This post has been republished via RSS; it originally appeared at: ITOps Talk Blog articles.
Windows Admin Center is not just a browser-based app for managing servers, clusters, hyper-converged infrastructure, and Windows 10 PCs, but it also lets you connect your Windows Server infrastructure to Azure hybrid services. It doesn't matter if you run Windows Server physical or virtual, or with Azure Stack HCI, with Windows Admin Center, you can easily connect Windows Server to Azure hybrid services like Azure Site Recovery or Azure Update Management. On Azure Friday, I had the honor to speak with Scott Hanselman, about how you can connect Windows Server to Azure Hybrid Cloud services using Windows Admin Center.
You can watch the full episode here:
In the video, we cover Azure Site Recovery and Azure Update Management. Azure Site Recovery allows you to replicate your virtual machines from your Hyper-V servers and Azure Stack HCI to Azure. This provides you with a simple and powerful disaster recovery (DR) solution without the need and complexity of having additional datacenters. With Azure Update Management, you get a centralized update management solution to schedule and orchestrate updates across your hybrid server environment. Hosted in Azure, update management works for Windows Server as well as for Linux servers, virtual and physical.
There are only two of the options you get with Windows Admin Center to take advantage of Azure services in your on-premises Windows Server environment. There are many more hybrid services for Windows Server, which you can unleash with Windows Admin Center.
- Back up your Windows servers with Azure Backup
- Protect your Hyper-V virtual machines with Azure Site Recovery
- Use synchronous or asynchronous block-based replication to a VM in Azure using Storage Replica
- Sync your file server with the cloud by using Azure File Sync
- Migrate storage to a VM in Azure using Storage Migration Service
- Leverage Azure to achieve quorum on your failover cluster and Azure Stack HCI with Cloud Witness
- Connect your on-premises servers to an Azure Virtual Network with Azure Network Adapter
- Make Azure VMs look like your on-premises network with Azure Extended Network
- Monitor and get email alerts for all the servers in your environment with Azure Monitor
- Centrally manage operating system updates for all your Windows Servers with Azure Update Management
- Improve your security posture and get advanced threat protection with Azure Security Center
- Apply policies and ensure compliance across your hybrid environment with Azure Arc for servers and Azure Policy
- Add a layer of security to Windows Admin Center by adding Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) authentication
- Manage Azure resources directly through Azure Cloud Shell embedded in Windows Admin Center
If you want to get started, you can download Windows Admin Center for free, and you can create a free Azure account here. If you want to know more about Windows Admin Center Hybrid servers and Azure Arc, check out my blog post and my session from Microsoft Ignite.