Breaking News

Newly announced at Microsoft Ignite 2022 is a new partnership with the Arc Jumpstart team. Now you can build out the next generation of HCI-Sandbox in the newly announced Public Preview of Jumpstart HCIBox.

This new solution builds upon HCI-Sandbox but offers a few additonal features like:

Automated Deployment of Azure Stack HCI Environment
Automated Registration of Azure Stack HCI Cluster
Automated Deployment of Azure Kubernetes Service
Automated Deployment of Azure Arc Connected Resource Bridge for Virtual Machine Deployment via Azure

Welcome to the easiest deployment of Azure Stack HCI, full stack of your life!

With this ARM Template you will be able to deploy a working, nested Azure Stack HCI cluster with Hyper-V, Storage Spaces Direct and Software Defined Networking, all manged by Windows Admin Center. It's so simple!

The Azure Stack HCI Operator's Sandbox is a series of scripts that creates a HyperConverged environment using four nested Hyper-V Virtual Machines. The purpose of the Azure Stack HCI Operator's Sandbox is to provide operational training on Microsoft Azure Stack HCI as well as provide a development environment for DevOPs to assist in the creation and validation of some Azure Stack HCI features without the time consuming process of setting up physical servers and network routers\switches.

Azure Stack HCI Operator's Sandbox is not a production solution! The Azure Stack HCI Operator's Sandbox's scripts have been modified to work in a limited resource environment as well as in a Microsoft Azure virtual machine. Because of this, it is not fault tolerant, is not designed to be highly available, and lacks the nimble speed and resilience of a real Microsoft Azure Stack HCI deployment.

Want a deeper understanding of Deploying Azure Stack HCI, and ready to learn quickly about the components?

<a href="https://sway.office.com/f4UzIZqrmGgMqTfZ?ref=Link.office.com/f4UzIZqrmGgMqTfZ?ref=Link" target="_blank">Deploying Azure Stack HCI</a>

What is Azure Stack HCI?

If you've landed on this page, and you're still wondering what Azure Stack HCI 21H2 is, Azure Stack HCI 21H2 is a hyperconverged cluster solution that runs virtualized Windows and Linux workloads in a hybrid on-premises environment. Azure hybrid services enhance the cluster with capabilities such as cloud-based monitoring, site recovery, and backup, as well as a central view of all of your Azure Stack HCI 21H2 deployments in the Azure portal. You can manage the cluster with your existing tools including Windows Admin Center, System Center, and PowerShell.

Initially based on Windows Server 2019, Azure Stack HCI 21H2 is now a specialized OS, running on your hardware, delivered as an Azure service with a subscription-based licensing model and hybrid capabilities built-in. Although Azure Stack HCI 21H2 is based on the same core operating system components as Windows Server, it's an entirely new product line focused on being the best virtualization host.

If you're interested in learning more about what Azure Stack HCI 21H2 is, make sure you check out the official documentation, before coming back to continue your evaluation experience. We'll refer to the docs in various places in the guide, to help you build your knowledge of Azure Stack HCI 21H2.

Why follow this guide?

This evaluation guide will walk you through standing up a sandboxed, isolated Azure Stack HCI 21H2 environment using nested virtualization in a single Azure VM. The important takeaway here is, by following this guide, you'll lay down a solid foundation on to which you can explore additional Azure Stack HCI 21H2 scenarios in the future, so keep checking back for additional scenarios over time.

Interested in AKS on Azure Stack HCI?

If you're interested in evaluating AKS on Azure Stack HCI (AKS-HCI), and you're planning to evaluate all the solutions using nested virtualization in Azure, it's certainly tempting to run AKS-HCI on top of an Azure Stack HCI 21H2 nested cluster in an Azure VM, however we strongly discourage this approach due to the performance impact of multiple layers of nested virtualization. The recommended approach to test AKS-HCI in an Azure VM using the official AKS on Azure Stack HCI eval guide.

Evaluating in Azure

As with any infrastructure technology, in order to test, validate and evaluate the technology, there's typically a requirement for hardware. If you're fortunate enough to have multiple server-class pieces of hardware going spare (ideally hardware validated for Azure Stack HCI 21H2, found on our Azure Stack HCI 21H2 Catalog), you can certainly perform a more real-world evaluation of Azure Stack HCI 21H2.

For the purpose of this evaluation guide however, we'll be relying on nested virtualization to allow us to consolidate a full lab infrastructure, down onto a single Hyper-V host inside an Azure VM.

Important Note - Production Deployments

The use of nested virtualization in this evaluation guide is aimed at providing flexibility for evaluating Azure Stack HCI 21H2. For production use, Azure Stack HCI 21H2 should be deployed on validated physical hardware, of which you can find a vast array of choices on the Azure Stack HCI 21H2 Catalog.

Nested Virtualization

If you're not familiar with Nested Virtualization, at a high level, it allows a virtualization platform, such as Hyper-V, or VMware ESXi, to run virtual machines that, within those virtual machines, run a virtualization platform. It may be easier to think about this in an architectural view.

Nested virtualization architecture

As you can see from the graphic, at the base layer, you have your physical hardware, onto which you install a hypervisor. In this case, for our example, we're using Windows Server 2019 with the Hyper-V role enabled. The hypervisor on the lowest level is considered L0 or the level 0 hypervisor. On that physical host, you create a virtual machine, and into that virtual machine, you deploy an OS that itself, has a hypervisor enabled. In this example, that 1st Virtualized Layer is running a nested Azure Stack HCI 21H2 operating system. This would be an L1 or level 1 hypervisor. Finally, in our example, inside the Azure Stack HCI 21H2 OS, you create a virtual machine to run a workload. This could in fact also contain a hypervisor, which would be known as the L2 or level 2 hypervisor, and so the process continues, with multiple levels of nested virtualization possible.

The use of nested virtualization opens up amazing opportunities for building complex scenarios on significantly reduced hardware footprints, however it shouldn't be seen as a substitute for real-world deployments, performance and scale testing etc.

Deployment of Azure Stack HCI 21H2 nested in Azure

For those of you who don't have multiple server-class pieces of hardware to test a full hyperconverged solution, this evaluation guide will detail using nested virtualization in Azure to evaluate Azure Stack HCI.

Architecture diagram for Azure Stack HCI 21H2 nested in Azure

In this configuration, you'll take advantage of the nested virtualization support provided within certain Azure VM sizes. You'll deploy a single Azure VM running Windows Server 2019 to act as your main Hyper-V host - and through PowerShell DSC, this will be automatically configured with the relevant roles and features needed for this guide. It will also download all required binaries, and deploy 2 Azure Stack HCI 21H2 nodes, ready for clustering.

To reiterate, the whole configuration will run inside the single Azure VM.

Deploy to Azure

Prefer a video, no problem! Watch this Getting Started video to well...Get Started with the Azure Stack HCI Sandbox, and within about 2 hours you will be ready to test out Azure Stack HCI

Custom Deployment- Azure Portal

For your first step, you will want to click "Edit Parameters"

You will need to supply the Resource Group and the Admin Password still, but this is a fairly easy process.

Hit Review+Create and jump to the "After Deployment Section"

Custom Deployment - AZ PowerShell

If you are more familiar with PowerShell and would rather do the deployment in Command Line, well Awesome, that is how you should be doing this. The instructions are below:

First, you will need to login to your Azure Account in your Terminal Session.

Connect-AZAccount

Then you will need to select your Subscript

AzStackHCISandbox

Install / Use

README