Azure Stack HCI Is a hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) cluster solution that hosts virtualized Windows and Linux workloads and their storage in a hybrid on-premises environment. Azure Hybrid Services enhances your cluster with features such as cloud-based monitoring, site recovery, and VM backup, as well as a central view of all Azure Stack HCI deployments within the Azure portal. You can manage your cluster using existing tools such as Windows Admin Center, System Center, and PowerShell.
Azure Stack HCI, version 20H2, is a new operating system currently in public preview, Downloadable.. It is intended for on-premises clusters running virtualized workloads with built-in hybrid cloud connectivity. As a result, Azure Stack HCI is offered as an Azure service and billed with your Azure subscription. Azure Stack HCI now also includes the ability to host Azure Kubernetes services. For more information, see. Azure Kubernetes service on Azure Stack HCI..
Get started with Azure Stack HCI and Windows Admin Center
Windows Admin Center Is a locally deployed browser-based app for managing Azure Stack HCI.The easiest way to do Install Windows Admin Center Is on the locally managed PC (desktop mode), but can also be installed on the server (service mode).
If you install Windows Admin Center on your server, tasks that require CredSSP, such as creating clusters and installing updates and extensions, must use an account that is a member of the Gateway Administrators group on the Windows Admin Center server. See the first two sections of for more information. Configure user access control and permissions..
Before you get started, you need to know that Azure Stack HCI is still in preview and not ready for production use. However, I have installed it on MVP LAB for testing purposes only and am learning all the new features.
What’s new in Azure Stack HCI
Clusters running Azure Stack HCI version 20 H2 have the following new features compared to Windows Server 2019-based solutions:
- What’s New in Windows Admin Center: The ability to create and update hyper-converged clusters via an intuitive UI makes Azure Stack HCI easier than ever.
- Stretch cluster for automatic failover: Multisite clustering with storage replica replication and automatic VM failover provides native disaster recovery and business continuity for clusters using Storage Spaces Direct.
- Affinity and anti-affinity rules: These can be used in the same way that Azure uses Availability Zones to isolate VMs and storage together, or in clusters with multiple fault domains, such as stretch clusters.
- Azure portal integration: Azure Stack HCI’s Azure Portal Experience is designed to display all Azure Stack HCI clusters around the world with new features under development.
- GPU acceleration for high performance workloads: AI / ML applications can benefit from improved performance on the GPU.
- BitLocker encryption: BitLocker can now be used to encrypt the content of Azure Stack HCI data volumes, allowing governments and other customers to continue to comply with standards such as FIPS 140-2 and HIPAA.
- Improved storage space direct volume repair speed: Repairs volume quickly and seamlessly.
The next step-by-step guide is to use Windows Admin Center to install your Azure Stack HCI cluster.
[追加],[新しいサーバークラスターの作成]Click in the order of.
Select Azure Stack HCI.
Here you can also choose whether both Azure Stack HCI nodes are on the same site or there are more Azure Stack HCI nodes on the two sites for disaster recovery and business continuity.
In MVPLAB, all Azure Stack HCI nodes are in one site.More about The Microsoft Azure Stack HCI Stretch Cluster is here.
Prerequisites before you start Use the Windows Admin Center Wizard to create an Azure Stack HCI cluster.
This is what I like about Windows Admin Center and supports all the steps and choices for creating an Azure Stack HCI cluster that uses storage space directly.
Add an Azure Stack HCI node server with an administrator account and password
Add a node to the domain.
Install the required features on the Azure Stack HCI node server
Install updates on Azure Stack HCI node server
Here you can get options from your hardware vendor
I don’t know this because it’s virtual.
Restart the Azure Stack HCI node server,[次のネットワーク]Click
The network adapter is up and running.
If you have enough Nics on your Azure Stack HCI node server, you can choose a Teamed Management NIC here.
I choose a single management NIC.
Plan your Azure Stack HCI node network
Configure production and storage networks
Here you can configure different switches to suit your workload.
Windows Admin Center works with Software Defined Networking (SDN)
I skipped this in MVP LAB.
Before you can create an Azure Stack HCI cluster, you must first validate the cluster.
Once the cluster validation is complete, you can download the cluster validation report.
Here, give the cluster a name and a static IP.
[クラスターの作成]Click.
Microsoft Azure Stack HCI cluster is created 
[ストレージ]so[次へ]Click.
[次へ]Click
I got some small discs Click Next.
Storage has been validated and is suitable for Storage Spaces Direct.
Storage Spaces Direct is enabled on Azure Stack HCI clusters.
SDN[次へ]Click
Here you can configure the network controller for your Azure Stack HCI cluster
Azure Stack HCI cluster created 
This is the dashboard in the Windows admin center of my Azure Stack HCI cluster
Azure Stack HCI cluster management
It’s important to use Windows Admin Center to manage your Azure StackHCI cluster because you can use Azure Monitor now that you have connected your WAC to your Azure subscription.
From here, the cluster will also be connected to the Azure Monitor Analytics workspace.
AzureStack HCI cluster node connected to Azure Monitor.
The Windows Admin Center allows you to manage Azure Stack HCI updates using Clustered Updates (CAU) without workload downtime.
Start cluster-aware update
[インストール]Click
One Azure Stack HCI node is waiting and the other is being installed.
Another Azure Stack HCI node is now installing the update.
The update was successful on both Azure Stack HCI nodes.
Microsoft Azure Stack HCI Cluster is running
Create a virtual machine on an Azure Stack HCI cluster.
Conclusion
Windows Admin Center supports all the easy steps to create a Microsoft Azure Stack HCI cluster with the Deployment Wizard. Of course, if you need to create more Azure Stack HCI clusters for different platforms, such as virtual machine deployments, AKS Kubernetes clusters for container applications, or SQL environments, you can also write your own PowerShell deployment script. ..
Here you can find out more about PowerShell commands
After deploying an Azure Stack HCI cluster using your own PowerShell script, you can add the cluster to the Windows Admin Center for IT management.
The cluster installation time is really fast. We hope this will provide better internal information about the preview of Microsoft Azure Stack HCI clusters and Windows Admin Center.
The next step is AKS Cubernetes on Azure Stack HCI
Kubernetes container on Azure Stack HCI
