Microsoft Azure Stack HCI / Azure Local (subscription per core)

Microsoft Azure Stack HCI — now branded Azure Local — is a hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solution delivered as a subscription service licensed per physical processor core. It runs on validated customer-owned or hardware and extends Azure management, security, and cloud-native services directly into on-premises datacenters, branch offices, and edge locations. The platform is built on a purpose-hardened Windows Server Datacenter kernel and integrates Azure Arc natively, enabling a single control plane across hybrid environments without requiring persistent cloud connectivity for workload execution.

Azure Local supports virtualized Windows and Linux workloads via Hyper-V, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) enabled by Arc, Azure Virtual Desktop, and increasingly, on-premises AI inferencing workloads using GPUs attached to validated nodes. Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) provides software-defined, NVMe/SSD/HDD-tiered storage with built-in resiliency, while Software Defined Networking (SDN) delivers microsegmentation and network virtualization. Clusters can range from single-node deployments at the edge to 16-node stretched clusters for high availability across fault domains, all managed through Windows Admin Center or the Azure Portal via Arc.

The subscription model (manufacturer part number CFQ7TTC0HCBR) is billed per physical core on each node in the cluster, covering the Azure Local operating environment, Azure Arc integration, and access to Azure hybrid benefits. This model is particularly suited to regulated industries, sovereign and air-gapped environments, manufacturing and retail edge deployments, and organizations running AI/ML inference pipelines that require data residency or low-latency local processing. Microsoft positions Azure Local as the primary path for customers seeking Azure-consistent operations without moving workloads to the public cloud.

Ideal for

• On-premises AI inferencing: deploying GPU-enabled Azure Local nodes to run large language model inference or computer vision workloads at the edge while keeping sensitive training data on-site under organizational control
• Disconnected and sovereign government environments: running Azure-consistent IaaS and PaaS workloads in air-gapped or intermittently connected datacenters that cannot rely on continuous Azure public cloud access
• Hyperconverged branch office infrastructure: consolidating compute, storage, and networking onto a small validated-node cluster in a remote or retail location managed centrally through Azure Arc from a single pane of glass
• Azure Kubernetes Service at the edge: running AKS enabled by Arc on Azure Local to host containerized applications with the same DevOps toolchain used for public cloud AKS clusters
• Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI): delivering Azure Virtual Desktop session hosts on-premises to meet latency, data residency, or bandwidth constraints that prevent hosting desktops in Azure regions
• Disaster recovery and business continuity: using stretched two-site Azure Local clusters with Storage Replica to maintain synchronous or asynchronous copies of VMs and volumes, enabling automatic failover without off-site cloud dependency

Technical specifications

Available from Omnixon Global. Submit an RFQ and our team will confirm configuration and availability for your order.