Azure Stack HCI can meet just about any need you throw at it, but you still need to get your ducks in a row to plan for a successful purchase and deployment. Speaking and working with your hardware vendor will solve most of your concerns, but you need to be aware of common pitfalls and gotchas you can run into throughout the lifecycle of your environment.
- Make sure your purchase can scale for future growth. Don’t just buy what you need NOW, but what you may need in your hardware lifecycle timeframe. Avoid having to make future large CapEx spends by sizing your chassis correctly for growth by leaving empty drive slots or DIMMs available so you can easily scale your existing hardware without needing to buy another full cluster node.
- Don’t cheap out on storage. NVMe and SSD flash storage has dropped dramatically in cost since 2019, even despite supply chain issues. Set yourself up for success with low-latency storage and take advantage of things like ReFS Deduplication.
Creating a secure environment for your deployment is also critical for success.
- If you can avoid dropping your Azure Stack HCI hardware into an existing domain, do it! Setup a brand new VLAN, subnet, and domain limited to whomever and whatever needs access.
- Adopt the principle of least privilege for users and avoid lateral movement from bad guys by taking advantage of privileged access workstations (PAWS) and just-in-time (JIT) authentication when able.
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