Azure Local - 2607 release and iSCSI SAN support goes GA
Today we have two major “announcements” from Microsoft:
- Azure Local Release 2607 - Features and improvements in 2607
- iSCSI SAN support goes GA - Azure Local expands SAN capabilities with iSCSI support
2607 release
Thomas Maurer created a very good summary of the 2607 release:
Original post: Azure Local 2607 release
Given that I listed the iSCSI going GA at the top, and Microsoft themselves created a separate blog about it, should tell you that this is a feature they want to highlight the most 😊 In fact, they are so proud of it, that it is listed twice because it is supported with S2D (hyperconverged) deployments as well as disaggregated deployments 😊
Azure Migrate built-in roles and Terraform support for replication and migration - obviously in preview 😉 - are definitely cool to see as well.
Thing that might catch you off-guard would probably be the security baseline that enforces a 14-character minimum password length for local account password requirements. Most people will not notice, but it will cause pain for others I am sure 😊 Good change, but something to just be mindful of.
You can see the full list of changes in the Azure Local 2607 release notes. However, one more thing I think is worth drawing some attention to is the fact that the Azure Local 2607 disaggregated deployment includes validation that now fails deployments that use external storage area networks (SANs) from unsupported vendors. Why was it not there to start off with? Either way, it is certainly a good idea to have some level of validation to ensure that the storage is supported 🤣
iSCSI SAN General Availability (GA)
The article Azure Local expands SAN capabilities with iSCSI support provides a good overview of the iSCSI feature and how to use it. So no need to repeat it here.
The main thing to note is that iSCSI is now generally available (GA) for both S2D (hyperconverged) and disaggregated deployments.
My take on it is, that it is great to see Microsoft finally adding iSCSI SAN support to Azure Local. This would have been nice quite a few years ago, as we all know VMware migrations were/are a big deal. Fairly sure that this is what those are really aiming for. The reality is however slightly less rosy. As someone pointed out in the blog’s comments, the price increase for this solution is significant. You can review the pricing here: Azure Local pricing overview. Take a look at “For disaggregated deployments or hyperconverged deployments with external storage (L2)” section in particular. Also, what originally I think could have been perceived as a cost saving for customers, because most VMware customers have some sort of SAN infrastructure in place, now might not be so appealing as there are significant limitations as to what storage arrays are supported, plus the price hike.
Again, great to see the features coming (same for Fibre Channel SAN support), just not sure how much of a game changer this will be for customers when it is all said and done.
Useful links
Happy Azure Localling 🤣