2 Tools for Sizing Azure Local and Windows Server Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI)

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 over- and under-sized clusters in greenfield and brownfield projects. In some cases, misjudged sizing led to additional investments due to inadequate planning.

To address these recurring issues, we assembled a toolkit of knowledge and solutions that can guide stakeholders through proper sizing processes. In this article, I’ll share two of the most valuable tools we’ve relied on over the years.

Common question: Can’t I just ask Dell or HPE?

Yes, you can. Most major vendors—including Dell and HPE—offer their own sizing tools, and they typically provide reasonable proposals. However, these vendors aren’t specialized in Azure Local or hyper-converged deployments, and their offers often go through partners. That introduces a common industry dynamic: some level of over- or under-sizing benefits the vendor’s bottom line.

For this reason, I personally prefer vendor-independent sizing tools.

The two HCI sizing tools I recommend

So, let’s talk about the tools I used at Microsoft.

Azure Local Sizing Tool

The Azure Local Sizing Tool is a generic tool allows you to generate sizing recommendations using all vendors listed in the Microsoft catalog. It’s great for quick validation checks and identifying which vendors and servers meet your base requirements.

Limitation: It’s not suitable for in-depth architecture or final sizing decisions.

Acuutech ScopeSys

Out ultimate weapon for sizing, network and architecture guidance was Acuutech Scopesys.

ScopeSys is a comprehensive, professional-grade tool for sizing, network design, and architecture. It incorporates actual bill-of-materials data from major vendors (Dell, Lenovo, HPE, Cisco) and draws on over a decade of hybrid infrastructure experience.

It is a paid tool with monthly per-seat licensing, but it’s open to vendors and partners. Acuutech’s mission is to enhance Azure Local and Windows Server Hyper-Converged deployments by prioritizing transparency and depth. Acuutech’s mission was to keep as open as possible to improve the customer experience with Azure Local and Windows Server Hyper Converged.

Azure Sizer vs. ScopeSys: A feature comparison
Let’s make a quick comparison between both tools, focusing on the major points.

Deciding on a system type and vendor

• Azure Sizing Tool: Requires you to choose a system type, service, and CPU vendor before seeing matching vendors.
• ScopeSys: Lets you input your workload and sizing needs first, then filters compatible vendors and systems dynamically.

Acuutech is following a different approach here. They will let you add all the sizing and workload requirements first and then choose the vendor. So, going back and changing my requirements, we end up with a good idea of the solution itself.

Acuutech is limited to Dell, Lenovo, HPE and Cisco but you can use the generic sizing for any other vendor. After sizing, it will allow you to check the models available. Models that do not support the chosen sizing will be greyed out.

How to enter redundancy and availability information

Again, both tools do a great job here. While Microsoft stays very generic with the information you need to enter, it delivers a strong result for a first estimation.

Acuutech, with their experience, are more granular here but with one downside: filling out the form requires more detailed information about the service, project, and infrastructure requirements.

Otherwise, you end up with a ‘garbage in – garbage out’ situation.

Two things I also like about ScopeSys are that it lets you choose between blade or sled chassis, or conventional servers.

And, it still has the option for active/active stretched clustering.

These configuration options make it easier to get a useful recommendation.

Entering actual workloads and required capacities

Microsoft keeps it generic with possible input values. And they leave solutions like Kubernetes out of scope.

But with GPU and Kubernetes becoming more common Azure Local use cases, not having those options available in a sizing tool is a significant minus.

Comparing the Azure Sizing Tool with a commercial option like ScopeSys, it becomes clearer that the tool lacks some important configuration options.

ScopeSys has an impressive number of ‘off-the-shelf’ solutions and workloads you can choose from.

Those include not only virtual machines (VMs) and virtual desktop profiles, with or without GPUs but it also lets you also add your own type, like container workloads.

Displaying the sizing tool results

With the Azure Local Sizing tool, after hours of preparation, you could end up with the screen shown below.

That often happens when choosing a configuration that is not available from the selected vendor. It’s frustrating to put in hours of work and then end up with “No matching hardware to display”. Especially if you do that more than once or need to go back and change all the requirements.

If everything runs smoothly, you will get a proposal and sizing information. But it won’t provide information like GPU partitioning.

One major flaw with the Microsoft Azure Local Sizing tool is that it doesn’t show network requirements. However, network is normally the largest issue and blocker in a project. Poor network planning results in a bad hyperconverged infrastructure.

Acuutech does much better here. While it’s limited to fewer solutions than Microsoft, they have some amazing upsides. You can see the changing architecture and environment every time you make a change of workloads.

The screenshot below shows the initial configuration.

I quickly added 30 more small virtual machines and the results page updated.

The tool directly changed the server type, cluster size, GPUs etc. I some cases, it also changes the vendor if your preferred one does not offer that specific sizing.

ScopeSys also shows you an estimated balancing between the nodes.

You can change the cluster size and vendor on the fly, and see how that affects your infrastructure and node pollution etc.

ScopeSys also changes network requirements and shows the switch bandwidth requirements for your workloads.

How does ScopeSys handle situations where there is no proper solution available?

As ScopeSys works on the fly, you see the impact of changes as soon as you add a requirement or workload. To test how it reacts, I added 3000 extra large VMs.

ScopeSys reacts immediately by showing there is no solution available. It also shows a major issue, as the solution would require more CPU cores even the largest servers could offer.

Tool documentation

The Microsoft Azure Local Sizing Tool has almost zero documentation, except the hints behind the question icon on the Sizer Page.

Acuutech offers a strong and ever-expanding library of documentation.

My recommendation for selecting a sizing tool for your HCI project

While Microsoft Azure Local Sizer is free and it delivers great results for initial indication and sizing, it has its flaws when it comes to larger projects and more detailed results and scoping. You would still have many blind spots and uncertainties after sizing with the tool.

For a larger investment or project, use Acuutech ScopeSys. It delivers:

• strong and vendor independent results.
• includes all technical and architectural requests and requirements you could face in your project.
• reports network requirements
• Updates on the fly if you need to change your original specificatinos.

Especially as an Azure Local Solutions Partner, I would have at least one or two ScopeSys licenses. Even presales, with some technical background or a checklist, could build a proper estimate with ScopeSys; that’s not possible with the Azure Local Sizing tool.

From a tool perspective, both are powerful. While the Microsoft Azure Local Sizing tool is more for those who want to get an idea of what they should use. ScopeSys is on the other hand a full professional sizing solution that includes all possibilities and offers solid results for your project.