Azure Stack HCI is a hybrid cloud solution that lets you run virtualized workloads on-premises with direct access to Azure services. It combines the performance, security, and scalability of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) with the flexibility and innovation of Azure.
As a datacenter scale customer, to take full advantage of these new capabilities, you need a powerful and reliable management solution that can handle the complexity and scale that comes with large scale deployments. To address these requirements, customers can continue to leverage System Center components as the management solution for larger deployments of Azure Stack HCI 23H2 clusters for a select set of scenarios while leveraging Arc based management of HCI clusters for other scenarios.
Supported Azure Stack HCI scenarios with System Center
The following scenarios will be supported in SCVMM to manage Azure Stack HCI 23H2:
- Addition and management of Azure Stack HCI clusters.
- Ability to provision and deploy Virtual Machines (VMs) on the Azure Stack HCI clusters and perform VM lifecycle operations.
- Management of storage pool settings, creation of virtual disks, creation of cluster shared volumes (CSVs) and application of QoS settings.
- Migration of VMware and Windows Server based workloads to Azure Stack HCI.
- Management of Azure Stack HCI clusters using the same PowerShell cmdlets used to manage Windows Server clusters.
- Azure based VM self-serve capabilities and Azure management services through Azure Arc-enabled SCVMM.
Supported Azure Stack HCI scenarios with System Center
The following scenarios will continue to be supported only from the Azure Portal/Windows Admin Center to manage Azure Stack HCI 23H2:
- Creation of Azure Stack HCI clusters.
- Register and unregister Azure Stack HCI clusters is built into deployment now.
- Upgrading Azure Stack HCI 22H2 clusters to 23H2 whenever upgrade becomes available.
- Enablement of Azure benefits on VMs running on Azure Stack HCI clusters.
- All operations on Azure Stack HCI clusters deployed with Windows Defender Application Control (WDAC).
- All new Azure Stack HCI 23H2 features like GPU-Partitioning, SDN Multi-site, etc.
- All Azure Stack HCI features that were previously unsupported with SCVMM like Stretched clustering with 22H2.
When is the support for Azure Stack HCI 23H2 coming with System Center?
Azure Stack HCI 23H2 support will be added to the next LTSC version of System Center. The General Availability of the next LTSC version of System Center will be closer to the General Availability of Windows Server 2025.
This article appears courtesy of Microsoft.