Microsoft Azure is getting the third and final Technical Preview of Azure Stack, adding new infrastructures, security, and connectivity features. The Azure Stack third Technical Preview is already available for download.
Some of the new features coming with the new update include Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets support; enhanced infrastructure management functionality; the ability to deploy with ADFS for disconnected scenarios; enhanced IaaS and PaaS functionality; Azure D-Series VM support; the ability to syndicate content from the Azure Marketplace to Azure Stack, and enhanced security for the isolated administrator portal.
The newly added features should allow applications to be easily moved from one place to another as well as encourage hybrid cloud adoption. The original plan was to release Azure Stack before the end of 2016, but the last-minute changes pushed back the release for the mid-2017.
After the release of the newest update, Microsoft plans to introduce multi-tenancy support, Azure Functions serverless compute service and VM Extension syndication at a later date.
Azure users can expect to only pay for Azure services they are using, known as pay-as-you-use go service. Services offered by Azure Stack will be metered the same as using the Azure Cloud, but the prices for the Stack will be much lower since Stack users maintain their own hardware and data centers.
For users unable to send their metering information sent to Azure Microsoft will offer core-based pricing. Core-based pricing is meant for the organizations that want Stack on their servers and hardware but don’t want their servers or hardware to connect to Microsoft Azure.
Redmond giant announced that Azure Stack systems from technology partners Dell EMC, HPE, and Lenovo will be available for order by mid-2017, while the Azure Stack systems from Cisco UCS will come later, during the Q4 2017.