Today is the day that many people have waited for… Azure Stack TP1 is just released. Let’s take a look at what we can expect in this release and how to get started with this build.
First things first: the download link
Azure Stack is Azure in your own datacenter. In the TP1 release we have the following features available for testing:
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IaaS
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Virtual Machines
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VM’s
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Azure Networking
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V-Nets
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Load Balancing
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VPN Gateway
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Azure Consistent Storage
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Blob Storage
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Table Storage
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- PaaS
- Available as extra download (see bottom: Tools & PaaS for Azure Stack)
- DBaaS
- Available as extra download (see bottom: Tools & PaaS for Azure Stack)
Here a quick overview of the POC architecture. This is whats is running on the Hyper-V host:
For more details on what roles VM’s are providing, find here more details.
To get started with Azure Stack make sure you have the right hardware in place. To recall the TechNet article here you need these hardware specs:
When you have this hardware in place grab the download and in the meantime install Windows Server 2016.
Also make sure you have an Azure AD available as we need Azure AD to authenticate against when we have Azure Stack installed. In the final release there will be more identity providers available like ADFS (on premise AD). But for now if you don’t have one, create one in Azure. Go to https://manage.windowsazure.com and click NEW:
Specify a name and click the Check mark:
When the directory is created I created a new global admin to use with the Azure Stack installation. Click the new directory and add a new user:
Make it global Admin, give it a name and then click next
Create a temporary password and click the check mark to finish. Now open an InPrivate edge session and login to https://portal.azure.com once with the new created account to change the password:
After providing a new password click Update password and sign in button. After login you can close the browser. So now we wait for the download to be finished. In the next post I will go over the installation steps as I have captured in my environment. I do recommend when you get started in your own environment to have a close look at the deployment guide for a successful deployment in your own environment.
Some other useful links:
Azure Stack ARM Github repo :
https://github.com/Azure/AzureStack-QuickStart-Templates
Azure Stack Feedback (UserVoice) :
https://feedback.azure.com/forums/344565-azure-stack
Azure Stack Documentation:
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/azure-stack-overview/
Tools & PaaS for Azure Stack:
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/azure-stack-tools-paas-services/
Azure Stack Wiki:
PART II: AzureStack TP1 released!
Mark Scholman
@markscholman