used to enable higher-order PaaS services. A core service is something common across
all types of IaaS and PaaS resources (for example, a subscription or role-based access
control), and these are provided by ARM. An additional service, as the name indicates,
is an extra service utilizing the other types of services as a building block, such as PaaS
Web Apps.
On top of this is a unified application model on which end-user experiences are
offered such as virtual machines, virtual networks, and more. If you understand ARM,
you will understand the key constructs for Azure Stack, including subscriptions,
resource groups, resource providers, resources, and more.
Behind the scenes, most Azure Stack deployments consist of a Windows Server 2016
Hyper-V environment and numerous virtual machines, as shown in Figure 9.18 which
shows the state for TP1 at the top and TP2 at the bottom. This shows the changes
between releases, and I expect it to continue to change as it releases and evolves, but
this gives some idea to the scope of the core Azure Stack services.
Figure 9.18 The core VMs used by Azure Stack in a single-box deployment with TP1
at top and TP2 at bottom
These virtual machines provide the base services for Azure Stack at TP2. You will see
this does not exactly match the TP1 screen shot:
ACS VM Provides the Azure-Consistent Storage services
AD/DC VM A local Active Directory instance used by Azure Stack for its internal