Azure Stack Reviews

The most valuable features are that it is a Hybrid, and we can easily integrate with the Microsoft Public Cloud.

It is totally CSA compliant. 

It's secure. It's not open. Anything we need to do has to be validated by the OEM, and software vendor.

It's an engineered system. everything that needs to be done such as a dispatching order when there is a new feature has to be completed by the vendors. It's totally dependent upon the vendor.

We need an expressway from a different network to allow for connectivity purposes. For example, If we want to have remote storage on-premises or off-site, I have to go through the public cloud. That is the only way.

There is a dependency. They don't encourage having it on-premises in different networks. 

I have an HCI model hyper-converged infrastructure. It's a minimum of four nodes with Microsoft Azure and I want to attach additional storage, but I cannot attach it without connecting directly and finding a new network.

There are limits to the bandwidth and sizing of the images.

Kubernetes as a service is there, but not as a platform as a service. I would like to have a Kubernetes cluster in a PaaS. They have it in the Azure public cloud, but they haven't released it in the Azure Stack.

I have been using Azure Stack for one year.

It's a stable product.

Azure Stack is scalable. You can add it immediately.

We have a cloud operator, we have our own provisioning team, cloud engineers, cloud architects, cloud evangelist, and cloud developers who use this solution.

I had contact with technical support once. There was a miscommunication between the hardware vendor and Microsoft OneNote. 

It took 20 to 25 days to get it back up and running. OneNote failed and Microsoft had an update without coordinating with the Microsoft engineer. There was a lack of communication.

Overall, the support is good.

Previously we used other solutions but we didn't want to use third-party outsourced companies. We have our own infrastructure.

The initial setup was easy, I didn't find it to be complex. Because it's validated hardware and software, any patches that have been released are validated by Microsoft itself.

Azure Stack is expensive.

In the Middle East, we deal with a company called Logicom that Microsoft promoted and suggested to us. We are customers of Logicom and Logicom has a relationship with Microsoft.

I don't see any levels of risk involved unless there are different levels of risk that I am not aware of.

We have concepts called foil domain, availability domain, and geo-location. If you have this large domain in one rack and it is hyper-converged, and if one rack goes down then it's gone. You have to invest more money to get another rack to distribute the load amongst the two and make it high availability.

The more that you invest the more availability you get.

If you have applications running in a Microsoft-oriented platform then you have to be very clever, especially with architecture and design. It depends on your requirements. 

It's an expensive solution and even if you don't have the instances up and running, you are having to pay for the storage.

If the company is established with good returns and they are looking for a secure, safe, and reliable system, Azure Stack is a good choice.

Cost matters, no one wants to pay for virtualization. It is now available for free with the OS.

Assessing cost and reliability, I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We are a solution provider and the Azure Stack is one of the technologies that we use to provide services to our customers.

Need more time

The most valuable feature is IaaS. I find it to be good.

Third-party dashboards are supported in the PaaS.

The rapid provisioning is good.

They have VPN connectivity, which promotes encapsulation.

In PaaS Model, they are only offering MS SQL as a service, web applications as a service, and containers as a service. When it comes to containers, I could not find how to use the functionality. Recently, one of our customers wanted to have Sybase as the database for their SAP applications, but it was not in the Azure Stack Marketplace.

It is closed and It doesn't allow you to customize networks or any new features.

Better flexibility in the network is needed.

I have been using Azure Stack for one year.

It's a cloud concept, so we expect stability but it's broad scoping with IT. I have been working in the field for the last 18 years and stability is affected by new technologies. We are told that new systems are quite stable, but we are still struggling to provide a service that is a reliable one. This is because of the different complicated scenarios, demands, and requirements from the end-user.

The cloud is challenging and from a stability point of view, it depends on what services you are running inside and what scalability you are providing to the end-user.

Good

The technical support is okay. There is a technical support gateway and Microsoft is working in the background. There is some kind of coordination between engineers from Microsoft and Dell, because one time when we had an upgrade, the people from Dell upgraded it without coordination from Microsoft.

Azure Stack is a closed box, but it is compliant. It doesn't permit you to customize the network or the features. You have to take what Microsoft is offering and just simply obey it.

We are using a connected model, as opposed to a disconnected model.

The pricing is very expensive. If I were rating it on cost then it would be a five out of ten.

We are using Azure Stack for the indicators and automation build.

It is very easy to learn and apply to other things.

If they could integrate with Jira, this would be very useful for someone using Jira and TFS. This would make it easier to use.

I have been using the solution for the past year.

There are some minor issues or bugs with it that I know are there.

I have not contacted the technical support.

The initial setup is straightforward, not complex. 

It took a week to deploy this solution.

I deployed the solution myself.

It is very good. I would rate the solution an eight (out of 10).

Azure Stack is like a hybrid model with a CI/CD pipeline. The IaaS and PaaS model works well with a hybrid type of connectivity.

Our only issue with Azure Stack so far is that the networking is very closed. You need to have the extended LAN to connect the internal LAN to the Azure Stack. Any connection we have needs site-to-site VPN connectivity instead of an internal connection, so Azure Stack has room for improvement in the networking area.

We've been using Azure Stack for more than two years.

Azure Stack is stable. 

Azure Stack is scalable, and it has governance features also.

We have third-party technical support. Sometimes it's good, and sometimes it's extended.

Setting up Azure Stack is easy.

The price of Azure Stack is higher relative to other solutions. 

I rate Azure Stack seven out of 10.