In November 2024 Microsoft made a set of Azure’s server management capabilities free for eligible customers running Windows Server on Azure Arc-enabled machines. If you’re running a Pay-As-You-Go server or it’s covered with licenses with Software Assurance or Software Subscriptions, then services such as Azure Update Manager, Change Tracking and Inventory, and Machine Configuration are included free of charge. Historically, you’ve needed to identify individual eligible servers and then manually activate the benefits, attesting you have the correct licences. Now there’s a new Azure Policy that, when implanted, continuously monitors the Azure Arc environment automatically identifying newly added machines and highlighting those missing the required benefits. It’s then an easy job for an administrator to initiate a remediation task to enable some of all of these servers for the benefits.

Find the announcement article for this new policy here: https://bit.ly/49YRQlz.