Review deployment prerequisites for Azure Stack HCI, version 23H2
Applies to: Azure Stack HCI, version 23H2
This article discusses the security, software, hardware, and networking prerequisites, and the deployment checklist in order to deploy Azure Stack HCI, version 23H2.
Review requirements and complete prerequisites
| Requirements | Links |
|---|---|
| Security features | Link |
| Environment readiness | Link |
| System requirements | Link |
| Firewall requirements | Link |
| Physical network requirements | Link |
| Host network requirements | Link |
Complete deployment checklist
Use the following checklist to gather the required information ahead of the actual deployment of your Azure Stack HCI, version 23H2 cluster.
| Component | What is needed |
|---|---|
| Server names | Unique name for each server you wish to deploy. |
| Active directory OU | A new organizational unit (OU) to store all the objects for the Azure Stack HCI deployment. The OU is created during the Active Directory preparation. The OU must be specified as the distinguished name (DN). The OU path doesn't support the following special characters anywhere within the path: &,",',<,>. For more information, see the format of Distinguished Names. |
| Active Directory Domain | Fully-qualified domain name (FQDN) for the Active Directory Domain Services prepared for deployment. |
| Active Directory LCM User credential | A new username and password that is created with the appropriate permissions for deployment. This account is the same as the user account used by the Azure Stack HCI deployment. The password must conform to the Azure length and complexity requirements. Use a password that is at least 12 characters long. The password must contain the following: a lowercase character, an uppercase character, a numeral, and a special character. The name must be unique for each deployment and you can't use admin as the username. |
| IPv4 network range subnet for management network intent | A subnet used for management network intent. You need an address range for management network with a minimum of 6 available, contiguous IPs in this subnet. These IPs are used for infrastructure services with the first IP assigned to fail over clustering. For more information, see the Specify network settings page in Deploy via Azure portal. |
| Storage VLAN ID | Two unique VLAN IDs to be used for the storage networks, from your IT network administrator. We recommend using the default VLANS from Network ATC for storage subnets. If you plan to have two storage subnets, Network ATC will use VLANS from 712 and 711 subnets. For more information, see the Specify network settings page in Deploy via Azure portal. |
| DNS Server | A DNS Server that is used in your environment. The DNS server used must resolve the Active Directory Domain. For more information, see the Specify network settings page in Deploy via Azure portal. |
| Local administrator credentials | Username and password for the local administrator for all the servers in your cluster. The credentials are identical for all the servers in your system. Make sure that the local administrator password follows Azure password length and complexity requirements. Use a password that is at least 12 characters long and contains a lowercase character, an uppercase character, a numeral, and a special character. For more information, see the Specify management settings page in Deploy via Azure portal. |
| Custom location | (Optional) A name for the custom location created for your cluster. This name is used for Azure Arc VM management. For more information, see the Specify management settings page in Deploy via Azure portal. |
| Azure subscription ID | ID for the Azure subscription used to register the cluster. Make sure that you are a user access administrator and a contributor on this subscription. This will allow you to manage access to Azure resources, specifically to Arc-enable each server of an Azure Stack HCI cluster. For more information, see Assign Azure permissions for deployment |
| Azure Storage account | For two-node clusters, a witness is required. For a cloud witness, an Azure Storage account is needed. In this release, you cannot use the same storage account for multiple clusters. For more information, see Specify management settings in Deploy via Azure portal. For naming conventions, see Azure Storage account names. |
| Azure Key Vault | A key vault is required to securely store secrets for this system, such as cryptographic keys, local admin credentials, and BitLocker recovery keys. For more information, see Basics in Deploy via Azure portal. For naming convention, see Azure Key Vault names. |
| Outbound connectivity | Run the Environment checker to ensure that your environment meets the outbound network connectivity requirements for firewall rules. |
Next steps
- Prepare your Active Directory environment.