I would be nice if Azure Arc was supported in NMM, to allow us to manage on-premises servers the same way we managed Azure server VMs.
For example, being able to manage apps and run scripted actions on those on-premises servers would be great.
And for clients who have Hyper-V on-premises, this could be coupled with Azure Stack HCI to provide full VM support (start, stop, provisionning, ...).
Thanks for another great idea, Christian Nancy!
I know we have the Azure Stack HCI support in our Enterprise edition of Nerdio, but we haven't implemented it in NMM, yet, because the cost for SMBs to implement Azure Stack HCI (with the on-prem hardware) is prohibitive.
However, Azure Arc is something that's much more affordable with the burden of entry being so low.
The only "issues" that I can see in implementing something like this would be API support (for scripted actions) and how we would deploy the Arc agent to the on-premise server(s) when we don't have an agent or jumpbox in the environment to see those servers or even know they exist.
If we had a secure way of talking to the Domain Controller and using that as the jump-point, we could possibly deploy the Arc agent that way.
Another option would be for the onus of the Azure Arc Agent install to be on the MSP and then NMM takes it from there once it's already talking to Azure.
Out of curiosity, how many Arc enabled servers are you managing right now in your environments?
Or is this (Azure Arc/Azure Stack HCI) a way for you to start growing your business into a larger market and convert existing Citrix/VMware customers to AVD?
We currently have no on-premises server enrolled in Azure Arc. This was borne out of reading about Azure Arc and thinking that it would be great to bring more unified management of those servers. And we currently do not have clients that have enough of an on-premises or 3rd party hosted virtual environments to justify paying for HCI.
Ah, makes sense.
I was working with an MSP that used Azure Arc extensively for the on-prem servers they managed, but Cloud Desktops weren't even on their radar at the time.
I did some digging and it looks like there's not too much available, yet, in the way of GraphAPI calls for Azure Arc so it may be a bit before we're able to implement this idea. That being said, once Microsoft adds the functionality, we'll definitely take a serious look into implementing it into our product. 🙂
Dave Stephenson, I wanted to see about re-engaging you on this feature request and share some further comments.
1. The APIs needed for Azure Arc are the standard Azure Resource Manager APIs, not Microsoft Graph. I see no technical road block on the Microsoft side for including Azure Arc - Machines in the cloud (even apart from Azure Local) in Nerdio.
2. The same extension framework used on Azure VMs is used on Azure Arc devices. I would predict that it would be reasonable to run a custom script extension against an Azure Arc device for running a Scripted Action against it.
3. Azure RBAC roles apply to Azure Arc devices so the standard permissions of registering a subscription in Nerdio and linking a resource group should permit actions.
4. These statements could all be verified by creating a custom Azure Runbook that runs commands against an Arc Machine using Azure PowerShell but using the Azure service principles Nerdio uses for other actions with the owner permission.
The two biggest use cases we have involve (1) running Windows scripts against servers running on-prem but connected to Azure by Azure Arc, (2) Deploying Console Connect to Azure Arc machines as well as Azure VMs. The latter is critical as we consider sunsetting our existing RMM platform and replacing it with Nerdio. I am less concerned about deploying the agent as I recognize that would require a link that doesn't exist yet but it would be an above and beyond feature to help on that too.
Any newer thoughts in the last 12 months about it? Thank you for your time.
Thanks, Jacob!
Those are some helpful insights.
I haven't had much time to look into this, but it looks like there are some improvements that might make this possible/feasible now.
Let me see if I can get one of our Product Managers to reach out to you to talk more about this feature and your great use-cases for it.
Stay tuned! 😎
Great, thank you! I would be happy to discuss with someone live!
Hi Jacob! As of now (Summer 2025), we have no immediate need for Azure Arc since we've steadily freed our existing clients from the shackles of on-prem servers ;-)
I would say that unless there is interest from others in the community, this idea be tabled for the time being. I am sure you guys have a lot of requests in your queue so I wouldn't want previous resources expended on this topic at the moment.
I appreciate the follow-up though!
Christian
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