We're moving!
Hello friends, Last week at Microsoft Ignite 2024 we introduced Azure Local, cloud infrastructure for distributed locations enabled by Azure Arc. Azure Local is an exciting new chapter for adaptive cloud. It replaces Azure Stack HCI and adds important new options like lower-cost edge devices (preview) and disconnected operations (preview). There is no action required for existing Azure Stack HCI customers: you'll transition seamlessly to Azure Local. If you haven’t already, check out the announcement blog. Azure Local is powered by Azure Arc, so it makes sense to unite the Tech Community blogs. Going forward, we’ll use the Azure Arc blog for Azure Local. We’ll migrate all the old content from the Azure Stack blog soon, to ensure that nothing is lost. On behalf of the team, I want to say a heartfelt thank you for all your enthusiasm, comments, and questions over the years. In the last decade, we’ve published more than 100 posts on this Azure Stack blog, and you’ve read them more than 1.3 million times! Technological progress is a journey with no end, but what really matters is the friends we made along the way. <3 Now… go follow the Azure Arc blog! We’re excited to keep the party going over there. - Cosmos and the Azure Local teamPublic Preview of Azure Migrate from VMware to Azure Stack HCI
We are excited to announce the public preview of Azure Migrate's latest functionality: seamless migration from VMware to Azure Stack HCI. This significant enhancement extends the power of cloud migration to the edge, offering cutting-edge performance and security while keeping your data securely on-premises. With Azure Migrate’s agent-less replication, minimal downtime, and network traffic optimized data transfer, this new capability ensures an efficient, smooth transition for your virtualized workloads. Explore the Azure Migrate today and experience the next evolution of virtualization and cloud integration.Apply critical update for Azure Stack HCI VMs to maintain Azure verification
Recently, Microsoft rolled out critical updates for Azure verification for VMs on Azure Stack HCI, and we strongly recommend current users to apply these latest cumulative updates for continued, seamless functionality of your Azure benefits on Azure Stack HCI VMs.Logical Networks in Azure Portal for HCI: Setting the Stage for Software Defined Networking
Logical networks have finally been brought into Azure Portal for Azure Stack HCI! Learn about how logical network support is necessary to bring our north star of SDN virtual networks and security benefits that will be coming later this year.
Hyper-V VM Migration to Azure Stack HCI, version 23H2
Written by Kerim Hanif, Senior Program Manager on the Azure Edge & Platform team Azure Migrate is a unified platform that simplifies migration, modernization, and optimization of on-premises resources to Azure. We have been working very closely with Azure Migrate team to add more destinations for Azure Migrate like VMware and Hyper-V. Last year we launched the private preview of Hyper-V virtual machine (VM) migration with Azure Migrate, and today we are very happy to announce the public preview of this capability. Note: VMware migration is currently in private preview. Please fill this form if you would like to be part of the private preview and help us build a high-quality migration capability. What is new in this public preview? This feature enables you to migrate your Windows and Linux VMs running on Hyper-V to Azure Stack HCI, version 23H2 clusters (GA as of Feb 1 st of this year). A wide range of source environments starting from Hyper-V on Windows Server 2012 R2 to Windows Server 2022 are supported. This feature uses the agentless migration option of Azure Migrate. This means that you don't need any prep such as installing an agent on the source VMs. All you need are two appliances, one on the source, and one on the target. While you can manage, monitor, and configure via the cloud (Azure Migrate), the data transfer between the source and the target is kept local. All the migrated VMs are Arc-enabled by default. This means that the full power of Arc VM management is immediately available to you once the migration is complete. Migrating variety of VMs (Windows and Linux) from Hyper-V to Azure Stack HCI How to get started? Make sure that you have an Azure Stack HCI cluster running version 23H2. Create a migration project in Azure Migrate. Discover the VMs on your source Hyper-V servers and clusters. Select the VMs you want to migrate and start replicating them to the target Azure Stack HCI cluster (source VMs can continue running at this stage). When ready, start the migration, and migrate your VMs with minimal downtime. Track the progress from the Azure portal. Where to learn more? For more information and detailed steps, please visit the following links: Options for migrating virtual machines to Azure Stack HCI (preview) Use Azure Migrate to move Hyper-V VMs to Azure Stack HCI (preview)Azure Stack HCI version 23H2 is generally available
Today we’re announcing the general availability of Azure Stack HCI version 23H2, and the Azure Arc infrastructure needed to provision virtual machines and Kubernetes clusters, and Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI. Together, these capabilities enable an adaptive cloud approach, empowering customers to deploy and operate everything from hardware to applications using Azure Resource Manager and core Azure management services.
Possible MAC address assignment strategies for tenant VMs running on Stack-HCI environment
Azure Stack HCI is a hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) cluster solution consists of windows servers (Hyper-V), Storage Spaces Direct, and Azure-inspired SDN. All clustered servers share common configurations and resources by leveraging the Windows Server Failover Clustering feature. A Windows Failover Cluster consists of multiple windows servers running in a cluster to provide high availability i.e. If one server node goes down, then another node takes over. We can create multiple VMs on the failover cluster. VMs can be connected to different tenant networks. In this case we need to make sure VM connected on network 'A' with static ip should persist same network configuration even if it gets migrated from one node to another within a cluster. This is possible by assigning static MAC/static IP for the VM. But how to get free and unique MAC to assign to VM, there are different ways to solve this problem. In this article we will discuss some of them with pros and cons. (Note: solutions discussed in this article are just to suggestions, can not be considered optimal solutions)Software Defined Networking: Multisite - A Tale of 2 SDN Sites
Multisite connectivity through Software Defined Networking is now in public preview with HCI 23H2, allowing you native layer 2 and layer 3 connectivity across different physical locations for your SDN infrastructure! This new feature will GA with 23H2 GA.
