In the early days of Microsoft Azure, back in 2010 when it was called Windows Azure, Microsoft had announced plans to make the Azure services available to be run / hosted in on-premises datacenter. Shortly after the announcement they released Azure Pack which wasn’t quite what we had all hoped for. Then about 2 years ago, Microsoft started talking about “Azure in your datacenter” again! The started talking about this new product offering called Azure Stack. We’ve seen a couple technical previews of Azure Stack so far, but not much in the way of a GA (Generally Available) release. That is until now. This week, Microsoft announced that in coordination with hardware OEMs you can now order Azure Stack integrated system hardware, with the first systems beginning to ship in September. There is also some pricing information, and an Azure Stack Development Kit (ASDK) being made available.

This is an exciting time for Azure Stack, now that we can finally see it all coming together where we’ll finally be able to run Azure services natively in on-premises datacenter or absolutely anywhere else.

Azure Stack Integrated System Hardware

Azure Stack is being made available in multi-server system configurations from a couple of different OEM partners. The Azure Stack integrated system hardware from these vendors are certified hardware solutions. This mean they are fully certified and supported by Microsoft to run Azure Stack. They come completely ready to run, and they also offer consistent, end-to-end customer support. Initial availability will cover 46 countries covering key markets across the world, with more to be added in the future.

Here’s the partners that are currently or planning on selling Azure Stack hardware:

Dell EMC
HPE
Lenovo
Cisco (coming soon)
Huawei (coming soon)

Azure Stack Development Kit (ASDK)

The Azure Stack Development Kit (ASDK) is a Free, single-server deployment that is designed for POC (Proof of Concept), Trial, and Learning purposes. It is available as a Free download, and will help you and your organization get started developing for and running Azure Stack. The Portal, Azure services, DevOps tools, and Marketplace content are identical across both the ASDK (Dev Kit) and Azure Stack integrated system. All applications built against the ASDK will work when deployed in a multi-server system just the same.

Here’s a couple documentation links for the Azure Stack Development Kit that will useful getting started:

To view the original announcement from Microsoft about Azure Stack purchase availability, please visit the following link:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-azure-stack-is-ready-to-order-now/

About the Author

Chris Pietschmann

Chris Pietschmann is a Microsoft MVP, HashiCorp Ambassador, and Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) with 20+ years of experience designing and building Cloud & Enterprise systems. He has worked with companies of all sizes from startups to large enterprises. He has a passion for technology and sharing what he learns with others to help enable them to learn faster and be more productive.