Flo Fox

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…

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…

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…

During its latest Ignite 2022 conference for IT pros in October, Microsoft announced the public preview for Azure Jumpstart HCIBox, as well as Azure Jumpstart ArcBox for DataOps. In this article, I’ll be explaining what these new products are for, and I’ll also guide you to the required resources to get you started with them….

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…

Azure ExpressRoute is Microsoft’s solution for extending an on-premises network into the Microsoft cloud with a private connection. In this article, I’ll be explaining how you can migrate an Azure ExpressRoute connection without experiencing any downtime. There are two possible scenarios for the migration of an Azure ExpressRoute connection. Your first option is to migrate…

If you are working in a multi-cloud environment involving Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services, you may be using AWS Direct Connect or Azure ExpressRoute to set up a private interconnection to your on-premises resources. In this article, I’ll explain how you can enable AWS Direct Connect redundancy with Microsoft’s Azure ExpressRoute by using physical…

A hybrid cloud architecture is an environment that combines private computing resources with a public cloud. A public cloud is a cloud computing platform provided by a third-party company, and a good example would be Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, or the Google Cloud Platform. In this article, we’ll explain how a hybrid cloud architecture works…

In the past few months, Azure Stack HCI pricing has been a hot topic in discussions with customers. Including the possibility of using Azure Stack HCI as a pay-as-you-go full OPEX solution. That’s an interrogation you may have had as well if you’ve ever worked with Azure Stack Edge, which is a hardware solution provided…

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…

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…