Flo Fox

Hyperscalers like Microsoft, Google and Amazon Web Services must manage and maintain millions of servers and datacenter equipment. In this article, I look at why hyperscalers use AI and predictive maintenance to improve uptime and reduce staffing costs. Managing large-scale datacenter environments with predictive maintenance In environments with thousands of servers and complex infrastructure, traditional…

Before diving in, consider how this feature reshapes Azure Local deployments in real-world datacenters. Understanding Azure Local SAN support Azure Local SAN support (Storage Area Network) represents a significant shift in how customers can architect Azure Local environments. Today I want to dive deeper into the SAN support for Azure Local, as announced by Microsoft…

As Azure Local and other hyper-converged solutions—such as Windows Server Hyper-Converged and Proxmox—continue to gain traction, many customers, partners, and smaller OEM resellers still struggle with sizing their clusters accurately. This challenge has persisted for years, particularly with Azure Local and Windows Server environments. During my time at Microsoft, we encountered frequent issues with both…

Imagine having the power of Microsoft 365’s cloud services right within your own datacenter, offering you unparalleled control and security. That’s what Microsoft is promising with Microsoft 365 Local. Microsoft 365 Local is a validated reference architecture for running a private instance of Microsoft 365 on Azure Local (Azure Stack HCI). It provides Microsoft 365…

Azure Arc Gateway is a hidden champion in your Azure Hybrid box of tricks. How to deploy Azure Arc Gateway There are several ways to deploy Azure Arc Gateway, including command-line interface (CLI) and PowerShell but the simplest way is using the Azure Portal. To complete the deployment, your account requires the following permissions. Let’s…

Today I would like to dig a bit deeper into guest virtual machine (VM) storage virtualization on Azure Stack HCI. My case and scenario today will be around virtual iSCSI servers as a target for other workloads like SQL Server. My cluster consists of three Azure Stack HCI 23H2 nodes cabled in a switched configuration….

Since mid-June 2024, some Microsoft customers have been reporting Azure Arc and Azure Stack HCI connectivity issues from on-premises devices to the cloud service endpoints. Devices were not able to connect to Microsoft Azure services like Azure Arc Resource Bridge and Azure VMware Solution. The issues have mostly been reported by customers with restrictive firewall…

With Hyper Converged Infrastructure (HCI) solutions becoming more common, many customers are now concerned with building clusters on top of those environments. In this article, I’ll explain how to build a guest HCI cluster and why traditional approaches don’t work. In the past, customers built redundancy and resilience based on virtualization and Storage Area Networks…

In this article, I will give you an overview of Azure Stack HCI 23H2, which is currently in preview. With the release of 23H2, Microsoft is adding a lot of customer-requested features and enhancements. So, let’s dive in!   When will Azure Stack HCI 23H2 be released (general availability)? The most pressing question I get…

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…

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…