the diversity of languages and developer frameworks. The Dapr extension eliminates the overhead of downloading Dapr tooling and manually installing and managing the runtime on your clusters.

For more information, see Dapr extension for AKS and Arc-enabled Kubernetes.

Azure AI Video Indexer

  • Supported distributions: All Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) certified Kubernetes clusters

Azure AI Video Indexer enabled by Arc runs video and audio analysis on edge devices. The solution is designed to run on Azure Stack Edge Profile, a heavy edge device, and supports many video formats, including MP4 and other common formats. It supports several languages in all basic audio-related models.

For more information, see Try Azure AI Video Indexer enabled by Arc.

Edge Storage Accelerator

  • Supported distributions: AKS enabled by Azure Arc, AKS Edge Essentials, Ubuntu

Edge Storage Accelerator (ESA) is a first-party storage system designed for Arc-connected Kubernetes clusters. ESA can be deployed to write files to a "ReadWriteMany" persistent volume claim (PVC) where they are then transferred to Azure Blob Storage. ESA offers a range of features to support Azure IoT Operations and other Azure Arc Services.

For more information, see What is Edge Storage Accelerator?.

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