Azure Stack Hub Demystified

Richard Young

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781801075978
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Business Intelligence
• Index: Computer Science

Deploy, configure, administer, and run Microsoft Azure Stack HubKey Features• Understand the topics required for the Microsoft Azure AZ-600 exam• Configure and provide services from Microsoft Azure Stack Hub• Implement data center integration with Microsoft Azure Stack HubBook DescriptionAzure Stack Hub is the on-premise offering from Microsoft, which provides Azure Cloud services within a customer's own data center. It provides consistent processes between on-site and the cloud, allowing developers to test locally and deploy to the cloud in exactly the same manner. Azure Stack Hub Demystified provides complete coverage of deploying, configuring, administrating, and running Microsoft Azure Stack Hub efficiently. Firstly, you will learn how to deploy Azure Stack Hub within an organization. As you progress, you'll understand configuration and the different services provided by the platform. The book also focuses on the underlying architecture and connectivity options for the modern data center. Later, you will understand various approaches to DevOps and their implementation, and learn key topics for the AZ-600 exam. By the end of this Azure book, you will have a thorough understanding of Azure Stack Hub and the services that are provided by the platform, along with the confidence and information you need to be able to pass the AZ-600 exam.What you will learn• Understand the architecture of Azure Stack Hub• Get up to speed with the management and administration of Azure Stack Hub• Explore how to administer virtual networking within your Azure Stack• Become well versed in using the Azure Stack Hub support model and updating Azure Stack Hub• Understand how licensing and billing is done with Azure Stack Hub• Discover the tools that can be used to implement security within Azure Stack Hub• Focus on how DevOps practices can be incorporated with Azure Stack HubWho this book is forIf you are an Azure Administrator and Azure Stack Hub Operator who provides or is looking to provide cloud services to end users or customers within their own data center, then this book is for you. This book will also be beneficial to those who are preparing for Exam AZ-600: Configuring and Operating a Hybrid Cloud with Microsoft Azure Stack Hub.

Section 1: Architecture and Deployment

After reading this section of the book, you should have a complete understanding of the architecture of Azure Stack Hub and be able to describe the deployment process in detail.

The following chapters will be covered under this section:

• Chapter 1, What is Azure Stack Hub?
• Chapter 2, Azure Stack Architecture
• Chapter 3, Azure Stack Hub Deployment

Chapter 1: What Is Azure Stack Hub?

This first chapter will introduce you to Microsoft Azure Stack Hub and how it is positioned within the Microsoft Azure ecosystem. You will gain a detailed understanding of the typical usage scenarios for Microsoft Azure Stack Hub and the Azure capabilities that are provided by the platform. We will cover the initial core fundamentals to prepare you for later chapters in this book. We will also cover the skills you will be tested on if you are looking to take the Microsoft AZ-600: Configuring and Operating a Hybrid Cloud with Microsoft Azure Stack Hub exam.

In this chapter, we're going to cover the following main topics:

• Introducing Azure Stack
• Understanding hybrid use cases
• Introducing Azure Arc
• Learning about Azure Stack integrated systems
• Exploring the AZ-600 exam requirements

Let's dive into the first topic.

Introducing Azure Stack

To begin this book, I thought the best place to start would be with a basic understanding of Microsoft Azure Stack Hub. The idea of this is to look at a question I am asked by customers all the time. What is Microsoft Azure Stack Hub? In simple terms, then, Microsoft Azure Stack Hub is an extension of Microsoft Azure, but this is only part of the answer. Microsoft Azure Stack Hub is a hybrid cloud platform that allows you to use Azure services from your company or a service provider data center. When people think of Microsoft Azure, they think of the public cloud offered by Microsoft, but it is, in fact, a complete ecosystem that incorporates not just the public cloud but also the on-premises versions called Microsoft Azure Stack. This includes Microsoft Azure Stack HCI, which stands for Hyper-Converged Infrastructure. HCI will be explained in detail in Chapter 2, Azure Stack Architecture but for now, it is enough to say that with HCI, both compute and storage are supplied from the same server. This is different from a traditional infrastructure, where storage and compute are separate. Microsoft Azure Stack Edge along with Microsoft Azure Stack Hub and Microsoft Azure Stack HCI conform to this pattern. This book is only focused on Microsoft Azure Stack Hub, but it is worth understanding the complete ecosystem as this will help highlight the differences between the different versions of solutions under the Microsoft Azure Stack banner. This becomes important especially when it comes to running solutions in a hybrid cloud scenario, which we will cover later in this chapter. The advantage of Microsoft Azure Stack is that it provides a consistent environment that those who already use Microsoft Azure will be more than familiar with. In fact, the promise of Microsoft Azure Stack Hub when you talk it through can be thought about in terms of the following concepts:

• Consistent application development
• Azure services available on-premises
• Integrated delivery experience

For a developer who builds cloud applications for Microsoft Azure, they can take all the skills and tools they already use onto this platform. The deployment process that's used for Microsoft Azure is the same one that's used for Microsoft Azure Stack Hub. Development tools such as Visual Studio can also be used within this environment. Microsoft markets the fact that applications that run in Microsoft Azure can be run on Microsoft Azure Stack Hub with no changes other than deployment location, which is not strictly the case as some changes are nearly always required.

Microsoft Azure capabilities are also available within Microsoft Azure Stack Hub, which, again, breeds familiarity both from a developer standpoint but also from an operator and administrator standpoint. The following Microsoft Azure capabilities can be found in Microsoft Azure Stack Hub:

• Virtual machines: Rapid deployment with scaling on demand.
• Containers: Linux and Windows Servers containers, Azure Kubernetes Services.
• Networking: Virtual Network, Load Balancer, VPN Gateway, network security groups, public IPs, route tables.
• Storage: Blobs, tables, and queues.
• Key Vault: Securely protect application keys and secrets.
• Azure App Service: Web and API applications, Azure Functions, serverless computing.
• Azure Marketplace: Ready to go applications from the Azure Marketplace.
• Event Hubs: Scalable event processing for ingesting and processing large amounts of event data.
• Azure IoT Hub: Centralized message hub for communications between IoT applications and devices.

We will be covering each of these capabilities and services in detail later in this book, along with their limitations, as they are integral to creating offers and services from Microsoft Azure Stack Hub.

Supporting the Azure Stack Hub infrastructure

In addition to Microsoft Azure's capabilities and the support offered by Microsoft, Microsoft Azure Stack Hub is also supported by a myriad of both hardware and software vendors. I myself work for Lenovo, who provide certified hardware solutions that can be used to run Microsoft Azure Stack Hub on-premises, and I also work closely with Microsoft to ensure they adhere to the best practices when it comes to deploying Microsoft Azure Stack Hub. Lenovo are by no means the only hardware vendor to offer certified hardware for Microsoft Azure Stack Hub, and it is also supported on offerings from Dell, HPE, and Cisco, among others.

As well as the various hardware solutions that are available in the market, Microsoft Azure Stack Hub is also supported by software vendors extensively. Some industry standard solutions that are available to run in Microsoft Azure are also supported in Microsoft Azure Stack Hub through the Azure Marketplace. This allows customers to run the same software applications, such as Red Hat, F5, Docker, Kubernetes, Chef, and so on, in the same way in both their on-premises environment and the public cloud via Microsoft Azure.

Given the support of Microsoft and their hardware partners, this allows Microsoft Azure Stack Hub to offer a fully integrated delivery experience. Microsoft Azure Stack Hub is fast to deploy, allowing customers to get up and running quickly. The billing model within Microsoft Azure Stack Hub can be extended from Microsoft Azure to allow you to pay for use within the same Microsoft Azure subscription bill.

The key takeaway for Microsoft Azure Stack Hub from this quick overview is that this is an on-premises version of Microsoft Azure that is fully owned and operated by the customer within their own data center. Customers completely control the a...

Table of contents

• Azure Stack Hub Demystified
• Contributors
• Preface
• Section 1: Architecture and Deployment
• Chapter 1: What Is Azure Stack Hub?
• Chapter 2: Azure Stack Architecture
• Chapter 3: Azure Stack Hub Deployment
• Section 2: Identity and Security
• Chapter 4: Exploring Azure Stack Hub Identity
• Chapter 5: Securing Your Azure Stack Hub Instance
• Chapter 6: Considering DevOps in Azure Stack Hub
• Section 3: Features
• Chapter 7: Working with Resource Manager Templates
• Chapter 8: Working with Offers, Plans, and Quotas
• Chapter 9: Realizing Azure Marketplace
• Chapter 10: Interpreting Virtual Networking
• Chapter 11: Grasping Storage and Compute Fundamentals
• Section 4: Monitoring, Licensing, and Billing
• Chapter 12: Monitoring and Managing Azure Stack Hub
• Chapter 13: Licensing Models in Azure Stack Hub
• Chapter 14: Incorporating Billing Models
• Chapter 15: Troubleshooting and Support
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