Azure Stack Reviews

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. 

We primarily use the solution for everything from VM storage to networking to app services.

We use almost every aspect of the solution. Overall, it's quite a valuable product for our organization.

The setup is very straightforward and it's quite stable.

I can't think of any area in which the solution is currently lacking.

The solution could use more training materials to help users understand how to use the product effectively. Online training would also be a beneficial addition to the product.

I've been using the solution for about five years.

The solution is quite stable. We've never faced any issues so far.

The scalability potential of the solution is very good.

The technical support has been good so far. We have been satisfied with the level of service they've provided to us. They've always answered our questions, and, depending on the severity of the issue, they've been able to resolve things quite quickly.

We didn't previously use a different solution.

We've found the initial setup to be quite straightforward and simple to execute.

The pricing of the solution is quite fair. It's not too expensive.

I'd advise those who don't want to spend money on hardware to try the solution out. I'd recommend it to others.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten overall.

We use Azure primarily for sales management. Specifically, we use it to help us manage the delivery of digital solutions that we provide to clients.  

We also use it for our own internal accounting, tracking our CRM document management, and we have developed different tailor-made solutions through which we provide additional services to our clients.  

It allows us to creatively integrate solutions easily.  

The best thing about this product is that it is user-friendly and intuitive. That is true, especially for dashboarding and management reporting. The low code development tooling that they provide allows us to do rapid development. They also have some interesting features for self-learning, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.  

It is a complete stack that helps us to easily link various components together so that the whole component-based development connects to other open-source components. This helps make the rapid development of general solutions possible.  

As far as what we would like to see added, there are no burning issues right now. If we are looking for certain areas of improvement and we want to have specific features or functions, the flexibility of the environment allows us to easily add the functionality we want.  

There are always things that you have to find out for yourself. That creates complexity. Could Microsoft make the product easier to use? Probably by adding more scenarios, but Microsoft already has guidelines on when to use what feature. In the area of training, Microsoft already offers a lot of opportunities to further your skills with its products. These resources make it possible to get started quickly. The product is never going to do your learning for you in that way.  

I do not have any recommendations as to how the product should be enhanced as some of that is the user's responsibility and opportunity.  

I have been using Azure for one and a half years now. That was half a year after we originally embarked on using the Microsoft suite.  

This product is stable. I would say 'yes' to that twice over.  

So far we have not found any problems with scalability. Azure Stack was easily extendable. We started with a small cloud environment, we had to extend it over time and it grows as we do.  

Our client base is growing rapidly. We are now above a hundred clients and on average there are two to three users per client.  

I have not been in touch with technical support myself but other people in our organization have. More or less, I think they were satisfied with the tech support services.  

For most users, the support experience depends on the subscription you have and on experience. We have some experience with Microsoft Stack people within our network. That makes a big difference. Because of that we hardly ever really need to use technical support services.  

The setup for Azure becomes more complex when you have multiple users. When you have multiple organizations, with multiple users working or using the same solution, data storage needs to be very well separated because of privacy. That is a piece of complexity that is embedded in the way we provide our services. There is no link to Microsoft or any software provider service. We defined how to make it work that way.  

Given the current direction and strategy of Microsoft, I think Azure Stack is one of the most comprehensive solution platforms available today.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate this product as an eight of ten. In my case, there really is very little Microsoft can do to make the score better. I could really never give a software product a perfect score. There is always something that can be improved. If you work in a flexible, dynamic environment, you have to make choices in terms of how to design things. You have to decide which additional components to use or incorporate, or to not use what are considered standard features that most other people use. Users' choices will be different depending on their needs, application, and adaptation.  

Our primary use case of Azure Stack is for a customer that's an ISP. They supply services to their clients where they offer the Azure Stack capability.

The most valuable thing of Azure Stack is the means of giving my customers or my clients the capability of using Microsoft products on a public or a private cloud, but not in the Microsoft public cloud. So it is an on-premise private cloud, but it's like being on the public cloud.

I like the ease of making use of Microsoft products, and instead of being directly connected to Microsoft using My Clients, keeping them the same kinds of values.

Pricing is always a hot topic, so the pricing can always improve. And I'm not too sure if the Microsoft technical capabilities are very good because I don't make use of it. So, for me personally, pricing would probably be the only factor that needs to improve.

I also think the monitoring tools needs some improvement.

The program is very stable.

I think the scalability is pretty good because from an IP point of view we can scale this solution to become very massive. You can start with the full node and go to 60 or 80 nodes very easily. So the scalability is very good.

The initial setup is very, very simple because it comes fully integrated from HP with Microsoft integration. That makes the setup very straightforward.

I will definitely recommended this solution to others, especially for large companies, because I think it's a wonderful solution. It will also work great for people that has multiple companies inside the group. One should use Azure Stack as an on-premise private cloud solution because it is a very effective solution.

On a scale of one to ten, this solution earns a good eight. In the next version I would like to see an improvement in the monitoring tools.

We are a managed cloud service provider and provide Azure hybrid cloud services. We operate Azure Stack on our data center and resell Azure publicly.

Beside providing to our customers, we use Azure Stack for internal use as well. We are gradually migrating our internal application from VCE to Azure Stack because the cost of Azure Stack is much cheaper than VCE.

• The PaaS that we use as our web service.
• IaaS (VMs)
• SQL service
• Development
• Media service
• Firewall

Azure Stack is relatively new and lacks the features compared to public Azure. Hopefully, it will provide more core on the VM and support multi-scale units.

We are using the Microsoft Azure Stack Development Kit (ASDK) in an evaluation environment issued by Microsoft, and not in a production environment. It is deployed within a VM on top of the Azure public cloud.

The goal of our evaluation is to see if it is sufficient to support becoming a cloud provider for companies in our local market.

The most valuable feature is the ease of deployment for services such as SSH, creating a web site, and Azure billing services to measure the consumption of resources.

I would like to see better support for containers.

Containers and the IoT hub that exists in Azure Stack should be usable on-premises.

I am currently evaluating Azure Stack and have been testing it for one week.

I cannot really tell what the stability is like because I am only using the Azure Stack in an evaluation environment. I have just now put it under a heavy workload to test whether it is stable enough for our production environment.

I am the only person who is using this solution in my company, as I test the features that I think we will need.

I have not used technical support for this solution. However, I have found with other Microsoft products, their support is very helpful and was able to solve my problems.

Azure Stack is the first solution of this type that I am testing.

The initial setup started in a straightforward manner, but I faced some issues during the deployment. I was able to solve these problems with the information that I found on the Microsoft website when I searched for the errors using Google. Once I followed the steps the solution seems to be fine.

I deployed this solution on my own, using the Microsft website as a reference.

I plan to test VMware vRealize, but I have not done it yet.

I think that this is a good tool for cloud operating systems.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We are a solution provider and Azure Stack is one of the products that we implement for our clients. One of our clients is using it as an IaaS, where they have control over the infrastructure.

As we learn more about this product, security-wise, and about the tools that are available, we can apply this to what our customers are looking for.

The most valuable features are the control and flexibility that we have, where we can build our own solutions from scratch.

Azure Stack integrates well with other tools.

There are documentation and tools available for use, and they are good.

One of the problems is that systems still have to be developed and as things move forward, we have to build a lot of our Azure Stack solutions from scratch. It does not give you a complete, production-ready setup.

We are still exploring Azure Stack and are in the requirement gathering phase.

I have not been in contact with technical support.

The initial setup is not complex.

We have an in-house team for deployment. We have different internal teams and generally do not rely on third-party vendors.

We are satisfied with the pricing.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this solution is to first look at the people within the community. They have provided details about their experience and it's a good place to start understanding and analyzing, before beginning the implementation. It will give you an idea as to costs, as well as how to integrate with your environment.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Last year I used the solution to develop phone applications. We did some work with AAD which is the Azure Active Directory. We used the solution to its full potential.

The solution is easy to use, especially for individuals who are not familiar with coding and has security built-in.

The user interface could be more user friendly.

I have been using the solution for more than six years.

We have a team of five that use the solution in our organization and they do all the development for us.

The support for the solution is very helpful. They are responsive and return with resolutions quickly.

The installation is easy, there are only a few clicks.

I did the installation myself.

I would recommend the solution to others.

I rate Azure Stack a nine out of ten.