Azure Stack HCI Insider - November 2024

Are we ready for Microsoft Ignite?! Before we sum up the flood of new things announced there, here's the latest and greatest from the previous months.

Public Preview of Azure Migrate from VMware to Azure Stack HCI

Microsoft announced the public preview of the Azure Migrate functionality to migrate VMs from VMware to Azure Stack HCI, a significant enhancement in our cloud migration capabilities that seamlessly extends to the edge, in line with our adaptive cloud approach.

• No workload impact during replication:?Azure Migrate uses technologies such as LEDBAT++ to optimize the network traffic and ensure reliable transfer from source to target. It also interacts directly with the vCenter APIs to copy the disks in the background. This means your workload n VMware will continue to run with no disruption during the copy process.
• Data stays on premises: The VMs being migrated go directly from the VMware infrastructure to the Azure Stack HCI infrastructure without going through the cloud. This allows you to stay in control of your data and ensure compliance.
• Minimal Cutover Time: Designed to minimize downtime, our migration solution ensures a quick and efficient cutover to Azure Stack HCI, maintaining business continuity.

Full blog HERE

New features for Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI!

Autoscale for host pools

Autoscale is now generally available for Azure Virtual Desktop host pools on Azure Stack HCI. Autoscale allows you to scale available session hosts up or down according to a schedule to optimize deployment costs. The same scaling plans applied to Azure virtual machines (VMs) can now be applied to Azure Stack HCI VMs.

Start VM on Connect

Start VM on Connect helps reduce costs by enabling users to power on VMs used as session hosts only when they're needed. You can then power off VMs when they're not needed. Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI users now have the option to use this feature with Azure Stack HCI VMs.

Windows 11 and Windows 10 Enterprise single-session images on Azure Marketplace

IT admins can now download Windows 11 or Windows 10 Enterprise single-session images from Azure Marketplace to their Azure Stack HCI clusters. By making single- and multisession Windows 11 images available, admins gain additional flexibility in choosing VMs for session hosts.

Azure Virtual Desktop Insights support

Azure Virtual Desktop provides a centralized, first-party monitoring solution that enables IT admins to detect, diagnose, and resolve issues within their environments. You can now monitor Azure Virtual Desktop session hosts on Azure Stack HCI using Azure Virtual Desktop Insights.

Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI supports per-user access pricing

Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI now supports per-user access pricing. Organizations, including independent software vendors (ISVs) could already use Azure Virtual Desktop to provide external users with a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) experience for software access.

That delivery and per-user access pricing model is now also available to organizations and ISVs that want to provide external users with access to their solutions via Azure Stack HCI. Learn more about pricing and contact your sales rep for more information.

Full blogpost with images HERE

Microsoft Ignite 2024 session

Not all session seem to be up, there's a quick list of recommended sessions (so far):

https://ignite.microsoft.com/en-US/sessions/BRK214

https://ignite.microsoft.com/en-US/sessions/BRK235

https://ignite.microsoft.com/en-US/sessions/BRK215

https://ignite.microsoft.com/en-US/sessions/BRK238

That's all for today, but we'll be back after Ignite with all the good stuff.

Did I forget something or want to include something next time? send me a ping!

Darryl van der Peijl