In this workshop, we'll walk you through deploying both Azure Stack HCI, and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) on Azure Stack HCI in an Azure VM, and set the foundation for you to explore in your own time. You'll cover aspects such as:
- Deploying and configuring a Windows Server 2019 Azure VM to host the infrastructure
- Deployment and configuration of a 2-node Azure Stack HCI Cluster using Windows Admin Center
- Deployment of the AKS on Azure Stack HCI management cluster with Windows Admin Center
- Deployment of the AKS on Azure Stack HCI target/workload cluster with Windows Admin Center
- Deployment of a simple test application
- Integrating with Azure Arc
- and more...!
This guide has been tested and validated with the May 2021 release of AKS on Azure Stack HCI, and Azure Stack HCI 20H2 with the latest updates installed.
- Welcome to the Azure Stack Skilling Workshop
- Version
- Contents
- What is Azure Stack HCI?
- What is AKS on Azure Stack HCI?
- Why follow this guide?
- Evaluation using Nested Virtualization
- Deployment Overview
- Deployment Workflow
- Get started
- Product improvements
- Raising issues
- Credits
- Contributions & Legal
Azure Stack HCI 20H2 is a hyperconverged cluster solution that runs virtualized Windows and Linux workloads in a hybrid on-premises environment. Azure hybrid services enhance the cluster with capabilities such as cloud-based monitoring, site recovery, and backup, as well as a central view of all of your Azure Stack HCI 20H2 deployments in the Azure portal. You can manage the cluster with your existing tools including Windows Admin Center, System Center, and PowerShell.
Initially based on Windows Server 2019, Azure Stack HCI 20H2 is now a specialized OS, running on your hardware, delivered as an Azure service with a subscription-based licensing model and hybrid capabilities built-in. Although Azure Stack HCI 20H2 is based on the same core operating system components as Windows Server, it's an entirely new product line focused on being the best virtualization host.
If you're interested in learning more about what Azure Stack HCI 20H2 is, make sure you check out the official documentation, before coming back to continue your workshop experience. We'll refer to the docs in various places in the guide, to help you build your knowledge of Azure Stack HCI 20H2.
If you've landed on this page, and you're still wondering what AKS on Azure Stack HCI is, Azure Kubernetes Service on Azure Stack HCI is an on-premises implementation of Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), which automates running containerized applications at scale. Azure Kubernetes Service can run on Azure Stack HCI 20H2 and Windows Server 2019 Datacenter-based clusters, making it quicker to get started hosting Linux and Windows containers in your datacenter.
If you're interested in learning more about what AKS on Azure Stack HCI is, make sure you check out the official documentation, before coming back to continue your workshop experience. We'll refer to the docs in various places in the guide, to help you build your knowledge of AKS on Azure Stack HCI.
This workshop guide will walk you through standing up a sandboxed, isolated AKS on Azure Stack HCI environment using nested virtualization in Azure. Whilst not designed as a production scenario, the important takeaway here is, by following this guide, you'll lay down a solid foundation on to which you can explore additional AKS on Azure Stack HCI scenarios in the future, so keep checking back for additional scenarios over time.
As with any infrastructure technology, in order to test, validate and evaluate the technology, there's typically a requirement for hardware. If you're fortunate enough to have multiple server-class pieces of hardware going spare (ideally hardware validated for Azure Stack HCI, found on our Azure Stack HCI Catalog), you can certainly perform a more real-world evaluation of AKS on Azure Stack HCI. For those that don't have spare hardware, using nested virtualization can be a great alternative for evaluation.
If you're not familiar with nested virtualization, at a high level, it allows a virtualization platform, such as Hyper-V, or VMware ESXi, to run virtual machines that, within those virtual machines, run a virtualization platform. It may be easier to think about this in an architectural view.
As you can see from the graphic, at the base layer, you have physical hardware, onto which you install a hypervisor. In this case, for our example, we're using Windows Server 2019 with the Hyper-V role enabled. The hypervisor on the lowest level is considered L0 or the level 0 hypervisor. In Azure, you don't have access or control over this. On that physical host, you create a virtual machine, and into that virtual machine, you deploy an OS that itself, has a hypervisor enabled. In this example, that 1st Virtualized Layer is running a nested operating system with Hyper-V enabled - for instance, this could be Windows Server 2019. This would be an L1 or level 1 hypervisor. Finally, in our example, inside that OS, you could create a virtual machine to run a workload. This could in fact also contain a hypervisor, which would be known as the L2 or level 2 hypervisor, and so the process continues, with multiple levels of nested virtualization possible.
The use of nested virtualization in this workshop guide is aimed at providing flexibility for evaluating Azure Stack HCI and AKS on Azure Stack HCI in a test environment, and it shouldn't be seen as a substitute for real-world deployments, performance and scale testing etc. With each level of nesting, comes the trade-off of performance, hence for production use, AKS on Azure Stack HCI should be deployed on validated physical hardware, of which you can find a vast array of choices on the Azure Stack HCI 20H2 Catalog or the Windows Server Catalog for systems running Windows Server 2019 Datacenter edition.
For those of you who don't have multiple server-class pieces of hardware running Azure Stack HCI 20H2 or Windows Server 2019, this workshop will guide you through deploying an Azure Stack HCI cluster, and AKS on Azure Stack HCI inside an Azure VM, using nested virtualization.
In this configuration, you'll take advantage of the nested virtualization support provided within certain Azure VM sizes. You'll first deploy a single Azure VM running Windows Server 2019 Datacenter. Inside this VM, you'll configure an Azure Stack HCI cluster and go on to deploy the AKS on Azure Stack HCI management cluster, and worker node clusters. All of this, in a single Azure VM.
The steps outlined in this guide are specific to running inside an Azure VM. If you plan to use these steps in an alternative environment, such as one nested/physical on-premises, the steps may differ and certain procedures may not work. If that is the case, please refer to our official documentation.
This guide will walk you through deploying a sandboxed infrastructure. To accommodate different preferences, we've provided paths for those of you who prefer PowerShell, or GUI (Graphical User Interface, such as Windows Admin Center)-based deployments.
The general flow will be as follows:
Part 1 - Complete the pre-requisites - deploy your Azure VM: In this step, you'll create a VM in Azure using an Azure Resource Manager template. This VM will run Windows Server 2019 Datacenter, with the full desktop experience. PowerShell DSC will automatically configure this VM with the appropriate roles and features, download the necessary binaries, and configure 2 Azure Stack HCI 20H2 nodes, ready for clustering.
Part 2 - Configure your Azure Stack HCI 20H2 Cluster: In this step, you'll use Windows Admin Center to deploy an Azure Stack HCI 20H2 cluster - along with a File Share Witness, a Cluster Shared Volume, and finally, you'll register this cluster with Azure.
Part 3 - Integrate Azure Stack HCI 20H2 with Azure: In this step, you'll use Windows Admin Center to register your Azure Stacl HCI Cluster with Azure and explore what's presented in the portal
Part 4 - Deploy your AKS-HCI infrastructure: In this step, you'll use Windows Admin Center to deploy AKS on Azure Stack HCI - this will consist of first deploying the necessary management cluster, then followed by a target cluster, for running workloads.
Part 5 - Explore AKS on Azure Stack HCI Environment: With your deployment completed, you're now ready to explore many of the aspects within AKS on Azure Stack HCI. We'll also provide links to further scenarios and resources to continue your learning.
- Part 1 - Complete the prerequisites - deploy your Azure VM
- Part 2 - Configure your Azure Stack HCI 20H2 Cluster
- Part 3 - Integrate Azure Stack HCI 20H2 with Azure
- Part 4 - Deploy your AKS-HCI infrastructure
- Part 5 - Explore the AKS on Azure Stack HCI Environment
If, while you work through this guide, you have an idea to make the product better, whether it's something in Azure Stack HCI, AKS on Azure Stack HCI, Windows Admin Center, or the Azure Arc integration and experience, let us know! We want to hear from you!
For Azure Stack HCI, Head on over to the Azure Stack HCI 20H2 Q&A forum, where you can share your thoughts and ideas about making the technologies better and raise an issue if you're having trouble with the technology.
For AKS on Azure Stack HCI, Head on over to our AKS on Azure Stack HCI 20H2 GitHub page, where you can share your thoughts and ideas about making the technologies better. If however, you have an issue that you'd like some help with, read on...
If you notice something is wrong with this guide, such as a step isn't working, or something just doesn't make sense - help us to make this guide better! Raise an issue in GitHub, and we'll be sure to fix this as quickly as possible!
If you're having an issue with Azure Stack HCI 20H2 outside of this guide, head on over to the Azure Stack HCI 20H2 Q&A forum, where Microsoft experts and valuable members of the community will do their best to help you.
If you're having a problem with AKS on Azure Stack HCI outside of this guide, make sure you post to our GitHub Issues page, where Microsoft experts and valuable members of the community will do their best to help you.
Major kudos to Yagmur Sahin for his work on his Azure Stack HCI and AKS-HCI on Azure projects - without his hard work as a starting point, I'd never have been able to put all of this together, so kudos to Yagmur - amazing work!
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