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What's in preview for Azure Stack HCI, 2306 release (preview)

  • Article

Applies to: Azure Stack HCI preview channel and Supplemental Package

This article describes the new features or enhancements that are currently available in the preview for Azure Stack HCI. This article includes:

Azure Stack HCI preview channel

The Azure Stack HCI preview channel features preview versions of Azure Stack HCI OS release. For more information, see Join the preview channel.

Azure Stack HCI, 2306 Supplemental Package (preview)

Azure Stack HCI, 2306 Supplemental Package is now in preview. You can deploy this package on servers running the English version of the Azure Stack HCI, version 22H2 OS. For more information on Azure Stack HCI, version 22H2, see What's new in 22H2.

Important

When you try out this new deployment tool, make sure that you do not run production workloads on systems deployed with the Supplemental Package while it's in preview even with the core operating system Azure Stack HCI 22H2 being generally available. Microsoft Customer Support will supply support services while in preview, but service level agreements available at GA do not apply.

Azure Stack HCI, 2306 Supplemental Package is supported for customers’ production workloads when deployed on Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure.

Follow these steps to download the Supplemental Package files:

  1. Download the Azure Stack HCI operating system from the Azure portal. Make sure to select English from the Choose language dropdown list.

  2. Download the following Supplemental Package files:

    Azure Stack HCI Supplemental Package component Description
    BootstrapCloudDeploymentTool.ps1 Script to extract content and launch the deployment tool. When this script is run with the -ExtractOnly parameter, it will extract the zip file but not launch the deployment tool. 
    CloudDeployment.zip Azure Stack HCI, version 22H2 content, such as images and agents. 
    Verify-CloudDeployment.ps1 Hash used to validate the integrity of zip file. 

To learn more about the new deployment methods, see Deployment overview.

What's new

The following new features are available in the 2306 preview release of Supplemental Package:

  • ISO refresh - In this release, the ISO for the installation of Azure Stack HCI, version 22H2 operating system is refreshed to include the latest cumulative update corresponding to June 2023.

    Note

    The Supplemental Package supports only the English version of the Azure Stack HCI OS. Make sure to download the English version and use the refreshed ISO. For more information on June release, see Azure Stack HCI, version 22H2 OS build 20349.1787.

  • Use existing data disks for storage - Beginning this release, you can deploy a single server cluster using existing data drives. Use this option when you try to repair this server.

  • Remove requirement for D: drive - In this release, the requirement of boot (C: drive) partition and data (D:) partition is removed. This partition was created when you installed the operating system on your Azure Stack HCI servers.

  • Manage capacity on your cluster - Starting this release, you can manage the cluster capacity by adding servers to your cluster. You can also repair a server in an existing cluster. For more information, see Add a server and Repair a server in your Azure Stack HCI cluster.

Known issues

To review a list of the known issues for this release, see View known issues in Azure Stack HCI, 2306 Supplemental Package release (preview).