Announcing HCIBox support for Azure Stack HCI 23H2

Since HCI 23h2 was announced, HCIBox users have been asking me and the Jumpstart team, "when will HCIBox be ready?" Some are interested in the new cloud deployment features, others are curious about a refreshed AKS on HCI. The wait is over. At last, HCIBox 23H2 is here and ready for you to get hands-on. :cool:

HCIBox now supports Azure Stack HCI 23H2 and is ready to offer the latest capabilities of Azure edge environments with native Azure Arc and AKS integration in a self-contained sandbox. This sandbox deploys easily into an Azure subscription, and uses nested virtualization to emulate an HCI cluster inside an Azure VM. This allows users to experience many Azure Stack HCI 23H2 features like the new cloud deployment feature with minimal manual effort. HCIBox automatically generates a ready-to-go ARM template that can be used to deploy a new HCI cluster. The cloud deployment also automatically provisions Arc resource bridge and AKS components, and HCIBox comes with additional modules to showcase cloud VM management and AKS on HCI.

As part of this release, most aspects of the HCIBox codebase were refactored to simplify and streamline the deployment experience. The network configuration has also been redesigned, with dedicated subnets for both guest VM management and AKS.

In response to user feedback the HCIBox documentation has also been revised and simplified, with dedicated guides for deploying with either Azure Developer CLI (azd) or Azure CLI. This is a direct continuation of our investment in azd, following the release of azd support in Jumpstart Agora and the Retail industry scenario. But we aren't stopping here! There is much more in store for HCIBox in the coming months. Join the discussion on the Azure Arc Jumpstart Github repository to contribute!

Many aspects of the HCIBox provisioning process have changed with this release and we encourage all users to thoroughly review the updated documentation. Be sure to also check out our new Jumpstart Lightning video where we discuss the new release. Get started with HCIBox today!

Published on: January 30, 2024

Learn more

Azure Arc Blog articles

Setting up Power BI Version Control with Azure Dev Ops

In this blog post is a way set up version control for Power BI semantic models (and reports) using the PBIP (Power BI Project) format, Azure D...

2 hours ago

Azure Developer CLI (azd) – March 2026: Run and Debug AI Agents Locally, GitHub Copilot Integration, & Container App Jobs

Run, invoke, and monitor AI agents locally or in Microsoft Foundry with the new azd AI agent extension commands. Plus GitHub Copilot-powered p...

18 hours ago

Blog image

Azure Arc Blog articles

Learn more

Announcing HCIBox support for Azure Stack HCI 23H2

Related posts

Setting up Power BI Version Control with Azure Dev Ops

Azure Developer CLI (azd) – March 2026: Run and Debug AI Agents Locally, GitHub Copilot Integration, & Container App Jobs

Writing Azure service-related unit tests with Docker using Spring Cloud Azure

Azure SDK Release (March 2026)

Specifying client ID and secret when creating an Azure ACS principal via AppRegNew.aspx will be removed

Azure Firewall integration with Microsoft Sentinel and Defender XDR

Azure Developer CLI (azd): Run and test AI agents locally with azd

Microsoft Purview compliance portal: Endpoint DLP classification support for Azure RMS–protected Office documents

Azure Security - Build and Scale Securely on Microsoft's AI Platform

Introducing the Azure Cosmos DB Plugin for Cursor