Reference Guide

Introduction
This chapter presents the following topics:
Topics:
• Document overview
• Audience and scope
Document overview
This reference architecture guide provides an overview of the Microsoft Azure Stack HCI operating system and guidance on
how to deploy stretched clusters in your environment. The guide provides network topology references and best practices to
consider during a stretched cluster deployment.
The Microsoft Azure Stack HCI operating system can be deployed in both standalone and stretched cluster environments. For
the deployment steps for a standalone cluster and end-to-end deployment steps with network and host configuration options,
see the Network Integration and Host Network Configuration Options article.
Dell Technologies offers integrated systems with the new Azure Stack HCI operating system. This guide applies to select
configurations of the integrated systems built using AX nodes.
Audience and scope
This guide is for systems engineers, field consultants, partner engineering team members, and customers with knowledge of
deploying hyperconverged infrastructures (HCIs) with Windows Server operating systems and the newly released Azure Stack
HCI operating system (20H2).
Customer site-to-site networking configuration and guidance is outside the scope of this document.
Assumptions
This guide assumes that deployment personnel have:
● Knowledge of AX nodes from Dell Technologies.
● Experience of configuring BIOS and integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) settings.
● Advanced knowledge of deploying and configuring Windows Servers and Hyper-V infrastructure.
● Experience with deploying and configuring Storage Spaces Direct Solutions with Windows Server or Azure Stack HCI.
● Familiarity with customer site-to-site networking, including enabling and configuring the necessary static routes or inter-site
bandwidth throttling (if needed) according to the stretched cluster requirement.
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4 Introduction