Azure Stack HCI is changing the face of IT Management
Businesses are increasingly looking to merge on-premises infrastructure seamlessly with the cloud to improve and centralise the management, monitoring and resource capacity of their IT environment, with Azure Stack HCI this vision becomes reality.
But what is Azure Stack HCI?
A new take on hyperconverged
A hyperconverged infrastructure operating system (HCI), Azure Stack HCI is built on proven technologies such as Hyper-V, Storage Spaces Direct and core Azure management services. It combines:
- Validated hardware from world-class brands such as Dell, Lenovo, HPE, DataON and Fujitsu
- An Azure Stack HCI operating system (consisting of between 1 and 16 physical servers)
- Familiar Hyper-V based compute resources
- Azure services such as backup, monitoring and site recovery
- The ability to run both Windows and Linux virtual machines as Azure Arc-enabled servers
This enables a hybrid environment to be created, consolidating on-premises and cloud computing resources to form a single HCI solution that allows businesses to virtualise their servers, storage and networks and manage them via Windows Admin Centre (a web-based management console for managing complete IT infrastructure). This guarantees a consistent user experience across on-premises and cloud infrastructure, with administrators being able to use the same management tools across all their services.
By using Azure Stack HCI, businesses are benefitting from significant cost-savings as they can use existing Windows Server and SQL Server licences with it and thanks to the pay-as-you-go model, businesses only pay for the Azure services used with their workloads.
Justified excitement
Software, security, scalability and its compatibility with other Azure systems have captured the imagination of many IT teams.
Innovation in software
Azure Stack HCI is built on software-defined storage (SDS) a tool which separates data storage resources from physical storage hardware making it easier to automate and adapt to new demands. All of which makes it more flexible, efficient and scalable ensuring excellent performance with reduced costs.
Furthermore, whilst the compute services within Azure Stack HCI are comparable to traditional virtualisation clusters, the Azure Stack HCI operating system brings a lot of additional innovation. Foremost are features such as Hotpatch which significantly reduces downtime for patches and SMB over QUIC which allows users to securely access data from file servers running on untrusted networks.
Scalability
Azure Stack HCI enables users to add nodes to their cluster one at a time, giving them the opportunity to tailor their infrastructure to their needs, growing the cluster as and when the business grows. For IT teams looking to better match capacity with demand, this helps to avoid unnecessary and premature overprovisioning.
Security
Pre-configured with over 300 security settings including Secure Boot and Trusted Platform Module, Azure Stack HCI guarantees a consistent security level baseline across deployments. When combined with data-at-rest and data-in-transit encryption it safeguards user information. All of this is bolstered by using Azure Security Centre, Windows Admin Centre and Microsoft Defender for Cloud which provide you with security insights and behavioural analytics to enable enhancements to your security posture.
Kubernetes
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) allows organisations to host containerised applications on the Kubernetes platform while significantly simplifying the process. By using AKS on Azure Stack HCI, businesses use an on-premises AKS that automates and runs containerised applications at scale. This reduces the time needed to start hosting Linux and Windows containers in the datacentre and gives businesses the freedom to scale up or down by adding or removing Kubernetes nodes to their cluster.
Virtual desktops
Finally, businesses now have the option to bring their Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) on premises by utilising Azure Stack HCI. Not only does this enable businesses to improve the user experience by bringing hosts closer to the user and thereby cut out the latency of the cloud, they can also store user data on-premises meeting data sovereignty requirements.
Poised to change the IT environment
With its focus on scalability, simplicity and cloud integration, Azure Stack HCI represents a significant leap forward in hyperconverged infrastructure. As hybrid cloud models continue to gain traction, Azure Stack HCI is poised to be a cornerstone technology for organisations seeking to seamlessly blend their on-premises infrastructure with the power and flexibility of the cloud.
Want to find out more? Get in touch with the FluidOne-Business IT team today.
