purposes. This VM also provides DNS and DHCP services.
ADFS VM Hosts the ADFS services
BGP/NAT VM Border Gateway Protocol instance, which in Windows Server 2016
is a separate, independent service and infrastructure component acting as a BGP
route reflector. This enables better separation and scaling of connections. It also
provides Network Address Translation gateway and VPN services from the Azure
Stack virtual networks outbound to other networks.
Certificate Authority VM Provides CA services for Azure Stack
Client Connection VM A VM to which users can connect for easy testing and
interaction with the Azure Stack instance without requiring separate network
connectivity.
Gateway VM Provides the multi-tenant gateway services for edge services
SLB MUX VM Provides the Software Load Balancer Multiplexer (MUX) part of
the load balancer in Windows Server 2016. Incoming requests are received by a
MUX instance that selects a backend DIP (Dynamic/Datacenter IP), encapsulates
the packet, and forwards to the host that is hosting the DIP. The Hyper-V switch
removes the encapsulation, rewrites the packet, and forwards to the DIP. The VM
with the DIP can then respond directly to the source, bypassing the MUX and
increasing the scalability of the load balancer.
NC VM Network Controller instance for the software-defined network
Portal/WAS VM Hosts the Azure Resource Manager Control Plane and Azure
portal services (plus some additional services that enable admin and tenant usage)
SQL VM SQL Server instance used by various fabric services
SUS VM Provides Windows Service Update Services to the Azure Stack fabric
xRP VM Hosts the Compute, Storage, and Network resource providers
Additionally, on the physical host are storage services that utilize technologies
such as Storage Spaces Direct, ReFS, and Scale-Out File Services to provide the
Azure Consistent Blob Services (ACS Blob Service). This may seem like a lot of
virtual machines that require a lot of resources, which is why the single-box
deployment needs at least 96GB of memory (although 128GB is recommended)
and 12 cores (16 recommended) along with 4 local data disks (which are used with
Storage Spaces Direct to provide the base storage). You should realize, however,
that this is just a basic, single-box deployment meant for nothing more than
testing and POCs. In a production deployment, there would be multiple physical
boxes (at least four) and many of the preceding VMs would have multiple
instances, some that leverage the Service Fabric to replicate state and provide a
highly available, highly scalable service, such as the Azure Consistent Storage and
Network Controller services, while others have their own multi-instance support,
such as the MUX and gateway VMs. Additionally, in production, Storage Spaces