Azure Local Reviews

The main use case for Azure Stack HCI is that it is being used as our primary production environment after we replaced our hypervisor, VMware, with Azure Stack HCI.

Some of the best features of Azure Stack HCI are that, as we are primarily a Microsoft Windows Server organization using Microsoft Windows Server on most of our servers, we already own data center licenses for Microsoft operating systems. The hypervisor, Azure Stack HCI, actually comes with that license, which allows us to switch from VMware to Azure Stack HCI without any additional cost, significantly reducing our operational costs, especially now that Broadcom has purchased VMware, to $0. This difference is extremely significant for someone who already holds data center licensing for Microsoft.

For those familiar with Hyper-V, the learning curve is not so bad as it is very similar. We have utilized the virtual machine support feature in Azure Stack HCI for managing both Windows and Linux workloads, and so far we have been very satisfied. However, we've had some small difficulties in migrating our VMs over from VMware to Azure Stack, as there are some intricacies that can be complex at times. The migration tool, which is still only in beta and has not fully released yet, functions but can be tricky for certain configurations or specific features from VMware. We've encountered issues with configurations such as shared VMDKs that do not convert appropriately, necessitating changes in VMware prior to completing the conversion; otherwise, the VM simply won't convert.

An area that could be possibly improved with Azure Stack HCI is the stretched cluster functionality, which was included in version 23H2 for disaster recovery purposes. However, this functionality has been put on hold for the next release, and Microsoft has decided to discontinue stretched cluster technology completely, which is disappointing. They promise to bring back a significant or similar solution in a future release, but currently, there is no such functionality for stretched clusters between two sites in the latest versions of Azure Stack HCI, which poses a problem as we were looking forward to utilizing it.

The integration with Azure Arc provides a unified management experience, but I find it to be fairly clunky. The integration exists, but it is not smooth or very easy to use. While they've started to integrate the two, the integration lacks maturity and makes it difficult to manage effectively. There are discrepancies between managing VMs through Azure Arc versus managing them directly, as changes made not using the Azure Arc integration are not easily reflected in Azure Arc. For instance, if I have an Arc-enabled VM and make changes to it outside the Arc interface, those changes may not be registered directly in Azure Arc, leading to issues in fully viewing the status and configuration of VMs depending on the management tool used. You either manage VMs fully through Arc or not at all because mixing the two methods results in incomplete visibility and inconsistencies.

I have had a little bit less than a year of experience with this product.

Overall, I would rate Azure Stack HCI a seven out of ten. I'm not giving it a higher rating not due to its capacity or stability, but because it still lacks maturity. It does not feel like a well-oiled machine yet, with too many idiosyncrasies and insufficient documentation and integration, feeling more like software that is still in beta. Stability-wise, it has been quite stable and in terms of performance, it compares well to what we've had with VMware, so I cannot complain on that side.

Regarding Azure Stack's cloud bursting capabilities, we have started migrating our infrastructure but have not yet challenged the capacity. In terms of performance, we have not noticed any degradation compared to running our VMs on VMware, but we haven't put a lot of load on our migration yet, as some of our production servers facing high loads are still pending conversion; we are still in the migration process.

I would rate the support for Azure Stack HCI a seven out of ten. The support is good, but it can be slow since all our dealings have gone through our value-added reseller. Support has to first go through them before we receive assistance from Microsoft support, which adds an extra step that can be aggravating. Not every support team member is very knowledgeable about Azure Stack HCI, creating delays in resolution. When a call is opened with the value-added reseller's support team, their expertise is limited, leading to longer response times. While you eventually get your responses, it can be slower than expected, reflecting that Azure Stack's support is still in its early stages after not being widely adopted yet.

Positive

I cannot assess Azure Stack HCI's capacity to support advanced container services like Kubernetes, as we have not used it for that purpose yet.

We are using Windows servers for most of our infrastructure, where about 60% of our 130 servers are Windows-based.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate Azure Stack HCI a seven overall.

Azure Stack HCI is used for integrated compute, storage, and networking.

The installation of Azure Stack HCI was challenging in the beginning, but currently there is good maturity about the implementation and integration with other systems.

Azure Stack HCI has been very beneficial for disaster recovery operations, though the main data center still has a mix of infrastructure between other products.

Regarding Azure Stack HCI's edge computing capabilities, the operation teams are using this feature for services that need backup, and they are capitalizing on this feature, which has been very beneficial when retrieving data.

There could be improvements with Azure Stack HCI regarding the license and price, as they have significantly higher prices compared to other competitors.

The end-to-end encryption provided by Azure Stack HCI is good, but there is still a need to use an encryption tool for the transfer of data between the source and destination.

Azure Stack HCI has been in use for around five to six years. There has been some transformation for some products, but Azure Stack remains in use at some disaster recovery sites.

The completion time for installation of Azure Stack HCI was lengthy in the beginning, taking a couple of months, but after achieving good maturity, it became easier.

For technical support from Microsoft, I would rate it between eight to nine. They have more advantages than VMware, especially for containerization, and they provide good support as well.

Positive

For the deployment of Azure Stack HCI, the same team of operations that was needed was about five to six persons, similar to the VMware roles.

The installation of Azure Stack HCI was a mix of internal effort and external support. Premier support was obtained, and the Microsoft team and our partner were onboarded to help the team in the implementation and operations at specific points.

Before choosing Azure Stack HCI, Alibaba Cloud was considered, as they have good presence in Saudi Arabia.

In assessing the impact of data center modernization efforts with Azure Stack HCI, Microsoft may currently focus on their cloud, and once they have their cloud in Saudi Arabia, this will be a significant change. Azure Stack HCI was viewed as a temporary solution for a private cloud with good features, though not comparable to what is available in Azure cloud.

Work is still ongoing on the benefits of hybrid cloud with Azure.

Azure Stack HCI has been rated a seven out of ten. License and cost are main reasons for this rating, as the issues faced in the beginning of implementation were significant hurdles for the operation team. The implementation was very difficult for the operation team at that time, as the necessary skills to implement and integrate this product were not available. One of the major issues was the support for the hardware after five years, including Cisco and HP, which created significant challenges for the operation team.

The clients who need on-premises infrastructure and for some regulations cannot move all the data to the cloud or for some AI on-premises to evaluate the videos, such as in a factory, are the primary users. Azure Local is for experience on-premises while still offering the ability to blend with cloud services.

Clients who earlier had Hyper-V and Storage Spaces Direct are now being moved to Azure Local, providing the advantage of having an on-premises infrastructure with Azure's cloud experience.

Users can also run on-premises Azure Kubernetes Services or AKS on-premises for those who, due to regulations, cannot move data to the cloud or for use cases such as on ships. Azure also supports Virtual Desktop on Azure Local and SQL Managed Instances on-premises.

Another appealing factor is the cost-benefit for clients not wanting to pay high fees to VMware, as Microsoft Windows Server users can use the Azure Local services free with Windows Server Datacenter Software Assurance.

Azure Local, formerly known as Azure Stack HCI, is gaining attention due to its offering of a cloud experience on-premises. It supports infrastructure as code deployment through Azure DevOps and allows for seamless management via Azure Arc, a single pane of glass in Azure.

Microsoft Fabric is another key offering, acting as a comprehensive solution for analytics as everything previously managed via Power BI Premium capacity plans is now consolidated under Microsoft Fabric.

There is room for improvement in the deployment process, particularly when dealing with Azure Stack HCI, as implementation can become challenging with three or more nodes.

The deployment process for Azure Stack HCI could be enhanced, especially for larger implementations.

I have been working with it for a couple of years, including creating demos for clients and continuing to make new demonstrations.

When the stack exceeds three or more nodes, the implementation becomes quite challenging. The process becomes harder with three and more nodes of Azure Stack HCI. The deployment process could be improved.

Microsoft professional services are considered lacking as they often do not resolve problems, labeling them as client's infrastructure issues. Premier or Unified Support through Enterprise Agreement is quite good and offers solutions to problems not addressed by the standard support.

The standard professional support level is not satisfactory, often requiring clients to resolve problems themselves. Premier or advanced support for partners is recommended for better service.

Positive

As a Microsoft partner, I appreciate Azure Stack HCI, but VMware is also a very good virtualization platform, among others, depending on the use case.

The setup duration depends on expertise level. For a beginner, it takes approximately one week, but for someone who has done it multiple times, it can be completed in one day.

This solution costs €10 per core per month. The whole stack is free if you are renting Windows Server Datacenter.

Google and AWS offer similar cloud experiences on-premises.

Other alternatives include VMware, Proxmox, and SUSE Harvester. There are several hyper-converged solutions, but they lack the ability to stretch to the cloud.

The main focus includes Power Apps and Azure DevOps, encompassing the Microsoft 365 suite, modern work, and Azure. Azure AI Foundry is a current hot topic, with interface deployment on Docker within client tenants consuming Azure AI services, including models from ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Grok, and others.

Microsoft Fabric serves as the comprehensive analytics solution, including data warehouse, OneLake, and modern analytics capabilities. Power BI premium capacity plans are being moved to Microsoft Fabric.

Azure Resource Manager is utilized for control and deployment, particularly through Azure DevOps for infrastructure as code deployment.

Azure Local, formerly Azure Stack HCI, represents a significant advancement for clients previously using Hyper-V and Storage Spaces Direct. Through Azure Arc, users can manage and monitor on-premises servers through a single Azure panel that handles both cloud services and on-premises infrastructure.

This solution receives a rating of 9 out of 10.

I use it for local computing to integrate with cloud solutions. When I integrate local services and servers into Azure Stack HCI or the current Azure, it simplifies the cloud journey for me.

Azure Site Recovery is brilliant. The integration with Azure using Azure Arc is excellent. Additionally, Azure storage for local usage is very efficient for an HCI product. There has been some return on investment in terms of time usability and reduction of footprint, and obviously, HCI two emissions and other factors.

A little bit of the storage architecture could be improved. The integrated switching could use some enhancements. The virtualization platform always has room for improvement. Hyper V seems to lag behind compared to VMware.

The solution has not been available for long, however, I have probably used it for about four years. Since it has only been out for that long, I have been working with Microsoft for about 15 years.

I would rate the stability as seven out of ten.

The scalability is extremely good. I would rate it as ten out of ten.

I would rate their customer service about seven or eight out of ten.

Neutral

I migrated from VMware to Azure Stack.

The initial setup is probably about an eight out of ten. It's not the easiest thing in the world, yet it's fairly simple to get through.

There has been some return on investment in terms of just time usability and reduction of footprint.

The pricing is very competitive unless you are talking about the actual licensing itself. The licensing is quite expensive because it's per call.

I haven't used it for AI. It's not built for that. It's a good solution. It doesn't fit everyone, however, I'd probably rate it about a seven out of ten. 

We were looking for a solution with high computing features and IOPS. We also have high network requirements. We have a production environment that runs on Kubernetes.

The solution has the latest processor. It provides the new SSD and a 25 GB network. The Kubernetes environment is better than that of other tools. The features are good.

We faced multiple problems with the product’s stability. The product must provide more versions and bug fixes.

I have been using the solution for almost 1.5 years.

The product is not 100% mature.

The tool is scalable. We did not face challenges with scalability. We can add multiple nodes and configure more applications. We have 500 to 600 users. We have six nodes.

The support team resolved the stability issues when they were escalated. The support is good.

Positive

The initial setup was quite complex. The deployment took almost ten days. It is not difficult to maintain the tool. There are issues sometimes due to bugs. Otherwise, maintenance is not a challenge.

A third-party vendor deployed the solution. We did not have any trained resources.

Considering the performance of the tool and the features it provides, the ROI is good.

The pricing is high compared to other tools.

VxRail does not provide support for Kubernetes.

I will recommend the solution to others. The users must wait at least a year for the product to mature. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I use the tool by myself. I do recommend it to other customers. I am a Microsoft MVP, operating most likely in the functional areas or just the KPIs. I do recommend the tool to others as it is a good product.

The features of Azure Stack HCI that have proven to be the most beneficial for optimizing our company's data center operations revolve around its performance. Recently, I tested a four-node solution with NVMe, which is the sixteen generations tool that falls under the 16th generation solution from Dell, and I was able to do five million apps, so it offers pretty good performance for me.

Speaking about the tool's challenges, I would say that if you know the product, you probably know why there are challenges in it. The challenge now is that Microsoft has too many things to do with the management of Microsoft Azure Portal. There are just too many things you can do from Microsoft Azure Portal. So you have to do a lot of things in a traditional way with PowerShell, which works fine for a lot of customers, but for a lot of customers, it is not enough. The biggest challenge with the tool is not being able to manage everything from Microsoft Azure Portal.

In the future, I want to see the tool offer better integration and multi-cluster management in Microsoft Azure Portal. With multi-cluster management, you can view all of your virtual machines across all of the clusters you have and maybe move the machines between the clusters, which is something that I would love to see.

I have been using Azure Stack HCI for nine and a half years.

I have never used the solution's technical support as I usually have my own path, but I have heard that they are good. The support is cheap. You can pay 100 bucks and have support from Azure. You just create a ticket from Microsoft Azure Portal, and it is easy to get support.

I have specialized in HCI tools for Dell for three years now, so I know a little bit about Azure Stack HCI currently.

When I talk to the customers, I see that cost savings come from the licensing part because a lot of customers already have Microsoft Software Assurance, which one can get with Azure Stack HCI. If you are interested in using the Azure Arc, it is free for Azure Stack HCI. If you are in a VMware world, then there are a lot of licenses for VMware tools, so I guess Microsoft is comparatively cheaper.

Speaking about how Azure Stack HCI's scaling capabilities impacted our IT infrastructure management, I would say that the tool's scalability part is not that good because you, on paper, you can scale up to sixteen node clusters, but the optimal size of the cluster is somewhere between five to eight nodes or even five, six nodes at times. If you have four nodes with five million apps, then it won't mean that you can have eight nodes with eight million apps. You will have four nodes with five million apps and eight nodes with six million or seven million apps. The scaling-up process is not linear, and it is not the end of the challenge. I have never seen a customer doing many scaling-ups with the tool. It is quite a robust solution, but nowadays, we are not talking about the scalability features with the customers, as we are currently talking about the benefit of having a hybrid solution because it is connected to Azure, which can then allow you to consume some of Azure's services. It may not allow a user to consume everything under Azure's services, but a few of them can be used.

Speaking about the integration with Azure services enhancing Azure Stack HCI's usage, I would say it is like a promise. When you keep asking what is available from Microsoft Azure Portal, you will find out that it is just the virtual machine deployment, and then you'll find out that the resource bridge can't support the virtual machines. It was more of a promise of what could be done in the future if Microsoft implemented it correctly. Everyone is eagerly waiting for 2024 Microsoft's release, which will most likely be in October.

Azure Stack HCI support for initiatives in AI and machine learning is not something that Microsoft is discussing clearly. You can obviously use the GPUs that you can pass through into the containers, but there are no SKUs in Microsoft Azure Portal that can use the GPUs right away, so you have to attach them, making it kind of complicated, and there isn't a native AI available right now. It is a little challenging because Microsoft has to come up with something, but it hasn't come up with anything yet.

I won't be able to recommend any other product in place of Azure Stack HCI.

I recommend the tool to others.

If you are into open-source tools, you would probably go with KVM, and if you know nothing about Microsoft, then Azure Stack HCI would not be the right solution for you. For most companies or corporations, Azure Stack HCI is suitable for them. It offers nice performance and specifications and is relatively cheaper than other tools.

I used to work at Microsoft three years ago as a PFE. I used to write for workshops on how to use or what technology is used in Azure Stack HCI. I used to run the workshops. I trained internal people on the tool. I know a lot of big brands because I worked with the product managers at Microsoft, and we used to shape the products together. Even now, I still work closely with them, so I know a lot about the tool.

I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

There are many use cases for this solution, but a key one in my latest project involved a government organization. They had a requirement to keep all services running within their own data center, not in a vendor's data center. However, they also wanted to leverage cloud services when needed.

They're still figuring out which Azure services they can leverage without compromising data privacy. So, all the services are running in the Stack HCI cluster within their data center.

This solution was important for integration, on-premises and cloud environments. When you run these services on-premises, everything stays on-premises, and the customer has complete visibility into those services. This is because everything runs in VMs within a Hyper-V cluster registered with Azure using Azure Arc. That's what we call Azure Stack HCI in a nutshell.

Now, the integration part allows us to leverage many Azure filters and manage services. For example, if we enable monitoring with the Azure monitoring agent, Log Analytics agent, etc., we can send all the data to Azure and use Azure Defender or Sentinel to analyze the data and get threat intelligence. 

This intelligence can be used to provide security measures through the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) center. It allows for instant creation, auto-response, and other functionalities. That's one area of integration.

Another way is through managed services. Imagine your applications running in the Stack HCI cluster and the database running in Azure, perhaps as a managed service like Cosmos DB or even a simple SQL database in an Azure VM. This is another way to achieve integration. 

So, monitoring and security are some of the best use cases for integration. We can have multi-layered applications that include both Azure services and on-premises resources like the Hyper-V cluster. 

In my hybrid cloud setup, there are three features I've found very efficient. The first is software-defined networking. Similar to Azure where you create virtual networks and software load balancing, Azure Stack HCI lets you configure them with a drag-and-drop experience on the on-premises cluster. That's one of the good feature.

The second is the ability to run Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) in the cluster. Any containerized microservices can be deployed and run in your own data center using AKS on HCI.

There are a lot of areas for improvement. Since I've been working very closely with this product, there are many areas, especially in software-defined networking. 

We had to improve multiple areas because we depended on the service fabric cluster to manage the software-defined network. That means we're already running a hypervisor inside a VM, and we're managing the control plane of the software-defined network. That's another cluster. So, multiple layers make the complexity more complex. 

So, from an operational perspective, it's very difficult to manage. So whoever is actually managing it should find it easier.

Therefore, I would like to improve the operational aspect by making it easier for users.

The deployment process can also be improved. It's purely based on PowerShell settings. So, there's a bit of optimization and tuning that can be done in the process settings as well because the current deployment process takes approximately one hour.

But again, it's a one-time process. We can always counter the challenge by saying that we don't want to improve it because it's a one-time process. But one hour is a bit long. 

So there's some tuning happening, especially a service fabric cluster thing, which has been taken care of now in the next version of HCI. 

The service fabric service is completely removed, and they are integrating the control plane process of software-defined networking into the HCI node itself, not running it inside a VM. So that's a good thing.

Azure Stack HCI is already being used by many customers in the market. The only complexity and challenge is with Software Defined Networking (SDN) alerts. So, I haven't seen many customers using it yet because I'm the only person here who's good at Software Defined Networking and HCI right now. That's a challenge because a lot of people depend on me since I'm the only one working on this.

So I want to improve that area as well. I need more people to be accustomed to this product so we can help our customers more efficiently in different time zones.

At the same time, support is challenging for Azure Stack HCI with Software Defined Networking (SDN). We are trying to create a new team and train them to make sure we have more people available in this region to work on this product and help customers in a better way.

I have been using it for a few years now.

It is definitely stable. As you already know, Hyper-V has been around for more than a decade, actually more than two decades. 

Since Azure Stack HCI is purely based on a Hyper-V cluster, a three-level cluster, it's very stable. And with the ability to create up to 16 nodes in the cluster, you get redundancy and scalability.

Scalability is approximately 1000 VMs running on one node. Both vertical and horizontal scaling are available in Azure Stack HCI, and we can automate it as well.

It is definitely a reliable solution. Because it has all these features and cloud integration. Plus, horizontal and vertical scalability are also available. So, it's a pretty reliable solution. Even if one of the nodes goes down, not just one node – we can create up to 16 nodes. Even if five or six nodes go down, your applications are still up and running. That's the level of availability we get.

Around five or six customers are using Azure Stack HCI in India. But this customer, the government project, they are a different customer. They use Azure Stack HCI with SD-WAN.

There are very few people who are familiar with Azure Stack HCI with SDN, we are struggling to support them. I'm the person most of the time sitting there, helping out customers. But now engineers are getting trained on this product.

I used Azure Stack, however, it always seemed to lag behind the actual Azure services. For example, features like Azure Firewall or AKS might be generally available in Azure, but wouldn't be available in Azure Stack for another two years or so. It felt constantly behind the market, which is why I wasn't a big fan.

But Azure Stack HCI is completely different. It's an HCI solution, so everything is on-premises - the hardware and the services. You integrate it with Azure and register it, and you can even run some Azure services like Azure Backup on the on-premises cluster.

In the background, it's a Hyper-V cluster. Within that cluster, you can create a private AKS environment and run some Azure services like Logic Apps, or even deploy a full AKS cluster itself.

The initial setup is not complex at all. The orchestration part is handled by Azure Arc and HCI. You only need to manage your own data and application configuration, which you would have to do anyway, regardless of whether it's running in Azure or on-premises.

You can do it in-house.

The deployment process is also completely supported by the Azure Arc logs. You can use the logs pipeline to deploy it easily.

It is a hybrid solution. It's not just a cloud solution or an on-premises solution; it's definitely a hybrid solution.

There are a lot of learnings from the customer side. I learned a lot about how customers view a hybrid solution. I also discussed requirements with a lot of my management people. 

It wasn't just technical discussions – with a new product and new requirements, management also got involved to understand the business aspects. That's a good learning experience – how to look at this solution from a business perspective.

From a business perspective, there's a lot of discussion about money, time, and efficiency – those are the three main points. They want to reduce reliance on technical support. That was a very good learning experience for me. 

Since I became familiar with some of the customer requirements, I even visited the government office to understand their RFT (Request for Tender) discussion, the initial RFT. 

I was involved in studying the RFT and providing suggestions. From the very beginning, I was involved. So it was an immense learning experience from a lot of stakeholders, beyond just the technical aspects.

It is not a challenge for us as technical people because we're always learning. In IT or software or any IT domain, you're always a student. You're always learning and upgrading. 

However, these other aspects – understanding the business, stakeholder mindset, and requirements from different perspectives and stages – were a fantastic learning experience.

The main licenses are the OS licenses, the OEM licenses, and so on. They are very much aligned with the cost of expectations. We never had any challenges with the licensing at all.

It's definitely not extremely expensive, but you can still consider it expensive because the customer is responsible for maintaining all the hardware. 

They have to factor in the licensing costs, the solution design, buying the support, etc. So, at the end of the day, it can be a bit expensive. 

But, if you consider the value they're getting out of it, it might still be profitable proportionally. So in that way, it's not very expensive.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten because even if it is complex, it is a well-dealt product. 

Anyone considering Azure Stack HCI should first understand their environment and requirements. If it aligns well with a private cloud environment where they want to keep all their data on-premises but still have Azure integration, then I can definitely suggest a strategy for sure.

There's also another product coming from Microsoft called Azure Edge Zone, but it's not yet publicly available in most regions. It's only in private preview in one or two regions in the US, not anywhere else. So, I wouldn't recommend that to customers. Right now, Azure Stack HCI is the best possible hybrid solution I can suggest.

I use the solution in my company for the creation of the VMs and their manageability. Azure Stack HCI can be used to monitor the full dashboard in one console, and it is something that a user needs. I have one use case wherein some VMs are put under

Azure Stack HCI. If you take into consideration a VM that shows a CPU utilization of 25 percent and then monitor Azure Stack HCI with a free Microsoft tool that is available in Windows Center, it shows the same CPU utilization as two percent.

The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to manage VMs. The tool can reduce the physical server count and allow users to use an endless number of VMs under one host.

The product's initial setup phase can be a bit complex, making it an area where improvements are required.

I have been using Azure Stack HCI since 2012. I use it in my company.

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution.

In my company, we have around 60 VMs on Azure Stack HCI.

The solution's technical support is good. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.

Positive

The product's initial setup phase is complex. The engineers who have implemented the tool made the implementation process complex. Though the tool's setup process was quite simple, the engineers who implemented the product made it complex. Our company's team saw that the initial setup was complex.

Suppose you follow the prerequisites properly during the implementation phase. In that case, there are no challenges because once it is done properly, the whole installation can be smooth without any stoppages anywhere. You need to follow the prerequisites right from the IP address and network cable while ensuring that everything is in place. You should know the requirements of your means and how you want to implement the project, and, accordingly, if you're ready with your prerequisites, there is no problem.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

I have seen a return on investment from the use of the solution.

The fundamentals and basics attached to Azure Stack HCI are taken from Microsoft Hyper-V. Microsoft Hyper-V was basically renamed as Azure Stack HCI since it has all the features that a hypervisor product has.

From the perspective of the hybrid cloud setup, the tool can be used to manage PCs and servers virtually.

There has not been much improvement in our company's data center operations with the use of Azure Stack HCI. If I consider the ability of a product to improve the company's data center operations, I would favor Nutanix over Azure Stack HCI.

The optimization part is taken care of under Azure Stack HCI.

In my company, the scalability features have had no impact on our IT operations.

In Azure Stack HCI, integration is quite simple and user-friendly.

It requires maintenance in terms of the security patches that Microsoft releases, and it varies from organization to organization, as well as how their policies and processes work in terms of implementing Microsoft's hotfix package.

I recommend the product to those who plan to use it. If a user is already using Nutanix, they will not move to Azure Stack HCI. I would give Nutanix more ratings than Azure Stack HCI. Azure Stack HCI is cost-effective. Organizations that want to spend less money and find a cost-effective solution can choose Azure Stack HCI.

I rate the tool a nine out of ten.