{"id":121393,"date":"2026-01-19T17:07:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T16:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.licensingschool.co.uk\/licensing-blog\/?p=121393"},"modified":"2026-01-19T17:07:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T16:07:08","slug":"azure-arc-enabled-windows-server-benefits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.licensingschool.co.uk\/licensing-blog\/2026\/01\/19\/azure-arc-enabled-windows-server-benefits\/","title":{"rendered":"Azure Arc-enabled Windows Server benefits"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In November 2024 Microsoft made a set of Azure\u2019s server management capabilities free for eligible customers running Windows Server on Azure Arc-enabled machines. If you\u2019re running a Pay-As-You-Go server or it\u2019s 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\u2019ve needed to identify individual eligible servers and then manually activate the benefits, attesting you have the correct licences. Now there\u2019s 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\u2019s then an easy job for an administrator to initiate a remediation task to enable some of all of these servers for the benefits. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Find the announcement article for this new policy here: <a href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/49YRQlz\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/bit.ly\/49YRQlz<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In November 2024 Microsoft made a set of Azure\u2019s server management capabilities free for eligible customers running Windows Server on Azure Arc-enabled machines. If you\u2019re running a Pay-As-You-Go server or it\u2019s covered with licenses with Software Assurance or Software Subscriptions, then services such as Azure Update Manager, Change Tracking and Inventory, and Machine Configuration are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1168,1810,1811,102,254],"class_list":["post-121393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-azure-arc","tag-azure-update-manager","tag-machine-configuration","tag-microsoft","tag-windows-server"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Azure Arc-enabled Windows Server benefits - Licensing Lore &amp; Law<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In November 2024 Microsoft made a set of Azure\u2019s server management capabilities free for eligible customers. Find the announcement here.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.licensingschool.co.uk\/licensing-blog\/2026\/01\/19\/azure-arc-enabled-windows-server-benefits\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Azure Arc-enabled Windows Server benefits - Licensing Lore &amp; Law\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In November 2024 Microsoft made a set of Azure\u2019s server management capabilities free for eligible customers. 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