Thursday, May 14, 2026
2pm EST / 11am PST
DataON has been elevated to the Premier Solution tier for Azure Local, giving customers access to the highest level of Microsoft validation and the broadest set of supported deployment scenarios.
In this session, we’ll talk about how Azure Local is the foundation for Microsoft’s Sovereign Private Cloud, allowing organizations to run cloud-consistent infrastructure on hardware they own and operate within their sovereign boundary. It supports deployments across connected, intermittently connected or fully disconnected environments, with features such as support for SAN‑based architectures and Azure Local Disconnected Operations.
We’ll also cover the features that were recently GA’d — including local identity, rack‑aware clusters, and significant networking improvements—and explain how they strengthen security, resiliency, and manageability across your environment.
Finally, we’ll walk through the upcoming Azure Local pricing changes so you can plan confidently and maximize the value of your hybrid cloud investments.
TL/DR Overview
Azure Local is rapidly evolving into Microsoft’s unified on‑prem platform for hybrid cloud, sovereignty, and AI, and DataON—now one of only four global Premier Solution OEMs—sits at the center of that strategy.
The roadmap highlights SAN‑attach, multi‑rack scale, small‑form‑factor edge systems, on‑prem AI with Foundry Local, and upcoming zero‑downtime switching between connected and disconnected modes.
Combined with native Azure Site Recovery, stronger security, and improved update reliability, Azure Local is becoming a far more capable and flexible platform, while DataON expands its services in migration, VDI, DR, and monitoring to help customers modernize confidently.
Summary
1/ DataON is now one of only FOUR global Premier Solution Azure Local OEMs
What this means for customers:
- Premier hardware + lifecycle validation directly with Microsoft
- Premier support experience
- Existing DataON Azure Stack HCI customers are automatically grandfathered into Premier tier
- Faster issue resolution, tighter engineering alignment, higher reliability
2/ Azure Local is expanding massively — from tiny edge to 128‑node multi‑rack
Microsoft is doubling down on Azure Local as the on‑prem platform for hybrid, sovereign, and AI workloads. Key expansions:
- Small form factor Azure Local (Azure Linux-based, bare-metal Kubernetes)
- Midline HCI (S2D-based, the DataON sweet spot)
- SAN‑attached Azure Local (Pure, NetApp, Dell, more coming)
- Rack‑scale Azure Local (up to 128 nodes, ARM-based Azure Linux Core OS)
3/ SAN‑attached Azure Local is real — and customers asked for it
Microsoft now supports SAN-backed Azure Local clusters. DataON already has Pure Storage customers in production.
- V1 requires Fibre Channel
- SAN vendor must certify their arrays
- Additional licensing cost for SAN‑attach SKUs
4/ Disconnected Azure Local is becoming a first‑class citizen
Microsoft is investing heavily in sovereign private cloud scenarios.
- Fully disconnected control plane
- Support for M365 workloads on-prem (Exchange, SharePoint)
- GitHub Enterprise Local
- Foundry Local (on‑prem AI models + inferencing)
- Customer‑owned Key Vault on-prem
- Edge credentialing
- Air‑gapped operations
5/ Coming soon: Switch between connected ↔ disconnected with ZERO downtime
This is one of the biggest roadmap announcements. Why this matters:
- Today you must choose connected or disconnected at deployment
- Certificate rotation in AKS currently limits long-term disconnected operation
- New on-prem certificate management will fix that
6/ Multi‑tenancy is coming to Azure Local
This unlocks:
- MSP hosting
- Campus/department isolation
- Sovereign cloud partitioning
- Regulated workloads
7/ Azure Site Recovery (ASR) is finally coming natively to Azure Local
This is a huge customer ask for years.
Two modes:
- Azure Local → Azure Cloud
- Azure Local → Azure Local (site‑to‑site DR)
This replaces:
- Stretch clusters
- Third‑party DR tools (for many scenarios)
8/ Update reliability has dramatically improved
Telemetry shows high‑90% success rates for customers already on 24H2. DataON customers previously struggled with 22H2 → 24H2 transitions, but the platform is stabilizing.
9/ Foundry Local brings on‑prem AI to Azure Local
Microsoft is pushing AI down to the edge.
- OSS models (ONNX, VLLM, etc.)
- Frontier models (OpenAI, Mistral)
- Bring‑your‑own‑model
- Agentic RAG
- AI Video Indexer packaged for Azure Local
- GPU/NPU/CPU inferencing on-prem
10/ Security investments: Confidential Compute + Edge Approvals
Microsoft added a dedicated security engineering team to Azure Local.
Coming features:
- Confidential VMs
- GPU isolation
- Hardware‑based attestation
- Edge approvals (human‑in‑the‑loop for cloud‑initiated actions)
- Full audit trails
11/ DataON’s value-add: Migration, VDI, DR, monitoring, and Premier support
DataON emphasized:
- VMware migration expertise
- AVD on Azure Local (Citrix/Horizon replacement)
- DR/BC via Azure Site Recovery
- New monitoring stack (free)
- AMD edge nodes coming
- AI at the edge testing in 2H 2026
- Marketplace consumption models coming
12/ TL/DL Summary (the ultra‑short version)
Azure Local is becoming the universal on‑prem platform for hybrid cloud, sovereign workloads, and AI — and DataON is now one of Microsoft’s four OEMs delivering Premier Solutions for Azure Local.
Microsoft is investing heavily in:
- SAN‑attach
- Disconnected operations
- Multi‑tenancy
- Rack‑scale
- On‑prem AI (Foundry Local)
- Native DR (ASR)
- Confidential compute
- Update reliability
- Edge approvals
- Customer‑owned Key Vault
- Blob storage on-prem
DataON is expanding services around migration, VDI, DR, monitoring, and AI at the edge.