What is Azure Stack?

Azure Stack is a product that allows businesses to extend the capabilities of Azure services to their datacenters. It introduces infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) services capabilities within the same stack spanning across on-premises environments and the Azure cloud. Azure and Azure Stack share several components and capabilities including the Azure portal and the pay-as-you-go model providing an identical user experience to organizations using either service. Azure Stack helps organizations harness the power of the cloud while simultaneously addressing the multi-pronged challenges of business and technical considerations like regulations, data sovereignty, customization, and latency. Let us understand what Azure Stack is with its advantages and implementation scenarios.

What are the Benefits of Azure Stack?

There are many advantages to implementing Azure services on your organization’s data servers with Azure Stack.

Benefit from the known advantages of security, compliance, and trusted reliability of your own servers over the public cloud.
Maintaining core business apps within the organization’s datacenter while enabling cloud features.
Use Azure Stack for staging while they are still under development in the on-premises environment before moving them to the cloud.
Reduce overheads by aggregating on-premises CPUs, storage, networking, database, and web tier resources, and optimizing them.
Manage scalability and capacity handling better with Azure tools.
Make transitions between IaaS and PaaS more seamless.

Scenarios for Implementing Azure Stack

Azure Stack solutions can be deployed across a range of location boundaries including disconnected environments such as ships in transit, private data centers, as well as edge locations and remote offices to extend Azure services and capabilities. Below is the summary of the Azure Stack products and the scenarios in which they are effective.

Azure Stack Edge

Azure Stack Edge is a solution that extends computing power, storage, and intelligence capabilities from Azure to edge environments including corporate data centers, branch offices, or a remote field asset.

It can be used by organizations to generate rapid insights from the internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) workloads at edge locations. Azure Stack Edge is recommended in the following scenarios.

Reducing latency and improving analysis efficiency for IoT and AI data.
Improving machine learning models by deploying an edge-computing appliance close to the data source.
Managing edge computing solutions from a unified portal.
Establishing a secure, high-speed connection for transferring data to and from the cloud using a storage gateway.

Azure Stack HCI

Azure Stack HCI is a solution for consolidating virtualized applications and running on-premises virtual machines that connect with Azure. Here are some uses for Azure Stack HCI.

Equip branch offices, retail stores, and field locations with container-built edge workloads and applications on high-availability Virtual Machines with service monitoring using Azure Monitor.
Simplify large-scale virtualization and remote desktop services deployment solutions.
Use hyperconverged infrastructure to run high-performance SQL Servers.
Leverage Azure Security Center capabilities to standardize infrastructure security and protect workloads.
Scale-up file storage capability with Azure file sync.
Automate deployment, management, and scaling of containerized applications.

Azure Stack Hub

Azure Stack Hub is a solution designed to run Azure services on private, autonomous cloud-connected/ disconnected environments. It comprises of hybrid cloud innovations for workloads that have to be retained on on-premises infrastructure. Here are some scenarios in which Azure Stack Hub is the ideal solution.

Satisfy latency and connectivity requirements for local data processing without the internet for edge applications and disconnected scenarios.
Meet regulatory and policy compliance with on-premises deployment while using Azure.
Modernize legacy applications with Azure infrastructure, architectures, and processes.

Apps4Rent Can Help with Azure Services

Azure is a complex offering and continues to evolve with improved features, services, and products. As a Microsoft CSP, Apps4Rent can help you identify the right Azure cloud solution and make the best use of Azure services. We provide 24/7/365 services and support via phone, chat, and email for cost-effective Azure solutions. Feel free to reach out to us to know more about Azure.