Understanding Azure Stack HCI

I want to quickly touch on Azure Stack HCI, as there seems to be some confusion about what it is. Azure and Azure Stack are well understood. Azure Stack is a hyper-converged system (meaning the compute and storage are provided on the same nodes), with software providing most of the core storage and network capabilities. The Azure capabilities are enabled on top of this hyper-converged platform.

Azure Stack HCI is an evolution of the Windows Server Storage-Defined program, which was a set of hardware designed and certified to support Storage Spaces Direct (S2D). Storage Spaces Direct is the solution Azure Stack utilizes for its highly available storage that is enabled by duplicating data between disks on different nodes and sufficing it as aggregated, shared storage. Azure Stack HCI uses this same S2D technology for its software-defined storage and overall hyper-converged solution—hence, the “Azure Stack” in “Azure Stack HCI.&...