Building the future of Azure Stack HCI

Introduction

Our customers want a simple way to bring the power of the cloud into their real-world operations to transform their businesses. At Microsoft, our goal is to give businesses the ability to project Azure to wherever they need it, whether it be the cloud, a data center, or an edge location like a retail store.

However, we know operating even modern hybrid cloud environments can be a complex undertaking.   An array of disparate tools and technologies acquired over time and space often leaves customers to stitch it all together themselves. Our aim is to reduce that complexity with Azure-consistent infrastructure that simplifies the ability to take advantage of cloud-native technologies at the edge.

As part of this ambitious vision, we are evolving our flagship hyperconverged infrastructure offering, Azure Stack HCI, towards an increasingly cloud-native posture that leverages Azure Arc to meet the ever-changing needs of our customers. The result is a solution for businesses that simplifies operations, and allows our customers to use the same tools, app models, and control planes uniformly regardless of where their data and applications reside.

How Microsoft delivers a seamless cloud to edge solution with Azure Stack HCI

Unified and consistent operations across environments

• Edge deployments are streamlined into a simplified turnkey experience driven centrally from the cloud, which minimizes the need for on-prem IT expertise.
• Updates are one-click for the entire technology stack, closing the seams between hardware, firmware, drivers, OS, and agents. All updates are comprehensively validated for compatibility, interoperability, and reliability.
• Support is at the solution level, providing a single point of contact experience for hardware, software, and cloud components.

Simplified application modernization

• Applications are developed once and deployed and managed equally across environments.
• Azure Arc-enabled Azure features and services such as Azure Kubernetes Services, Azure Virtual Desktop, Azure Arc-enabled data services, and Azure Arc-enabled VM Management easily extend from the cloud to the edge.

Centralized governance

• On-premises resources are easily accessed, managed, and governed centrally through the Azure Portal.
• Infrastructure is continuously monitored to ensure it stays in a validated state.
• Azure’s policy management, threat protection, and security controls extend to on-premises infrastructure.

Announcing Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure

To simplify the inherent complexity of cloud to edge, the unique breadth and depth of our partners extends Microsoft’s cloud services and software into customers’ environments around the world. With one of our key partners, we recently announced the Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure, the first Azure Stack HCI solution of its kind, delivering integration and capabilities beyond the Validated Nodes and Integrated Systems in the Azure Stack HCI portfolio today.

Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Azure is the result of extensive engineering collaboration between Microsoft and Dell. It natively integrates with Azure Arc and Azure Stack HCI to provide a turnkey experience to customers, including simplified deployment, seamless management, and orchestration capabilities for hyperconverged infrastructure deployments. Building on Dell’s track record of delivering market-leading integrated infrastructure solutions with extensive software-driven management and orchestration (M&O) automation, this comprehensive solution enables IT admins and operators to focus less on managing the day-to-day operational tasks and more on innovation and achieving desired business outcomes. This integration gives customers a consistent operational model to run their application and data services across datacenter and edge and manage on-premises resources from the Azure portal with consistent security and governance.

Conclusion

We are excited for what’s to come with Azure Stack HCI as we keep building and transforming with our customers. To learn more about Azure Stack HCI, visit our page on Microsoft Learn.

For more information on Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure, please visit Dell’s solution brief.