Microsoft Azure Stack HCI Solutions
You must have heard of Microsoft Azure?
Unless you have been stranded on a remote island with nothing but your Sony portable television and a lack of double-A batteries you would inevitably come across Microsoft Azure. From the get-go, it was designed to migrate the business to a cloud-based solution while enabling a scalable solution that can leverage the performance and capabilities of remote servers without passing on the hardware investment and liability to the business.
Furthermore, the Azure software was designed to provide simple business blocks and workflows that were easy to customize and used by end-users and administrators alike. As this enterprise solution has been deployed over countless companies there are many end-users and administrators that are acquainted with its features and functionality; making a logical choice for many.
Back in the day
The challenge of finite hardware resources onsite that lead to cloud-based solutions two decades ago was great - until countless data breaches and leaks became an issue for industrial businesses to exchange data with others. As such this led to many de-facto industrial standards leading to the blacklisting of companies that could not store and audit their data effectively.
Unfortunately, while hardware onsite has improved, so has the growth in computational rich data tasks.
The terms "large data" and "big data" are now part of many businesses with file formats increasing with fidelity or complexity of a task. This has been predominantly due to AI data analytics and real-time data management. Productivity and efficiency are kings in any business so the current novel way of managing an enterprise is through a hybrid cloud-based solution.
Azure Stack hyper-convergent infrastructure (HCI) by Supermicro Solutions allows a business to keep its control of data local while leveraging the power of cloud-based tools as and when it needs to.
How does a business profit from Azure Stack HCI?
A business using Azure Stack HCI has the ability to run virtualized workloads on Microsoft-certified Supermicro HCI hardware solutions. This occurs onsite, providing full control of data and security while gaining Azure cloud capabilities and efficacies.
It is critical to business security and has been developed based on the growing desire for businesses to control their own data to ensure that it is not being used or intercepted by third parties.
These kinds of new hybrid platforms have been designed due to remote cloud-based data leaks in the past decades and security auditing pointing to significant exploits. In many industries where business-to-business (B2B) solutions require trust in data provided to the solution provider or upstream companies, the de-facto method of blacklisting companies that do not meet security expectations can cause a B2B focused business to lose significant and repeated earnings.
It should be noted that Azure Stack HCI offers monitoring, backup, and security options that can be adapted to business needs to be achieved through offsite or onsite tools accordingly.
Azure Stack HCI vs Azure Stack
Azure Stack HCI is not a one-for-one replacement for Azure Stack that runs on familiar virtualized infrastructure. The two have more differences than commonalities. Azure Stack HCI is a rebranding of Windows Server 2019 configured on a minimum of two systems running Storage Spaces Direct (S2D). S2D is software-defined storage Microsoft first introduced with Windows Server 2016.
Hardware and some of the software components are about the only things Azure Stack and Azure Stack HCI have in common. Azure Stack is an on-premises implementation of the core software that makes up the public Microsoft Azure cloud. Azure Stack is an entirely managed environment, where you can't get at the lower-level virtualization tools.
The biggest difference is the services provided by Azure Stack. You can't develop a software application based on Azure services and deploy those to Azure Stack HCI. You could conceivably develop container-based applications and integrate those into a large Azure-based solution, but that would be a difficult process. But, if you're paying big money for traditional storage, you could realize significant savings moving to an Azure Stack HCI solution.
Final Thoughts
Onsite heavy metal is dead, long live the cloud?
No, the industrial half ‘U-turn’ to a hybrid cloud-based solution is happening and if your business doesn't adapt quickly, it may become extinct as businesses tighten up their policies on who they will do business with. While industrial de-facto standards are not enforced by any regulatory body, they are a major iceberg on the horizon.
The major pain-point causing this change has been the exponential increase in data leaks from cloud-based solutions enabling businesses to be exploited as a result. Current ransomware attacks repeatedly on hospital facilities in Europe have highlighted the virility of the issue. Also a major concern for engineering and manufacturing sectors where operational technology (OT), information technology (IT), and internet of things (IoT) data integration have caused significant weaknesses to security.
Furthermore, it can cause major disruptions and financial losses not just for individual companies, but the entire supply chain. By removing 3rd party data, hosting data is confined to onsite security reducing the risk of further exploitation of the immediate business or high-value downstream enterprises.
Thankfully, if you already use Microsoft Azure, the HCI is easily integrated thanks to solutions provided by Supermicro and sold here.
Supermicro Solutions provide hardware solutions in 1U and 2U form factors. These can be configured to create a cluster environment between 2 and 16 nodes enabling a fully scalable solution. In addition to hardware, the Microsoft Azure HCI operating system needs to be installed across all platforms onsite for the enterprise to be managed centrally.
If you don't have Microsoft Azure and need a fresh enterprise management solution Microsoft Azure HCI, visit our products page.