Every company in every industry around the world is being challenged to transform from an organization that uses digital technology, to a digital organization. Application modernization is at the heart of digital transformation, with the opportunity to help companies engage customers, empower employees, optimize operations and transform products. Azure provides a rich platform for developers to build modern applications, and in fact most applications are moving to public cloud quickly. Some applications however face obstacles; latency, intermittent connectivity, and regulation being primary examples. Azure Stack provides a way to run the same applications in on-premises environments. With a consistent cloud platform, organizations can confidently make technology decisions based on business requirements, rather than business decisions based on technology complications.
Azure Stack is an extension of Azure, bringing the agility and fast-paced innovation of cloud computing to onpremises environments. Organizations can now build modern applications across hybrid cloud environments, balancing the right amount of flexibility and control. Developers can build applications using a consistent set of Azure services and DevOps processes and tools, then collaborate with operations to deploy to the location that best meets the business, technical, and regulatory requirements. Developers can speed up new cloud application development by building on application components from the Azure Marketplace, including open source tools and technologies.
Azure and Azure Stack unlock new hybrid use cases for both customer facing and internal line of business applications:
Edge and disconnected solutions: Customers can address latency and connectivity requirements by processing data locally in Azure Stack and then aggregating in Azure for further analytics, with common application logic across both. There's lots of customer interest in this edge scenario across different contexts, including factory floors, cruise ships, and mine shafts.
Cloud applications that meet varied regulations: Customers can develop and deploy applications in Azure, with full flexibility to deploy on-premises on Azure Stack to meet regulatory or policy requirements, with no code changes needed. Illustrative application examples include global audit, financial reporting, foreign exchange trading, online gaming, and expense reporting. Many customers are looking to deploy different instances of the same application to Azure or Azure Stack, based on business and technical requirements. While Azure meets most requirements, Azure Stack complements the deployment approach where needed.
Cloud application model on-premises: Customers can use Azure web services, containers, serverless, and microservice architectures to update and extend existing applications or build new ones. You can use consistent DevOps processes across Azure in the cloud and Azure Stack on-premises. We're seeing broad interest in application modernization, including for core mission-critical applications.
Azure and Azure Stack enable three core promises for customers:
Maximize developer productivity by empowering them to build and deploy applications the same way whether they run on Azure or Azure Stack. Implement a common DevOps approach across hybrid cloud environments. With a consistent platform for application development, customers can:
Adopt hybrid cloud computing on your terms. Meet business and technical requirements, with the flexibility to choose the right combination of cloud and on-premises deployment models. With Azure Services available onpremises, customers can:
Focus on optimizing business applications and services, with integrated systems that are designed to deliver consistent Azure innovation in a predictable manner. With an integrated delivery experience, customers can:
Customers can speed up their Azure Stack initiatives by leveraging the rich Azure ecosystem:
The graphic below provides a simplified view of the Azure Stack product architecture.
Developers and IT pros have an experience with Azure Stack that is consistent to that which they experience in Azure. This is fundamentally made possible because the Azure Stack portal environment is the same code as Azure. However, the real innovation of Azure Stack is the implementation of a consistent cloud API as Azure, so there is a consistent experience across clouds. Simply connecting to a portal to choose from
preconfigured patterns is not enough; the definition of self-service has evolved to include programmatic access to the cloud API for the creation, deployment and operations of workloads in a cloud.
A consistent API surface area between Azure and Azure Stack is the path to a set of experiences, tools, application patterns, automation capabilities, deployment and configuration, and operations that work across clouds.
These are all examples of the breadth of impact enabled by this hybrid cloud platform. In each area, we believe Azure customers should be confident that their investments in people, processes and technologies will be transferable between Azure and Azure Stack.
The key to our Azure cloud model is the Azure Resource Manager. In both Azure and Azure Stack, Azure Resource Manager plays two important roles. The first is by providing a single-entry point for users and tools to define their resources running in the cloud. The second is focused on enabling teams to create, organize and control their cloud application lifecycle.
A key principle of operating a cloud is constant innovation - new capabilities, new insights and new customer needs are the norm. Microsoft Azure is composed of over fifty services today and has an enormous amount of content in the Azure Marketplace. As Microsoft continues to innovate and release new Azure content and services, a way to deploy and manage new functionality throughout Azure datacenters was needed. Azure is fundamentally designed to enable the release of innovation on a regular and on-going cadence.
With Azure Stack, the framework we use to install and publish new content and services is the same. The only difference is that we've tuned the requirements for success when operated by customers instead of Microsoft.
When running a self-service cloud, curating a differentiated Marketplace for users is a key part of the value to customers. With Azure Stack, cloud operators will be able to create their own custom Marketplace content and add items directly from the Azure Marketplace to make them available to their users. Key Windows and Linux distributions along with other technologies, such as Blockchain, Mesos, and Cloud Foundry can all be made available in an Azure Stack Marketplace.
Azure services power the next generation of cloud applications and are a key component of every Azure Stack deployment. Azure Stack begins with the initial services required for getting started with application innovation initiatives by providing modern compute, storage, networking, and security services, as well as platform services, such as App Service and Functions. In Azure Stack, there are services that ship in the integrated system and services that can be "optional" services that can be added to an Azure Stack deployment to add new functionality.
When an Azure Stack operator chooses to add a service to their cloud they're growing the capabilities they can offer to their application teams. Microsoft will grow the list of services that can be installed to Azure Stack over time.
It is important to keep in mind that in Azure, services take dependencies on other services – they layer on top of each other. Each service in Azure is a candidate for being distributed through Azure Stack and we will listen to customer input and consider technical feasibility in determining the roadmap. For a detailed list of Azure services at availability and thereafter, see the sections below.
Like Azure, the cloud infrastructure with Azure Stack is a purpose built, preconfigured solution that provides the capacity and lifecycle management for the system. Our design point is to remove the complexity of building a cloud and focus on continuously delivering the services that applications depend on. Unlike Azure, Azure Stack is deployed, operated, and maintained by the customer. Accordingly, we have incorporated a set of principles in Azure Stack infrastructure design that simplify the operations experience so that operators and administrators can focus more on delivering Azure services and updates, rather than on infrastructure set-up and tuning.
All the Azure Stack solution components such as machines, software infrastructure, services, and subscriptions exhibit management interfaces that are intuitive to the end customer.
Management Capabilities include:
Azure Stack will provide scalability in multiple dimensions: This enables choice and flexibility to meet customer requirements and can grow with their needs. The approach to Azure Stack scale is derived from Azure. Customers will scale-out their deployments by adding capacity to a region, adding additional regions, while exposing unified access through ARM and portal.
Azure Stack has several entry points for scale and introduces new concepts that should be understood.
Scale for an Azure Stack cloud, then, is the formula of [#Regions] X [# of Scale Units per region] X [#Servers per Scale Unit].
Azure Stack is designed to stay consistent with Azure through continuous innovation. Like Azure, Azure Stack does planning and building at frequent intervals. This means that we prioritize capabilities based on customer feedback and deliver it as quickly as we can. These capabilities are grouped into 2 areas:
Microsoft will continuously deliver additional capabilities in regular updates. These updates will continue to expand customer choice of IaaS and PaaS technologies when developing applications, as well as improve manageability and grow the footprint of Azure Stack.
With Azure Stack, we will deliver two major types of updates:
Updates to Azure Stack Infrastructure are delivered on a monthly basis and each update can include new functionality, fixes and security updates.
Azure capabilities on Azure Stack | Azure IaaS services
Azure PaaS services
Azure Identity
Azure Marketplace Content - Key IaaS/PaaS workloads
Azure Marketplace Content – Images and extensions
DevOps Tooling integration
Protection and recovery of business applications and services (e.g., IaaS VMs)
|
Azure Stack infrastructure capabilities | Infrastructure
|
* Azure Service Fabric (delivered as a Service) estimated availability on Azure Stack in CY18 (see roadmap section) *** We expect most single VM solutions with BYOL terms that use available services in Azure Stack to work without changes.
**** Timing subject to change, given third party dependency ^Optional services
The following table highlights capabilities that will be delivered after the initial release :
Area | Sub-area | Available in Q4 CY17 | Estimated availability in CY18 |
Azure capabilities on Azure Stack
| Azure IaaS | Windows Azure Pack Connector for Azure Stack | Azure-consistency enhancements (e.g., New VM types, updated API versions for enhanced consistency with Azure, Managed Disks) |
Azure PaaS |
|
| |
Marketplace content | Additional Marketplace applications and services
| Additional Marketplace applications and services | |
DevOps tooling |
| Travis and Bamboo integration | |
Workload management |
| Fully automated failback with Azure Site Recovery | |
Azure Stack infrastructure capabilities
| Scale |
| |
Business continuity | Support for multiple fault domains |
| |
Security and Privacy |
| Azure Stack certified for Common Criteria | |
Integrated Systems partners |
| Huawei integrated systems available | |
Other | Security, firmware, and driver updates | Security, firmware, and driver updates |
Azure Stack has two deployment options:
The following table is a summary of the availability dates for Azure Stack.
Availability Date | Country Availability | |
Azure Stack Development Kit | Available as web download in July | Global |
Azure Stack Integrated Systems | Can be ordered from our hardware partners starting July with first systems beginning to ship in September:
Additional integrated systems will become available as follows:
| 46 countries (see section below for geo list) |
The following are the countries in which Azure Stack will be available initially:
Aligned with the product promise, Azure Stack brings the cloud economic model to on-premises environments with pay-as-you-use pricing.
As in Azure, there are no upfront licensing fees for the usage of Azure services on Azure Stack; customers only pay when they use a service. Since customers take on the cost of ownership and operations, Azure Stack prices will be lower than Azure prices in many cases. The pay-as-you-use model can be added to existing Azure agreements, enabling customers to use the same subscriptions, monetary commitment, and invoice for both Azure and Azure Stack. The pay-as-you-use pricing is available for purchase in the Enterprise Agreement (EA) and Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) channels.
Azure services running on Azure Stack will be metered on the same units as Azure.
Service | Meters | |
Azure Virtual Machines | Base virtual machine (VM) | vCPU/hour |
Windows Server VM* | vCPU/hour | |
Azure Storage | Blob storage | GB/month (no transaction fee) |
Table and Queue storage | GB/month (no transaction fee) | |
Azure App Service | Web Apps, API Apps, Functions | vCPU/hour |
Customers can deploy Windows Server and SQL Server VMs using their existing Windows Server and SQL Server licenses in conjunction with Azure Stack. They have the choice of using Azure Stack native hourly meters or existing Windows Server licenses to deploy Windows VMs. If existing Windows Server licenses are used, only the consumption fee on Base VM usage will be charged.
Organizations that aren't always connected to Azure or are otherwise unable to transmit metering information may choose to use Azure Stack in a disconnected mode. For disconnected operating mode, we offer a capacity model pricing package—a fixed fee, annual subscription based on the number of physical cores in your system. Two capacity packages are available: the App Service package, which includes App Service, base virtual machines, and Azure Storage; and the IaaS package, which includes base virtual machines and Azure Storage. With the capacity model, customers can use existing on-premises licenses to deploy Windows Server and SQL Server VMs. The capacity model is available via EA only.
For actual pricing details, please refer to the pricing and licensing datasheet.
Azure Stack needs to be purchased as an integrated system, with software pre-installed on hardware. Learn more about standard hardware configurations that are available from our launch hardware partners by going here.
Azure Stack enables a consistent, integrated support experience that covers the full system lifecycle. To fully support your Azure Stack system, customers need two support contracts— one with Microsoft (or their Cloud Solution Provider) for Azure services support and one with the hardware provider for system support. Our integrated support experience provides coordinated escalation and resolution, so customers get a consistent support experience no matter whom they call first. For customers who already have Premier, Azure, or Partner support with Microsoft, Azure Stack software support is included.