Azure public cloud services provide cloud services all around the world, through a technology based on the following high-level design on the left-hand side. If there are scenarios where Azure does not fit the requirements of a customer and services need to be put on-premise, Microsoft has released a product called Azure Stack that has nearly the same technical design as Azure, but runs a smaller footprint. The high-level design for Azure Stack is as follows on the right-hand side of the following diagram:
As you can see, the only difference is the infrastructure design on the bottom; in Azure this is something special, based on Windows server technology and in Azure Stack it is Windows Server 2016.
The following diagram provides a way to place Azure (and Azure Stack) all around the world:
The following features are available in Azure Stack as of today:
In this chapter, we will discuss this hybrid technology a little bit more in depth.
The chapter will cover the following topics:
- The Azure Stack Development Toolkit (ASDK) versus multi-host deployments
- Setting up an ASDK
- Working with Azure Stack
- Monitoring Azure Stack
- Use cases for Azure Stack