AKS without a hypervisor: Microsoft runs Kubernetes straight on bare metal

Microsoft has deployed Azure Kubernetes Service directly on physical hardware — with no hypervisor layer. The new option combines the Azure Local Small Form Factor platform with AKS Arc on Linux and connects automatically to Azure Arc for centralized management. Dropping virtualization dedicates all resources to workloads while keeping the familiar Azure experience — portal, Bicep, policies, monitoring, and GitOps. As Thomas Maurer notes, the solution is built for the edge — retail, manufacturing, field sites — as well as sovereign datacenters and scenarios where maximum performance matters. The same Kubernetes and a single interface now run everywhere, from the cloud to the network edge.