Azure Services.
On Your Hardware.

Validated Hardware Foundation

Azure Stack HCI runs on Microsoft-validated Integrated System hardware from Dell, HPE, Lenovo, Cisco, and others — listed in the official Azure Stack HCI hardware catalog. Each node contributes local NVMe, SSD, or HDD drives that are pooled across the cluster by Storage Spaces Direct. Using catalog-validated hardware eliminates compatibility risk and enables joint vendor-Microsoft support.

Managed from the Azure Portal — Wherever the Hardware Lives

Azure Stack HCI clusters appear in the Azure portal alongside your cloud resources — same resource groups, same RBAC, same Azure Monitor dashboards. Update policies, view cluster health, manage VMs, and deploy AKS clusters from a single pane of glass — regardless of whether the hardware is in your server room or a remote branch office.

• Azure portal cluster overview — health, nodes, storage, alerts
• Windows Admin Center for on-premises operations
• Arc-enabled VM management from Azure — create, resize, migrate
• Azure Monitor dashboards and alerting for HCI metrics

• $10 / physical core / month
• Azure Stack HCI OS (Azure Local)
• Storage Spaces Direct + Hyper-V
• Arc Resource Bridge included
• AKS enabled by Azure Arc
• Azure Monitor & Defender for Cloud
• Guest OS licences billed separately

• $23.30 / physical core / month
• All Standard features included
• Unlimited Windows Server guest rights
• No separate Windows Server licence needed
• Azure Hybrid Benefit eligible
• Covers all Hyper-V VMs on the cluster
• Simplifies compliance and licensing

• One-time prepaid licence per node
• Covers all physical cores on node
• Available from Dell, HPE, Lenovo OEM
• No ongoing subscription billing
• Still requires Azure subscription for management
• Ideal for 5–7 year hardware deployments
• Available on Integrated Systems only

Azure Services On-Premises

Run AKS, Arc VM management, Defender for Cloud, Azure Monitor, and Azure Policy on your on-premises hardware — the same Azure services your cloud teams use, no re-training required.

Simple Per-Core Subscription

Predictable $10/core/month Standard or $23.30/core/month Premium (includes Windows Server guests) — billed to your existing Azure subscription. No upfront software licence, no complicated SPLA agreements.

VMware Migration Ready

Azure Migrate and Azure Stack HCI provide tooling to lift VMware VMs to Hyper-V on Azure Stack HCI — capitalising on Broadcom licence cost concerns with a Microsoft-backed, Azure-managed alternative.

Data Sovereignty + Cloud Ops

Keep sensitive data on-premises in your own data centre while accessing Azure-native management, security, and CI/CD pipelines — ideal for UK regulated sectors (financial, healthcare, government).

Edge to Data Centre Scale

Deploy single-node edge clusters in branch offices or scale to 16-node all-NVMe clusters in the data centre — all managed from the same Azure portal under a single subscription.

Validated Partner Ecosystem

Dell, HPE, Lenovo, and 20+ hardware vendors offer Microsoft-validated Integrated Systems — pre-tested, catalog-certified nodes that ship ready to deploy with joint vendor-Microsoft support.

Dell Integrated System for Azure Stack HCI (AX-770)

Dell's latest Microsoft-validated Azure Stack HCI node combines 6th Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors (up to 86 cores per socket), 8 TB DDR5 memory, and 245 TB all-NVMe storage with NVIDIA GPU acceleration support — all pre-validated for Azure Stack HCI deployment.