Azure Stack Preview Available

Source: Microsoft

Azure Stack Technical Preview 1 became available in Jan. 2016. Azure Stack offers Microsoft-hosted Azure (public Azure) functionality for customer on-premises and third-party hosted deployments. The software could speed private cloud deployments, ease hybrid deployments that use on-premises software and public Azure, and allow customers who have not used public Azure due to data sovereignty, latency, or regulatory reasons to take advantage of the technology.

Stack is similar to Azure Pack, which is an existing on-premises offering that provides Azure functionality. However, Pack is an emulation of public Azure that relies on System Center, whereas Stack is based on the same software as public Azure.

Stack is expected to become generally available by the end of 2016, and it will require Windows Server 2016 (also in preview) when it arrives.

Technical Preview 1 supports a subset of the services of public Azure as shown here. Services in the preview are highlighted by rectangles. Starred services will remain in preview when Stack becomes generally available. Microsoft stated it will deliver more of the public Azure services to Stack with updates (which will probably be delivered less frequently than public Azure is updated), but it is implementing them in order of customer demand and technical feasibility. Further functionality was added to Technical Preview 1 in Feb. 2016, including the Web Apps service and providers to work with SQL Server and MySQL databases.