Azure Stack Reviews

We use the solution for its virtual machine features.

The visibility of the solution's SDN feature and transmission policy needs improvement.

We have been using the solution for five years.

I rate the solution's scalability as a ten.

Whenever we raise a ticket, it gets addressed immediately by the solution's technical support team.

Positive

The solution doesn't need configuration as it is prebuilt on hyper-converged infrastructure. Its deployment takes two to four months to complete. The process involves installing the hardware and network requirements. 

It is not a cost-friendly solution. I rate it a seven for pricing.

I advise others to appoint premise engineers to manage day to day activity of the solution. I rate it a ten as it is business-friendly and has all the features prebuilt.

I use a lot of services in Azure.  I have worked with completely isolated environments, building infrastructure from scratch using Terraform, Chef, Puppet, and other such tools.

The Platform as a Service (Paas) environment is the most valuable feature.

The Web App service is very valuable.

It is helpful from a security point of view because we can create our own isolated, private environments that contain virtual networks, and we can put security rules in place. We can also specify application rules, which is something that is also useful.

There are a lot of services in Azure that are not stable.

Azure Messaging services are in need of improvement.

I would like to see better monitoring capability, as we have in Dynatrace and other APM tools. The functionality is there, but it is not as detailed as it is in other tools.

I have about three years of experience with Azure, on and off.

My advice for anybody who is implementing Azure Stack is to start looking into DevOps early. There are a lot of things that can be done using the portal, and people tend to follow this process because it is easy. It's true that this approach may get things done fast, but it will only get you so far. Working with the DevOps capabilities, such as automation with Terraform, should be done sooner rather than later.

Every cloud has its pros and cons.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Our company is trying to build an application out of Azure Stack. We are trying to build an API out of Azure Stack, which will communicate with the ERP systems.

Azure Stack provides us with computational power. We also get an option to have it with Azure Cloud, which is beneficial. We don't need to buy any other extra servers or any virtual machines with high-end graphics. All the aforementioned details make it more convenient for me to work with Azure Stack.

The solution's price is high, and the implementation process is difficult. I would like to see a lower price and simpler implementation for Azure Stack.

I have been using Azure Stack for a year and a half. We also use the solution in our company. I am using the solution's latest version. 

My company is a reseller of Azure.

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution.

Right now, it is not in the production stage as it is still under the development stage, because of which I can't give a number on how many people are using it currently.

We got technical support from Azure about thirty days ago, and they have been very good.

I rate the support team a nine out of ten.

Positive

The solution is deployed on Azure Cloud.

The deployment part was a bit difficult, but the document helped me to get it done. While configuring it, we faced issues with its network interfaces, along with some security issues and vulnerabilities.

It took me around 40 days to implement Azure Stack.

The implementation process was something that came along from the reseller from whom we bought the solution.

Three members consisting of an ML developer, a person from DevOps, and an architect, were required to do the deployment.

Azure Stack is not a very costly tool. The pricing is according to the services we buy. When compared with AWS, Azure is a bit more costlier.

There is a need to pay additionally for maintenance or support. If you need premium support, you have to pay extra.

Azure Stack is a good solution since it allows you to explore more things, especially on the ML or DevOps sides. I would recommend Azure Stack to anybody planning to use it.

My company has attempted to integrate Azure Stack with products from other vendors. We haven't faced any difficulties integrating Azure Stack with products from other vendors. We provide solutions with Azure platform.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight and a half out of ten.

We are looking to implement asset management of marks and enrollment.

The product is fine. It comes with everything. It is probably the best solution out there.

Certain elements are difficult to deploy.

My organization has been using the solution for a number of years.

The deployment is probably not easy. Certain elements are easy to deploy, but certain elements aren’t. The ease of deployment depends on the maturity of the technical teams. If they're quite mature and experienced, then it's not too much of an issue. If there is a knowledge or skill gap, then, obviously, it'll be quite an issue. However, if it is a large organization, engaging with Microsoft is probably fine since it can fill in all the gaps for the organization.

We have a dedicated Microsoft team always working within our organization.

The product is expensive, but it is fine for the value that the solution produces.

I work for the government in a department related to leasing infrastructure. We are using the latest version of the product. Intune has recently opened a lot of functionality very similar to Jamf. There's quite a big gap between what Jamf offers and what Intune offers.

People planning to use the product should engage with Microsoft quite early on and see what products would benefit them rather than trying to figure it out themselves. It would be good if Intune would offer features aligning with enrollment and asset discovery. Jamf provides these features.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

Our primary use cases are computing, data platform along with migrating event-driven architecture. We use a lot of data bricks and data components. From the integration to data, and from the application deployment perspective to the platform as a service.

Azure Stack enhanced the productivity from the developers to testers to infrastructure engineers in the following way:

* Developers and the QA team focused on delivering business values rather than thinking about the build and deployment

* The infrastructure team focused more on automating the infra-build pipelines for different environments in no time 

* Azure Pipelines automated 80% of manual efforts on both the Development and Infra front. 

We have found the Kubernetes version is one of the key components which we are using heavily.

I would like to see the AI side come to one hundred percent in the near future. I would love to see a more reliable SAP improved.

I have been working with Azure Stack for the past seven years.

Azure Stack is highly stable across the globe from my experience.

Azure Stack is extremely scalable across the globe.

One of the best parts of technical support is they are really on top of all the issues. Once an incident has been raised, their team will call our technical engineers and start supporting them immediately. This is one of the major reasons why I have used Azure Stack. Azure Cloud is becoming so popular because in the end, businesses need assurance and they are always on top of it.

We were using an on-premise solution, but you know that an on-premise solution is not scalable with a cloud-based environment.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. It is a lean, shallow learning curve. They can quickly grasp it and can start working on deployment. The deployment was pretty smooth because we set up the CI/CD pipeline and Azure pipeline, which automatically builds the solution. It does the unit test and performance test, and if everything goes well, it is scheduling the deployments for production quickly.

We have both in-house and third-party teams, depending on the requirements and complexity of the deployment.

The licensing is pay-as-you-go, and Azure also provides a bring-your-own-license. I believe that is a good option if anyone is looking at it and they already have a license. They can get the infrastructure and the provision in a very short time and it will save the existing licenses. 

Different applications will have different licensing needs. It depends on which tool you use. You will then need to secure that license.

We evaluated AWS and Google. It depends on the company and what the best fit is for the organization. If companies have similar requirements, they can follow us, or if they have a different requirement, I believe that Google or AWS might fit their needs as well.

I think that anybody who wants to move on to Azure Stack, needs to assess their requirements, and what business needs they have. I would rate Azure Stack an eight out of ten.

We're using the latest version.

It's deployed on the cloud, mainly as a Kubernetes container.

It's more reliable, secure, and easy to deploy. It's much more stable as a platform.

There's Azure SQL Database on the cloud for small loads, but now they're moving to Synapse, which has a combination of the storage plus the analytics. 

I've been using this solution for more than six years.

It's stable. We haven't had any significant down times, because now you have redundancy across networks. We have not come across any situation where any disruptions have occurred, at least on the cloud connectivity.

It's absolutely scalable. We haven't had any challenges with scalability.

We had some issues, and we directly raised a defect bug to them so they could sort it out. I haven't heard teams complaining about that. I don't see any challenge right now because the stack is much stabler, easier, and we haven't needed to reach out.

Positive

Both AWS and Azure are the best in the world right now. 

It all depends on what our customers need, so we use both.

One or two people are needed to maintain this solution.

I would rate the pricing 4 out of 5. It could be lower.

I would rate this solution 9 out of 10.

The product is an on-premise data center for SQL servers and for virtualized environments.

The fact that it's integrated into Azure is its best feature. They go hand in hand.

It's very easy to set up the product.

The solution is pretty stable.

The product can scale. 

The fact that it is completely integrated into Azure, while positive, is also a downside. 

Azure Stack was implemented by Microsoft about eight months ago. That's pretty much how long I've been using it.

The solution is stable enough. It is not market-leading, however, it is reliable. 

The scalability is decent. It's not market-leading, however, it is possible. 

We have about 20 people using it in our company.

I haven't used technical support. I cannot speak to how helpful or responsive they are. 

We didn't change solutions. We just added it and we are still utilizing a host of other solutions, including VMware's vSAN. They both do similar things, however, if I had my choice, I would go with VMware. That's just subjective, however. 

The product has been simple to set up. The deployment is quick and takes an hour. It's not complex or difficult to implement. It's really quite easy. It's a next, next, next flow where you click through and run the software. When you implement it, you attach it to your Azure account and that's when the real work starts, of course, as then you have it up and running.

I install the solution myself. We both deploy it in-house and use a consultant. 

We're resellers. 

I'd recommend the solution, however, for those considering it, the most important thing is to get ahold of somebody who knows what they're doing, for example, a consultant.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

I don't have a specific feature, my customers use all of the features that are available and the entire stack.

I believe the only room for improvement is that I am based in Nairobi, if it has even a local node for Azure, I believe most customers will prefer that to reduce latencies and everything else when using the Azure Stack. They'll be better off if they can set up a local node in Nairobi, Kenya.

There are local things specific to the Kenya market, which are integrated into local development platforms available in Kenya, which would be helpful if it could be integrated with Azure Stack. We have a solution called M-Pessa, for example. If that can be done on a regular basis, I believe it is time to look for customers who want to use that channel today.

I have been working with Azure Stack for six years.

Azure Stack is a stable product.

Azure Stack is a scalable solution.

Technical support is okay. My customers have not complained about the technical support.

I actually work for an integrator company that specializes in UiPath. I primarily use UiPath, but I also use Automation Anywhere and Microsoft Power Automate.

We use Power Automate, but we also use Power BI for dashboard visualization. Then there's the standard Office 365, and we do have customers who use Azure.

I would say the initial setup is medium. It all depends on who is using it, but most customers rate it as a medium. It's not easy, but it's also not difficult. It's average. It's a medium.

In terms of pricing, my customers believe AWS is slightly more reasonably priced than Azure. They believe it is significantly less expensive than what Azure offers. It is simply a matter of pricing.

I would advise them to conduct a thorough assessment of the types of applications they want to host on Azure Stack before beginning the migration process. They must be absolutely certain. Then there are all kinds of local policies, security policies, on migrating data into the Cloud, to put it mildly. They should be on the lookout for such things. So, first and foremost, a proper assessment of what types of applications should be moved entirely to Azure Stack. Then, examine the policies, security policies, and cybersecurity that are associated with all of that.

I would rate Azure Stack an eight out of ten.