Azure Stack HCI (hyperconverged infrastructure) is a robust solution that integrates Windows and Linux virtual machines (VMs) or containerized workloads. It can do this with seamless connectivity to Microsoft Azure for enhanced cloud-based services, comprehensive monitoring, and streamlined management.
This hybrid solution modernizes on-premises data centers by integrating them with cloud services for improved performance, scalability, and security.
With a hybrid cloud approach, your business can take control of its cloud journey, seamlessly integrating on-premises hardware with cloud services at a pace that suits your unique needs and timelines. This is thanks to seamless integration with Azure services like Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory), Azure Monitor, Azure Backup, and more.
This integration ensures a consistent experience across on-premise and cloud infrastructures. You use the same management tools as an administrator across all your services. As a result, Azure Stack HCI is one of the fastest ways to get up and running with cloud computing.
This also means there can be significant cost savings when using Azure Stack HCI instead of making a hard switch from on-premise hardware to the cloud. At implementation time, you can use existing servers or commodity hardware, and then you can gradually move to cost-effective cloud solutions.
Beyond these benefits, Azure Stack HCI offers robust security features. With hyper-converged infrastructure, you can easily achieve virtual machine encryption and network micro-segmentation. Compared to implementing the same functionality in hardware, you can more easily manage HCI solutions and be more cost-effective.
Azure Stack HCI works by combining the functionality of traditional hardware elements (computing, storage, networking) into a single HCI solution with virtualization. On a practical level, you can administer all of these components through the Windows Admin Center.
Windows Admin Center is a web-based management console for managing a complete IT infrastructure. Since components like networking and storage are virtualized in an HCI environment, it’s much faster and less expensive to get up and running compared to the old ways of buying hardware, installing it, and maintaining it.
So, if an IT administrator wants to deploy a new instance of Microsoft SQL Server, creating a new virtual machine using storage from the Azure cloud is effortless. Similarly, you can quickly deploy a Docker application in a new Linux instance.
The tight integration with other Azure services simplifies the setup of other critical components, like authentication against Entra ID and defining network topology. With all the essential tasks of managing an IT environment available at a sysadmin’s fingertips, it empowers an organization to deploy new solutions rapidly.
Azure Stack HCI offers a robust set of benefits that make it an excellent choice for organizations looking to modernize infrastructure and take advantage of hybrid cloud computing. Here are a few of the key benefits companies can expect to see:
HCI technologies greatly simplify security, scalability, and management. However, Azure Stack HCI’s hybrid cloud functionality makes it stand out from the crowd. With built-in integration with Microsoft’s Azure cloud service, you can easily transition from on-premise, hardware-defined infrastructure to a modern cloud-based environment.
Azure Stack HCI offers all the standard features of HCI solutions.
Two popular virtualization options Azure HCI offers are Hyper-V and containerization. Hyper-V allows for multiple virtual machines on the same server, while containerization allows teams to set up containerized workflows using the Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS) and similar software.
Azure HCI also allows organizations to use software to define the infrastructure for networking and storage, where the configuration is abstracted away from the underlying hardware. These features allow teams to change infrastructure in real-time and programmatically based on current needs without investing in new hardware, licenses, and other expenses.
Edge computing allows the deployment and management of workloads closer to data generation points, reducing system latency and performance. Azure HCI includes Azure Arc, allowing organizations to connect their management services to on-premise, edge, and cloud services.
Azure HCI comes secure out of the box, including consistent Secure Boot, UEFI, and TPM settings. It also contains security features that make things easier:
Azure HCI also has resources to help organizations comply with security standards, including PCI, HIPPA, and FIPS.
Azure HCI offers an easy management portal for organizations to set up and modify their IT infrastructure. The Azure Portal gives an overview of HCI clusters, allowing teams to monitor systems at scale and manage Azure Services. Windows Admin Center is also available, giving teams the ability to manage individual virtual machines and edge services. Additionally, it provides many resources to collect resource metrics to see what resources your environment uses.
Azure HCI offers many performance tools to help teams manage high-demand environments. It offers many solutions that help teams monitor performance across their infrastructure and increase performance. Some common performance tools available are high-performance disks for quick file access and data optimization and GPU partitioning for AI and machine learning jobs.
While the Windows Admin Center greatly simplifies IT deployments, Azure Stack HCI offers other flexible management options. Depending on your company’s existing cloud footprint and the abilities of your sysadmins, some of the other management and deployment options might be a better fit.
For example, organizations already using some Azure cloud services can use Azure Portal to manage their Azure Stack HCI components. Administrators experienced with Microsoft’s PowerShell can also use that environment to create programmatic and script deployment and management tasks.
Azure Stack HCI supports a specialized form of scripts known as Deployment Scripts, which provide advanced deployment automation options. This can be especially handy for larger organizations that want to scale their Azure Stack HCI footprint faster.
Companies that invest in virtualization solutions can also utilize some of their preexisting tools, including VMWare Center and System Center. The ability to use the tools that administrators are already familiar with is another reason that Azure Stack HCI can be a cost-effective way to migrate your organization’s infrastructure into the cloud.
Deploying Azure HCI will require some basic information:
There are several steps to deploy Azure HCI once you make a plan and gather the data for deployment:
Deploying Azure HCI may be complex, especially if you have a large deployment. Several best practices are available that will help ensure a smooth installation.
In addition to the ability to quickly roll out IT infrastructure and applications, Azure Stack HCI has an almost unlimited number of use cases.
You can use Azure Stack HCI to create private clouds that offer a company the benefits of cloud computing with the security of on-premise installations. This is especially important for regulated industries like finance and healthcare. HCI allows organizations to store data securely, such as Electronic Health Records (EHR), financial data, and customer information.
You can also use it to make a high-performance computing cluster for demanding scientific and engineering applications by quickly creating virtual clusters. Doing this helps researchers create clusters to perform tasks like complex calculations, weather modeling, and genomic sequencing.
Azure HCI is also beneficial to any organization in the content distribution business. It can serve as the content delivery network, delivering text, images, and videos to customers worldwide using edge servers to manage delivery.
Adding remote offices to a corporate network with Azure Stack HCI is also easy. Using the Azure cloud as a bridge, remote workers can have the same experience as being on a corporate network, thanks to Azure Stack HCI’s virtualized networking solutions.
Azure Stack HCI is also well-suited to creating a DevOps environment for modern application development, testing, and deployment. It allows you to quickly deploy new apps and services and automate testing and debugging processes.
Are you ready to enhance your IT infrastructure by using Azure? Visit our Azure Monitoring Solutions page to learn more about how LogicMonitor can help you seamlessly integrate Azure with your current infrastructure.
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