General Questions on Azure Stack HCI

Question

1. Can I change the subscription for HCI later?
2. What are the different subscription types that you can use for HCI registration?
3. If I want to change the subscription in the middle of the month, do I get charged for the entire month?
4. What are the possible impacts to HCI deployment when the HCI is not reporting to Azure for more than 30 days?
5. List down the regions that doesn't support HCI registration.
6. Does HCI support Azure ADDS?

Answer 1

Hi @Nagaraj Hegde (ZEN3 INFOSOLUTIONS AMERICA INC) ,

I hope that I am able to answer your questions. Please find my comments below.

1. Can I change the subscription for HCI later? Yes. To do so, you must unregister your cluster from the current subscription. You should then be able to register the cluster to the new subscription.
2. What are the different subscription types that you can use for HCI registration? You can use any existing subscription for HCI registration. Ref. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure-stack/hci/deploy/register-with-azure#azure-subscription-and-permissions
3. If I want to change the subscription in the middle of the month, do I get charged for the entire month? You will only be charged for the time you are connected to a specific subscription. For example, if your month started over on the 1st (note that when your month starts is based on when you register, not calendar months) and you changed subscriptions on the 15th, you would be charged for the first half on the first subscription and the second half on the second subscription. The billing records generated by the HCI service keeps up with this from the cluster perspective.
4. What are the possible impacts to HCI deployment when the HCI is not reporting to Azure for more than 30 days? If your cluster does not sync with Azure at least once within 30 days, your cluster will go into a 'reduced-functionality' mode. Essentially, this means that your current VMs will continue running, but you will not be able to add VMs or make major changes within the environment. Ref. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure-stack/hci/faq#what-happens-if-the-30-day-limit-is-exceeded
5. List down the regions that doesn't support HCI registration. I do not have a complete list of supported/unsupported Azure regions. This can normally be found on the Azure Products Available by Region page, but for some reason, the Azure Stack HCI information has not been updated. I am checking into getting this list updated. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/global-infrastructure/services/?products=hci&regions=all
6. Does HCI support Azure ADDS? Azure AD is required for registering HCI to Azure and for the hybrid services, but it is not supported for authenticating to the node or cluster itself. This still requires a standard AD domain.

More information can be found on the Azure Stack HCI FAQ page - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure-stack/hci/faq

I hope this information is helpful.
Trent