Blog Post

Azure Arc Blog
1 MIN READ

Announcing the General Availability of Jumpstart HCIBox

dalekirby's avatar
dalekirby
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Sep 07, 2023
Almost one year ago the Jumpstart team released the public preview of HCIBox, our self-contained sandbox for exploring Azure Stack HCI capabilities without the need for physical hardware. Feedback from the community has been fantastic, with dozens of feature requests and issues submitted and resolved through our open-source community.
 
Today, the Jumpstart team is excited to announce the general availability of HCIBox!

 

Since our original preview release, we have also added new capabilities and optimizations, including the ability to deploy Azure Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance on the HCIBox cluster, improved support for AKS on Azure Stack HCI, improved recovery from deployment failures, and overall reduction in deployment time and cost.
 
HCIBox is used by thousands of customers, partners, and Microsoft field architects and engineers every month for hands-on skilling, labs, training events, product demos, and initial customer proof-of-concept projects. Because no physical hardware is required to use HCIBox, quickly validating basic HCI scenarios is very easy and fast when using HCIBox. This adoption accelerator helps inspire confidence in Azure Stack HCI with our customers and results in quicker turnaround for project kickoff.
 
Be sure to check out our GA launch video below to learn more and see a quick demo. Deploy your own HCIBox and get started today.
 
Updated Sep 05, 2023
Version 1.0
azure arc
data services
hybrid
kubernetes
multicloud
servers
unified operations
  • cblackuk1's avatar
    cblackuk1
    MVP
    Sep 12, 2023

    Sweet! Looking good 🙂 Glad to see it going live now 🙂

     

    Thanks for sharing 🙂

     

    Happy Azure Stacking!

  • Deleted's avatar
    Deleted
    Sep 12, 2023

    Another amazing approach on a lab that's reproducible on-premises (even on NUCs) can be found here based on MSlab and the preview of Cloud Deployment Kit from Microsoft

    AzureStackHOLs/lab-guides/08-DeployAzureStackHCICluster-DeploymentTool at main · DellGEOS/AzureStackHOLs · GitHub

     

    It is a great starting point to get started with Azure Stack HCI and expand with Arc Services, too. 

     

    If you have access to Visual Studio licenses for Windows Server Datacenter, you can run the lab very cost efficient at on-premises through hybrid benefits rights.

  • gabriielluizbh's avatar
    gabriielluizbh
    MVP
    Sep 21, 2023

    Error! :sad:

     

     

     

    ERROR: saving config: failed writing configuration data: open /home/gabrielluiz/azure_arc/azure_jumpstart_hcibox/.azure/azure_jumpstart_hcibox-dev/config.json: permission denied

     

     
  • Avooca's avatar
    Avooca
    Copper Contributor
    Nov 19, 2023

    dalekirby I agree the documentation is confusing.  Maybe breaking the different deployment options (AzD vs Az Bicep) into different pages would be a simple start.  That would help so the requirements for each workflow could be clearer, ie AzD requires AAD access to create the SP during the automation, plus Owner role on the target subscription vs you can BYO SP for the Az Bicep workflow if you can't get your account to have the AzD access requirements.