Azure Local Roadmap

by
Greg DeMichillie

by
Greg DeMichillie

Greg brings with him over two decades of engineering, product and GTM experience. He has held leadership positions at premier... more

Azure Local, formerly known as Azure Stack HCI, is Microsoft’s primary server host OS for on-premises virtualization and software-defined storage. It is a host OS based on Windows Server for hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI), licensed via subscription as an Azure service, and updated on an annual cadence. Azure Local is optimized to be a Hyper-V virtualization host for scenarios including remote offices, edge locations, and datacenter consolidation, and it is designed to connect to Azure to leverage cloud-based management services.

Product: Azure Local

Licensing: Azure Local Licensing

Near Term (2026)

Disconnected operations, including air-gapped deployment support, the most compelling new feature in Azure Local. Although Microsoft’s documentation states customers must also demonstrate “a valid business need” for disconnected operations, Microsoft claims the feature is available to all users.

Long Term (Beyond 2026)

If Microsoft intends Azure Local to be the primary method for customers to deploy and manage on-premises infrastructure, it needs to be much simpler to deploy. Instead of having a single, most-recent version, Azure Local is available in what Microsoft calls “release trains.” Each release train offers various features and comes with frequent quality and security updates that must be installed within six months of their release to maintain support.