azure subscriotion relatedadditional cost

Question

Hi All, We do have a Azure subscription already. We would like to do our monthly updates for servers through Azure and seems like we need to enable ARC on servers. I would like to ask how can we install agents on servers through portal or manually. Also, is there any additional cost for arc enabling as well besides of regular Azure subscription fee? Thanks in advanced.

Answer 1

@Miray Iren Thanks for reaching out. When you say monthly updates, I assume you are referring to patching of the servers. For this, you can use the Azure Update Manager service. Kindly note, Azure Update Manager is available at no extra charge for managing Azure VMs and Arc-enabled Azure Stack HCI VMs (for which Azure Benefits are enabled). For Arc-enabled Servers, the price is $5 per server per month (assuming 31 days of usage). For more information, refer this document.

To support management of your Azure VM or non-Azure machine, Update Manager relies on a new Azure extension designed to provide all the functionality required to interact with the operating system to manage the assessment and application of updates. This extension is automatically installed when you initiate any Update Manager operations, such as Check for updates, Install one-time update, and Periodic Assessment on your machine. The extension supports deployment to Azure VMs or Azure Arc-enabled servers by using the extension framework. The Update Manager extension is installed and managed by using:

• Azure VM Windows agent or the Azure VM Linux agent for Azure VMs.
• Azure Arc-enabled servers agent for non-Azure Linux and Windows machines or physical servers.

You can automate assessment at scale by using Azure Policy. For more information, refer this document.