This is a continuation of series of articles on hosting solutions and services on Azure public cloud with the most recent discussion on Multitenancy here and picks up the discussion on the checklist for architecting and building multitenant solutions. Administrators would have found the list familiar to them.  

While the earlier articles introduced the checklist as structured around business and technical considerations, the more recent articles provide information on a specific technology named Azure Arc

Azure Arc is a bridge that extends the Azure platform to the applications and services with the flexibility to run across datacenters, edge, and multi-cloud environments. Cloud native applications can be developed with a consistent development, operations, and security model because Azure Arc runs on both new and existing hardware, virtualization, and Kubernetes platforms, IoT devices and integrated systems.

Azure Arc supports custom location which provides a reference as deployment target that administrators can set up and users can access when creating a resource. The details of the backend infrastructure is hidden and only the reference is needed for the users. It is an Azure Resource Manager resource and it supports Azure role-based access control such that an administrator or operator can determine which users have access through which roles.

Resources can be created on a namespace within a Kubernetes cluster to target deployment of Azure Arc enabled database instance and it can be created on other IaaS platforms such as vCenter and Azure Stack HCI to deploy and manage virtual machines.

On the Kubernetes cluster, Azure Arc’s custom location references an abstraction of a namespace within the cluster and can be associated with granular RoleBindings and ClusterRoleBindings necessary for other services. Developers can then deploy these applications without having to know details of the namespace and Kubernetes cluster.

On the Azure Arc-enabled VMWare vSphere, the VM lifecycle operations can directly be executed from Azure. VM’s templates, network and storage can be browsed easily from the portal. Guest management can be enabled across Azure and VMWare virtual machines.

Reference: Multitenancy: https://1drv.ms/w/s!Ashlm-Nw-wnWhLMfc6pdJbQZ6XiPWA?e=fBoKcN