Flo Fox

As Azure Stack HCI becomes more common in datacenters and at the network edge, I would like to highlight some frequently asked questions I have encountered during the last few months about software and Azure Stack HCI antivirus. Does Microsoft support third-party software on Azure Stack HCI? In general, you can say “Microsoft does not…

Azure Stack HCI is Microsoft’s hyper-converged infrastructure cluster solution for hosting virtualized Windows and Linux workloads. In this guide, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about the network components and hardware required to run virtualized workloads on-premises with Azure Stack HCI. How to select the correct network components for Azure Stack HCI Before…

It’s been more than a month since Azure Stack HCI version 22H2 became generally available. With this latest update for Microsoft’s hyper-converged infrastructure cluster solution, there are some significant changes in storage network capacity and network equipment requirements. In this article, I would like to give you a quick overview of the changes IT pros…

As Azure Stack HCI becomes more widely deployed in datacenters and at the edge, I would like to highlight some frequently asked questions I have encountered during the last few months on Azure Stack HCI network requirements. Azure Stack HCI Network Requirements This series will focus on frequently asked questions about Azure Stack HCI and…

When planning for an Azure Stack HCI environment, many organizations may struggle to decide if they should go for a large Azure Stack HCI cluster or plan for smaller, use-case-specific clusters. Today, I would like to detail the ups and downs of both solutions. To do that, I’ll be discussing the required initial investments, maintenance…

While working with customers using Microsoft’s Azure Stack HCI solution, I often hear concerns about the security, identity management, and Internet access aspects of this platform. In this article, I’m going to detail a methodology allowing IT pros to make their Azure Stack HCI environment more secure by creating a fabric domain and network. More…

In this article, I will explain what are affinity and anti-affinity rules and how to use them with Azure Stack HCI and Windows Server Hyper-V. If you’ve been using other hypervisors, you may already be familiar with affinity and anti-affinity rules, which are used to define the relationship between virtual machines and hosts. What are…

When you virtualize an Azure Stack HCI cluster, you may want to load balance applications running on it to optimize server utilization. While there are various built-in options to do that, they may be quite limited depending on your usage scenarios. In this article, I’ll discuss the various options you have to implement Azure Stack…

Failover clustering in Windows Server and Azure Stack HCI can help to reduce disruptions in service within an organization. In this article, I’m going to explain why you need to have a Windows Server Active Directory domain controller outside of your Azure Stack HCI cluster. I will also detail how to deploy this domain controller…

If your company is interested in modernizing its infrastructure with Azure hybrid computing capabilities, you can now do so by deploying Azure Stack HCI on a single-node cluster. In this guide, I will explain the main use cases for single-node deployments before showing you how to install Azure Stack HCI single-node clusters with PowerShell. How…