Azure Stack Reviews

I am using Azure Stack to build a lot of different solutions.

I have been using Azure Stack for approximately nine years.

Azure Stack is very stable.

The scalability of Azure Stack is good.

I have approximately 200 users using this solution in my company.

I rate the support from Azure Stack a five out of five.

Positive

I did not use other similar solutions in this category.

The initial setup of Azure Stack is very simple. It takes approximately 48 hours to build a complete platform.

The implementation of Azure Stack was done in-house. We have five people for the maintenance of the solution.

The licensing model of Azure Stack is complicated. The solution is expensive.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Azure Stack an eight out of ten.

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.

We primarily use the solution to include Deployments of VM security, Sentinel Storage, and VPN tunnels.

Azure Active Directory is the most valuable feature. 

The technical support team's response time needs improvement. 

I have been using Azure Stack for ten plus years. 

The stability is an eight out of ten. 

The pricing is reasonable. 

Overall, I rate the solution an eight 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.

We use Azure Stack primarily for hosting customer applications .NET applications. We use mainly App Service, Blob Storage, and Cognitive Services. 

We develop applications on the Microsoft platform, infrastructure, and servers. Our servers are Windows, and we use the .NET framework and C# programming language. Everything is easier in Azure.

Azure Stack integrates well with Microsoft. It's also good for transitioning from an on-premise or hybrid setup to the cloud. It's seamless. 

Microsoft is changing the Azure Stack interface all the time, so it's sometimes hard to find the functionality or the service you're looking for. A feature was in one place and now it has moved somewhere else. 

It's because the product is quickly evolving, so they're changing constantly. I understand, but it's difficult to find things when we don't use Azure every day. It's not a big issue.

We've been using Azure Stack for seven or eight years.

Azure Stack is highly stable.

We have had a good experience with scalability. Azure Stack's replication is well-written. It's flexible. For example, you can scale it differently on workdays and weekends to reduce operating costs. We automatically reduce the sizing of the solution. We stop some services like VMs on the weekends if we can. Scaling up and stopping resources is automated based on a set schedule. This is useful.

Microsoft support is very good.

We switched from AWS to Azure. The main issues were costs and some bad experiences with temporary disks. This was a long time ago, so I cannot say if AWS is currently better or worse than Azure.

Azure Stack is also in the cloud, so it's easy. We also use the Internet Information Server. If you use the node server, it's going to be local and based on the technology you're using. We can choose between one or the other.

For example, we use Mongo Atlas service on Azure and on-premises. Both use the MongoDB Atlas service. It is architecture bound, so you have the choice of going through Azure or the on-premise solution because both have advantages.

Azure is relatively expensive, but on the other hand, you get excellent support, stability, and security, so I think it's worth it. 

I rate Azure Stack nine out of 10. It is a great tool if the technology you use is a Microsoft-based stack because Azure is Microsoft's cloud provider. 

It resolves some security concerns. For instance, if the customer is a bank, they want the infrastructure to be under a data center.

We have experience in Azure Stack. Internally, the cost increases when you use Azure Stack because you have to buy services from providers like HP, for instance. So, more or less, it's more profitable to use the non-Azure Stack cloud services servers.

In some cases, we've seen that some financial software is not working correctly or compatible with Azure Stack. Many companies build this, but some third-party products may not be compatible with Azure Stack. So these are some areas of improvement. 

In future releases, there's some incompatibility with third-party software or connectors that need to be created.

The product is stable, unfortunately, if sizing is correctly repeated during the design phase. There's no issue in Azure Stack.

The support is quite excellent. 

Positive

The initial setup is easy. 

The provider deploys the solution. 

In some cases, it's difficult to calculate the licensing costs. All the cost is the big picture there because this concerns the capacity of Azure Stack and Azure Service as well.

it's a pay-as-you-go model. So, it has some concerns to define the cost.

We are providing services based on Azure – infrastructure services, fast services, and all these kinds of things.

Azure Stack is very good technology. You can use other Microsoft products, such as Nutanix as the virtualization layer or VMware, and then install all the products that other complex vendors are using – Cloud Service or Amazon Service.

The only issue is some performance issues. And with this concern, if you have to do the right sizing.

From my experience, this solution is suitable for enterprise companies because of the higher price, the cost is huge.

It has to do with capability. If you need all the features, you don't need to buy all the stuff upfront; you can go to the cloud service of Azure. So, in terms of cost, this is the only thing.

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

I don't have a specific feature, my customers use all of the features that are available and the entire stack.

I believe the only room for improvement is that I am based in Nairobi, if it has even a local node for Azure, I believe most customers will prefer that to reduce latencies and everything else when using the Azure Stack. They'll be better off if they can set up a local node in Nairobi, Kenya.

There are local things specific to the Kenya market, which are integrated into local development platforms available in Kenya, which would be helpful if it could be integrated with Azure Stack. We have a solution called M-Pessa, for example. If that can be done on a regular basis, I believe it is time to look for customers who want to use that channel today.

I have been working with Azure Stack for six years.

Azure Stack is a stable product.

Azure Stack is a scalable solution.

Technical support is okay. My customers have not complained about the technical support.

I actually work for an integrator company that specializes in UiPath. I primarily use UiPath, but I also use Automation Anywhere and Microsoft Power Automate.

We use Power Automate, but we also use Power BI for dashboard visualization. Then there's the standard Office 365, and we do have customers who use Azure.

I would say the initial setup is medium. It all depends on who is using it, but most customers rate it as a medium. It's not easy, but it's also not difficult. It's average. It's a medium.

In terms of pricing, my customers believe AWS is slightly more reasonably priced than Azure. They believe it is significantly less expensive than what Azure offers. It is simply a matter of pricing.

I would advise them to conduct a thorough assessment of the types of applications they want to host on Azure Stack before beginning the migration process. They must be absolutely certain. Then there are all kinds of local policies, security policies, on migrating data into the Cloud, to put it mildly. They should be on the lookout for such things. So, first and foremost, a proper assessment of what types of applications should be moved entirely to Azure Stack. Then, examine the policies, security policies, and cybersecurity that are associated with all of that.

I would rate Azure Stack an eight out of ten.

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.