Azure
Hosted Control Planes for ARO
Feature Request: Hosted Control Planes for ARO
Description
I would like to request the tracking of the implementation of hosted control planes for Azure Red Hat OpenShift (ARO). This feature would allow for greater separation between the control plane and worker nodes, enhancing the cluster's management and security, and also reducing Azure resource costs for the cluster.
Reference
Hosted control planes are already available in Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA), providing a precedent for its feasibility and benefits. More information can be found in the Deployment Options of ROSA User Guide
ARO is difficult to adopt due to the high cost of master nodes. Japanese customers want ARO with HCP to be deployed in the Japan East region.
@0kashi Could we get more informations about the envisioned transition toward this feature ? Do existing ARO cluster will be able to migrate to that ? If yes, what will be the requirements (do preview feature like workload-identity profile cluster will be able to transition) ? or is it likely only to be available for newly created clusters ?
Note: we are very much interested of this feature in germanywestcentral/switzerlandnorth regions.
Is there any new estimate for GA planned? I do know it's difficult to share exact timelines, but I would appreciate at least an ETA, like Q2/2026 or similar. As AKS already provides HCP (ref: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/aks/core-aks-concepts#control-plane) it becomes a critical path for 2026 for us and more and more votes to migrate to AKS for operational but also cost-efficiency benefits... So it would be really helpful for me to drop some facts into that internal discussions about ARO and HCP. Thank you for sharing an update!
BR, Marcus
