Azure Stack HCI

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…

Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is a software-defined infrastructure that virtualizes and packages all the components of a conventional data center including network, storage, and computing resources. Hyperconverged infrastructure platforms allow businesses to virtualize servers, storage, and underlying networks and implement a software-driven control of their IT environment. In this article, we’ll look at the top 5…

Today I want to explain some more details about the maximum possible distance between two Azure Stack HCI nodes within an active/active cluster. As you may know, Azure Stack HCI has two cluster options, active/active or stretched cluster. A standard active/active cluster, with at least two server nodes in a single site or the same…

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….

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…

Earlier this year, Microsoft unveiled its plans to expand the Secured-Core initiative to its server products to help protect organizations from firmware attacks. The company has recently unveiled its plans to expand the Secured-Core initiative are now available for enterprise customers. “Partnering with leading original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and silicon vendors, Secured-core servers use industry-standard…

Microsoft has released a special ‘Hyper-V Server‘ core edition with every release of Windows Server Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC 2012 R2, 2016, 2019). This past summer, while Windows Server 2022 was being developed and finalized, questions arose amongst IT Pros (hey, that rhymes…someone set that to music right away) about the possibility of Hyper-V Server…