Azure Stack Reviews

Not sure

move to cloud - improved by no need to maintain hardware

We've had a lot of issues with the solution as of late. We aren't very happy with it right now.

The stability is okay.

You can scale the solution if you need to.

We started to get issues in May of this year.  We didn't know that the one side of Azure was not fully migrated. There's two Azure on-premise solutions in our organization.

I needed to migrate everything that wasn't migrated over quickly. I needed someone who was knowledgable to assist to get it done. Therefore, I asked Windows and was looking into our budget.

We told them to go ahead and do it, and that we had two thus far, one for memory, one for CPU, and that's all. I only wanted two point areas. I wanted my Azure to point to only one, however, now it's set up to point to two point areas, which is not what we want.

The solution is not user friendly. I'd prefer to move over to AWS, which is much easier in this sense.

The product could improve its manageability.

I've been using the solution for a while, however, we started having issues with the solution in May of 2020.

The stability is okay, however, there are a few glitches here and there. 

The scalability is okay. However, AWS is easier to scale. With AWS, you don't have to update your CPU and RAM. Everything's done for you.

In terms of technical support, it's very bad. We don't have a guy who is good at helping us, in our company, so we have to rely on the Shanghai team. The one person who supports us is in Shanghai.

We are relying on Shanghai technical support to help to create dashboards or whatever we need. Moving forward, we need a good technical guy in-house to help us. I cannot rely on Shanghai every time. 

Shanghai also seems to have two teams, however, I don't understand why. There's no direct number to the right people you have to reach, and the customer team we find to be quite bad. We're not overly satisfied with the level of service we've been provided so far.

The initial setup wasn't as easy as AWS, which has a much simpler deployment.

We ran into issues in terms of migration. Not everything was fully migrated, originally, and that caused us a lot of problems. It's still not quite set up how I would like it to be.

I've looked into AWS, which is more user friendly, and is a solution I would prefer to move over to. Not only is it always easier for us too manage by another provision, it's a lot faster. Azure is slower. 

Honestly, if I were to compare the two, I'd say that AWS is much better. It's so much easier to deal with and easier to understand. It's also easier to deploy and has a shorter learning curve overall. On top of that, AWS provides 20% of the traffic to the site. You don't need to update your processor for CPU and RAM. They do all of that for free. There's just way more up-sides to AWS than Azure, unfortunately.

Azure is just average. I'd rate it five out of ten. As an end-user, I find it far too difficult to manage, and it's not really worth the effort, especially when there are other solutions that make it so much easier.

We are a solution provider and we provide cloud service to our customers using Azure Stack. Some of the services that they use are Microsoft Intune, Azure Active Directory, and Azure Storage.

The user interface is nice and very simple to use. 

Azure provides a great deal of flexibility.

The user experience could be improved to make it more comfortable.

My company has been dealing with this solution for the past two years.

We have had no complaints with respect to stability.

Our customers are satisfied with the scalability of Azure Stack.

The technical support is good.

I have experience with AWS and I would have to say that it is more comfortable to use than Azure.

It's not complex at all. Based on the customer's requirements, we implement the solution. The deployment usually takes approximately 15 days.

In terms of costs, it is a standard price, and there is no negotiation.

My company is not very involved in the cloud, but Azure Stack is a product that we recommend depending on the customer. If their budget and requirements are appropriate, and they want the flexibility that this solution offers, then we can implement it.

I do not have experience with all of the products on the market, but from my perspective, Azure Stack is a good one.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

It resolves some security concerns. For instance, if the customer is a bank, they want the infrastructure to be under a data center.

We have experience in Azure Stack. Internally, the cost increases when you use Azure Stack because you have to buy services from providers like HP, for instance. So, more or less, it's more profitable to use the non-Azure Stack cloud services servers.

In some cases, we've seen that some financial software is not working correctly or compatible with Azure Stack. Many companies build this, but some third-party products may not be compatible with Azure Stack. So these are some areas of improvement. 

In future releases, there's some incompatibility with third-party software or connectors that need to be created.

The product is stable, unfortunately, if sizing is correctly repeated during the design phase. There's no issue in Azure Stack.

The support is quite excellent. 

Positive

The initial setup is easy. 

The provider deploys the solution. 

In some cases, it's difficult to calculate the licensing costs. All the cost is the big picture there because this concerns the capacity of Azure Stack and Azure Service as well.

it's a pay-as-you-go model. So, it has some concerns to define the cost.

We are providing services based on Azure – infrastructure services, fast services, and all these kinds of things.

Azure Stack is very good technology. You can use other Microsoft products, such as Nutanix as the virtualization layer or VMware, and then install all the products that other complex vendors are using – Cloud Service or Amazon Service.

The only issue is some performance issues. And with this concern, if you have to do the right sizing.

From my experience, this solution is suitable for enterprise companies because of the higher price, the cost is huge.

It has to do with capability. If you need all the features, you don't need to buy all the stuff upfront; you can go to the cloud service of Azure. So, in terms of cost, this is the only thing.

Overall, I would rate the solution a 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.

The solution is geared towards customers with large Microsoft footprints, in which it is very advanced. There is tight integration in respect of Microsoft workloads and extremely intelligent performance. Customers can use it to run SQL Server, Active Directory, VDI, Windows Server and other workloads. Many users use it for their dynamics, although I am not aware of a lot of deployments with SAP HANA. One who has a 60 or 70 percent footprint in the data center with Microsoft can save a lot. 

Azure Stack is a really good product when it comes to the functionality and the Azure Stack offer. Its most attractive feature is the licensing. The virtualization is in-built and free and it offers almost all the functionalities someone looks for from the Azure platform. 

Now that the solution is transitioning to a hybrid cloud approach, the licensing is not determined by the number of instances and this can result in huge savings. 

A subscription model customer will not need to do much up front purchasing. He can obtain all the up to date features offered on public cloud and grow at the rate he feels is best, with the attendant savings. 

I would like to see better network integration. 

While they are working on security, several things can be brought in on the networking side, such as extending to networks stretching in between data centers. These are absent at the moment. It would be good to have a single control plane for the networking.

I have around two years of experience with Azure Stack. 

The solution is certainly stable. 

The solution is definitely scalable. 

Installation is straightforward and not very involved. It can even be automated. 

The deployment was straightforward and really nice. While creating a system and configuring a cluster is possible, it would be really beneficial to do this in the reverse, since the cluster can be pushed in using the hardware management ID. 

While deployment is straightforward, it would require a good skill set with Microsoft technologies and a certain amount of networking knowledge to handle any trouble which may arise. 

The licensing is one of the solution's most attractive features. 

Subscription model customers need not make large expenditures on upfront purchasing. 

A customer must purchase the software needed for Microsoft support, if he wishes to have this. This would incur a monthly fee. But, the upcoming Azure Stack HCl, which is hybrid cloud, does not involve an upfront purchase, only a subscription-based fee. 

I work with Lenovo as a consultant, which means I handle deployment for others. 

We have a handlful of customers, most of whom are using Microsoft products, but some of whom use Windows. Many go with the Azure Stack solution. 

I would recommend the solution to others. 

I rate Azure Stack as an eight out of ten. 

There are multiple use cases for us in regards to this solution, including IoT, DevOps, storage, analytics, and many, many other scenarios.

We use it for our periodic builds, and for our source control.

The IoT, DevOps, microservices, micro functions, and storage are all valuable features.

The solution should be more open to allowing access to other tools and environments.

Technical support also needs a lot of improvement.

The solution is pretty stable.

The scalability of the solution is good. We have hundreds of users internally and thousands of users externally. We do plan to increase usage shortly.

Technical support is very poor. When we meet Microsoft in the coming weeks to discuss expansion, we'll be speaking to them directly about this.

Previously, we used AWS.

The initial setup was quite a long time ago, so I don't remember the details of the implementation.

We received some help with the implementation from Microsoft.

We are using the on-premises deployment model.

I would advise others considering implementing the solution to ensure they understand the solution to a high degree, as they won't get much help from technical support if they have questions.

I would rate the solution eight out of ten.

I am using Azure Stack to build a lot of different solutions.

I have been using Azure Stack for approximately nine years.

Azure Stack is very stable.

The scalability of Azure Stack is good.

I have approximately 200 users using this solution in my company.

I rate the support from Azure Stack a five out of five.

Positive

I did not use other similar solutions in this category.

The initial setup of Azure Stack is very simple. It takes approximately 48 hours to build a complete platform.

The implementation of Azure Stack was done in-house. We have five people for the maintenance of the solution.

The licensing model of Azure Stack is complicated. The solution is expensive.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Azure Stack an eight out of ten.

When we engage Azure Stack, it's very easy to lift and shift. That's why we've been successful because we can be clear and fast in understanding workflows from the customer.  

The most valuable feature is the clear and user-friendly interface.

Azure Stack could be improved with more integration, governance tools, monitor tools, and lift and shift tools. We also have problems with the capacity usage. In the next release, Azure should include a tool to manage the journey during the lift and shift process and identify where integration is needed.

I've been using Azure Stack for four to five years.

Azure Stack is stable.

The setup and integration are straightforward.

The premium version is too costly.

For those thinking about implementing Azure Stack, it's important to understand the customer's workflow and whether you're talking about IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS. I would rate Azure Stack as five out of ten.