deployment types of Azure Stack. In this section, let’s explore the two types in more
detail, because critical differences exist. You can review the official Microsoft
explanation at https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/growing-the-azure-ecosystem-
with-microsoft-azure-stack/. The two deployment types are as follows:
Single-Box Self-Install Deployment This option is available for customers
who have a piece of hardware that meets the requirements to perform a self-
installation of Azure Stack. These installations cannot span multiple physical boxes
nor have highly available instances of the Azure core and foundational services.
These deployments are not supported for production workloads and are designed
only for testing and proof-of-concept scenarios.
Turnkey Integrated Systems This is the production-supported deployment of
Azure Stack. Customers purchase a complete, preinstalled, configured Azure Stack
from one of the key partners that consists of a minimum of four boxes, providing a
highly available Azure Stack environment that can be expanded to additional
nodes.Initially, although this could change in the future, there is no option for customers to
self-install Azure Stack by using their own existing hardware in a multinode,
production manner. The reasoning for this has come from Microsoft’s early testing
with customers; the reality has been that customers are not equipped to deploy and
manage a highly complex infrastructure with software-defined networking and
software-defined storage. How many organizations build their own storage area
networks (SANs)? Hardly any. The complexities and intricacies of architecting, testing,
and maintaining the exact combinations of controller, disk, firmware, driver, software,
and more makes it unrealistic for a customer—and that’s just one component of Azure
Stack. For this reason, Microsoft has focused on providing Azure Stack through the
turnkey partners so that every element of the solution can be prescriptively controlled
and tested.
At the time of this writing, the exact licensing has not been shared. However, I expect
it to be something similar to Azure’s, where customers pay based on the type and
amount of services utilized.
What Does Azure Stack Mean?
The key point of Azure Stack is that it brings choice and consistency for customers. A
customer can create a JSON template that deploys services and deploy it to Azure, to
Azure Stack on premises, or to a hosting partner that uses Azure Stack. An application
can be written with ARM and deployed anywhere. Services will be able to easily burst
from on premises to Azure or a hoster with no rewrites or modifications required, and
it will be easy to move between clouds as required. Customers may test applications in
Azure and then deploy to production on premises by using Azure Stack, or vice versa.
A common question is, “Will feature x be available in Azure Stack because it’s running
on premises?” For example, Windows Server 2016 supports Shielded VMs and VHDX.