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Microsoft seems to have two frameworks and solutions for cloud on-premises services: Azure Pack and Azure Stack.

What is the difference between them and why would I chose one over the other one? Or are these solutions complementary?

Kosmo
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1 Answers1

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This question is rather broad, but the main difference is that the Azure Stack offers the exact same API's which Azure offers, while Azure Pack only mimics Azure. As an example, Azure Stack can utilize ARM templates to deploy resources (natively), so you could deploy ARM template, test it in your DC (on Azure Stack) and then deploy this template to Azure and it would work exactly the same.

You would want to read up on different topics\blog posts online. ps. Also, I would imagive Azure Stack and Azure would have a better integration, like the ability to manage one from the other, but that day is yet to come.

4c74356b41
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  • Thanks for the answer. But it looks like some services are not available at all in one framework but are available in the other. Example: Ms SQL Database. So I was interested if these are actually complementary and can be run together. I need to be able to have all (or the majority) of the services in one on-prem system. – Kosmo Nov 22 '16 at 09:41
  • Well, in a sense they are, but you would need separate environments for those. But as for your question, you should really aim towards Azure Stack, since its the future, while Azure Pack (despite Microsoft saying that it extended support for that) didn't get much love (if any) from Microsoft in the past year or so. – 4c74356b41 Nov 22 '16 at 09:45
  • Actually, I take back the example in my previous comment. Although there is no MsSql bundling in the Azure Stack, you can install and provide the database as a service in the Azure Stack: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-stack/azure-stack-sql-resource-provider-deploy – Kosmo Nov 22 '16 at 12:14
  • I'm not following Azure Stack's progress constantly, but thats nice to know ;) anyway, upvote\mark as answer if it answers your question, feel free to reach out in the comments ;) – 4c74356b41 Nov 22 '16 at 12:16
  • Reading more about this topic, it looks like the ARM (Azure Resource Manager) is the keystone difference between Azure Stack and Azure Pack. – Kosmo Nov 22 '16 at 13:37
  • well, ARM is what drives Azure nowadays, and Azure Stack is just a copy of Azure (to simplify it a bit). But when you work with Azure Stack you are working against the same API's as with Azure. Which didn't hold for the Azure Pack, which mimicked the looks and feels of Azure, but in a slightly different pattern. – 4c74356b41 Nov 22 '16 at 13:42
  • Also, there's this funny thing https://github.com/Microsoft/Phoenix. But overall I'd say that Azure Pack is pretty dead. – 4c74356b41 Nov 22 '16 at 13:43