Azure Stack Reviews

Our company uses the solution for normal production and visibility of our systems. We have 400 users and are at proof of concept while we complete governance. 

The solution integrates and runs well with other Microsoft tools. 

The whole package works very well together for identity management, defending endpoints or servers, and the CM.

Documentation for enrollment is very good. 

The solution could be less expensive. 

So many new features are added at a fast pace that it is sometimes hard to keep up with all the solution offers. 

I have been using Microsoft-based solutions for 23 years. The solution has been added to the mix along the way. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable. 

We do not have scalability experience because we are in the process of finalizing the cloud adoption framework and giving the green light for production. We have to finalize the governance and other things before we will allow production. While we wait, we are using the solution for proof of concept things. 

Technical support has worked very well.

From our experiences, technical support is rated a ten out of ten. 

If you want to do setup right, then it requires time and is complex. The risks are high if you deploy too quickly. 

We are partnered with consultants for implementation to ensure proper governance and frameworks. 

We will have an agreement with a partner to provide support and maintain at least a part of the solution with our in-house team. 

Pricing could be improved so I rate it an eight out of ten. 

We use Microsoft products but did conduct a lightweight comparison. Because we rely very heavily on Microsoft on-premises, we immediately saw the benefits of using the solution instead of AWS or Google. 

The solution is developing very fast so new features are always being added. It is almost hard to keep up with everything the solution offers. 

The solution has been working very well for our company. For financial institutions, I recommend its use along with Microsoft Identity.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

Our primary use cases are computing, data platform along with migrating event-driven architecture. We use a lot of data bricks and data components. From the integration to data, and from the application deployment perspective to the platform as a service.

Azure Stack enhanced the productivity from the developers to testers to infrastructure engineers in the following way:

* Developers and the QA team focused on delivering business values rather than thinking about the build and deployment

* The infrastructure team focused more on automating the infra-build pipelines for different environments in no time 

* Azure Pipelines automated 80% of manual efforts on both the Development and Infra front. 

We have found the Kubernetes version is one of the key components which we are using heavily.

I would like to see the AI side come to one hundred percent in the near future. I would love to see a more reliable SAP improved.

I have been working with Azure Stack for the past seven years.

Azure Stack is highly stable across the globe from my experience.

Azure Stack is extremely scalable across the globe.

One of the best parts of technical support is they are really on top of all the issues. Once an incident has been raised, their team will call our technical engineers and start supporting them immediately. This is one of the major reasons why I have used Azure Stack. Azure Cloud is becoming so popular because in the end, businesses need assurance and they are always on top of it.

We were using an on-premise solution, but you know that an on-premise solution is not scalable with a cloud-based environment.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. It is a lean, shallow learning curve. They can quickly grasp it and can start working on deployment. The deployment was pretty smooth because we set up the CI/CD pipeline and Azure pipeline, which automatically builds the solution. It does the unit test and performance test, and if everything goes well, it is scheduling the deployments for production quickly.

We have both in-house and third-party teams, depending on the requirements and complexity of the deployment.

The licensing is pay-as-you-go, and Azure also provides a bring-your-own-license. I believe that is a good option if anyone is looking at it and they already have a license. They can get the infrastructure and the provision in a very short time and it will save the existing licenses. 

Different applications will have different licensing needs. It depends on which tool you use. You will then need to secure that license.

We evaluated AWS and Google. It depends on the company and what the best fit is for the organization. If companies have similar requirements, they can follow us, or if they have a different requirement, I believe that Google or AWS might fit their needs as well.

I think that anybody who wants to move on to Azure Stack, needs to assess their requirements, and what business needs they have. I would rate Azure Stack an eight out of ten.

We're using the latest version.

It's deployed on the cloud, mainly as a Kubernetes container.

It's more reliable, secure, and easy to deploy. It's much more stable as a platform.

There's Azure SQL Database on the cloud for small loads, but now they're moving to Synapse, which has a combination of the storage plus the analytics. 

I've been using this solution for more than six years.

It's stable. We haven't had any significant down times, because now you have redundancy across networks. We have not come across any situation where any disruptions have occurred, at least on the cloud connectivity.

It's absolutely scalable. We haven't had any challenges with scalability.

We had some issues, and we directly raised a defect bug to them so they could sort it out. I haven't heard teams complaining about that. I don't see any challenge right now because the stack is much stabler, easier, and we haven't needed to reach out.

Positive

Both AWS and Azure are the best in the world right now. 

It all depends on what our customers need, so we use both.

One or two people are needed to maintain this solution.

I would rate the pricing 4 out of 5. It could be lower.

I would rate this solution 9 out of 10.

Azure Data Factory is a great solution for orchestration. 

From a security perspective, there are certain things which could be improved. We have that option of enabling the datacenter which sits on the Azure site. The solution is difficult to manage if this particular feature is disabled. 

I've been working with Azure Stack for nine to 10 years for me.

This is a stable solution. 

This is a scalable solution. 

The initial setup is straightforward if you are familiar with some of the architecture. The complexity may increase if you have a large amount of data that needs to be migrated. 

Azure is reasonably priced compared to Google Cloud, AWS, or some other cloud giants.

You need to focus on what your end goal to achieve and build the system in a way that makes it easy to maintain from a software, perspective, and platform perspective.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten. 

We are looking to implement asset management of marks and enrollment.

The product is fine. It comes with everything. It is probably the best solution out there.

Certain elements are difficult to deploy.

My organization has been using the solution for a number of years.

The deployment is probably not easy. Certain elements are easy to deploy, but certain elements aren’t. The ease of deployment depends on the maturity of the technical teams. If they're quite mature and experienced, then it's not too much of an issue. If there is a knowledge or skill gap, then, obviously, it'll be quite an issue. However, if it is a large organization, engaging with Microsoft is probably fine since it can fill in all the gaps for the organization.

We have a dedicated Microsoft team always working within our organization.

The product is expensive, but it is fine for the value that the solution produces.

I work for the government in a department related to leasing infrastructure. We are using the latest version of the product. Intune has recently opened a lot of functionality very similar to Jamf. There's quite a big gap between what Jamf offers and what Intune offers.

People planning to use the product should engage with Microsoft quite early on and see what products would benefit them rather than trying to figure it out themselves. It would be good if Intune would offer features aligning with enrollment and asset discovery. Jamf provides these features.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

We use the solution for its virtual machine features.

The visibility of the solution's SDN feature and transmission policy needs improvement.

We have been using the solution for five years.

I rate the solution's scalability as a ten.

Whenever we raise a ticket, it gets addressed immediately by the solution's technical support team.

Positive

The solution doesn't need configuration as it is prebuilt on hyper-converged infrastructure. Its deployment takes two to four months to complete. The process involves installing the hardware and network requirements. 

It is not a cost-friendly solution. I rate it a seven for pricing.

I advise others to appoint premise engineers to manage day to day activity of the solution. I rate it a ten as it is business-friendly and has all the features prebuilt.

The product is an on-premise data center for SQL servers and for virtualized environments.

The fact that it's integrated into Azure is its best feature. They go hand in hand.

It's very easy to set up the product.

The solution is pretty stable.

The product can scale. 

The fact that it is completely integrated into Azure, while positive, is also a downside. 

Azure Stack was implemented by Microsoft about eight months ago. That's pretty much how long I've been using it.

The solution is stable enough. It is not market-leading, however, it is reliable. 

The scalability is decent. It's not market-leading, however, it is possible. 

We have about 20 people using it in our company.

I haven't used technical support. I cannot speak to how helpful or responsive they are. 

We didn't change solutions. We just added it and we are still utilizing a host of other solutions, including VMware's vSAN. They both do similar things, however, if I had my choice, I would go with VMware. That's just subjective, however. 

The product has been simple to set up. The deployment is quick and takes an hour. It's not complex or difficult to implement. It's really quite easy. It's a next, next, next flow where you click through and run the software. When you implement it, you attach it to your Azure account and that's when the real work starts, of course, as then you have it up and running.

I install the solution myself. We both deploy it in-house and use a consultant. 

We're resellers. 

I'd recommend the solution, however, for those considering it, the most important thing is to get ahold of somebody who knows what they're doing, for example, a consultant.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

When we engage Azure Stack, it's very easy to lift and shift. That's why we've been successful because we can be clear and fast in understanding workflows from the customer.  

The most valuable feature is the clear and user-friendly interface.

Azure Stack could be improved with more integration, governance tools, monitor tools, and lift and shift tools. We also have problems with the capacity usage. In the next release, Azure should include a tool to manage the journey during the lift and shift process and identify where integration is needed.

I've been using Azure Stack for four to five years.

Azure Stack is stable.

The setup and integration are straightforward.

The premium version is too costly.

For those thinking about implementing Azure Stack, it's important to understand the customer's workflow and whether you're talking about IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS. I would rate Azure Stack as five out of ten.