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Second Preview of Azure Stack at Ignite

A second preview of the forthcoming on-premises version of Azure highlights "infrastructure management technologies."

At Microsoft's Ignite event in Atlanta, the company provided a look at a second technical preview of Azure Stack.

Azure Stack is Microsoft's Azure Pack successor that promises a truer Azure-like cloud experience for those managing premises-based infrastructure. The final product isn't expected to appear until sometime in 2017.

TP2 of Azure Stack offers a preview of its "infrastructure management technologies." This preview is designed for use on a "single server deployment so that cloud/owner operators can begin to see how the system works," Microsoft's announcement explained. Other additions in TP2 include:

  • Azure Queue storage support, a feature to support application messaging, and
  • Azure Key Vault support, which adds cryptographic protection for data stored in datacenters

Microsoft also plans to add support for its App Service "in the coming weeks." App Service is designed to facilitate application development by business users.

Azure Stack drew a bit of controversy back in July when Microsoft indicated that the solution would only be available on OEM hardware. That announcement meant that organizations couldn't use their own hardware for production environments when deploying Azure Stack.

Last month, Microsoft explained that the OEM hardware restriction had to do with keeping Azure Stack properly updated on smaller scale hardware.

About the Author

Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.

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