Navigate to the Azure portal -> Azure Arc -> Azure Stack HCI and click on Download Azure Stack HCI.
Select the version, in this case we will go with the latest version and we agree to the terms and proceed to click on Download Azure Stack HCI.
Flash the ISO on a USB device using rufus or a similar program, plug it into the server and enter the button to enter the boot menu. On this Supermicro server this is with F11.
Select the USB device and hit enter.
Select the language, time and keyboard input and click on Next.
Click on Install now.
Agree with the terms and click on Next.
Select Custom.
Select the drive you with to use to boot and click on Next. (because I have a RAID controller in JBOD mode, the full drive size isn’t displayed for drive 0 and drive 1)
Azure Stack HCI will now proceed to install.
After the server has installed and rebooted, you now need to set a password. Make sure to use the same password on all of your nodes.
Enter the password twice, make sure the password follows the Azure guidelines.
Now the password has been changed, hit enter to proceed.
We will start by setting the computer name by entering 2 and hitting enter.
Enter the name and hit enter.
You will be prompted to reboot, but we can do this at a later stage. Enter N and hit enter.
We will now enable remote desktop temporarily. Enter 7 and hit enter.
Enter E and hit enter.
Enter 1 and hit enter.
Remote desktop will now be enabled. Hit enter to continue.
We will now configure the static IP which is required by Azure Stack HCI. Enter 8 and hit enter.
Select the NIC you want to configure the static IP on, in my case this is number 5.
We will first set the static DNS server(s) by entering 2.
Enter the IP of the DNS server and hit enter.
Enter the IP of the second DNS server or leave blank if you don’t have one.
Now navigate back to the menu of the adapter and enter 1.
Enter the static IP, the subnet mask and the gateway and hit enter.
Now enter 6 to patch the nodes.
Enter 1 to perform all quality updates.
The node will now search for updates.
Enter A to start installing all the updates.
The updates are now being installed. Enter Y to reboot.
After the server is back up and you entered it using remote desktop, enter PowerShell by entering number 15.
Temporarily disable the firewall by entering the command:
netsh advfirewall set allprofiles state off
We will now copy the drivers to the nodes using SMB.
Enter the following commands to start the install of the Intel NIC drivers.
cd "C:\temp\Intel NIC"
.\Autorun.exe
Follow the steps in the wizard to install the drivers.
Enter the following command to install the driver of the RAID controller.
pnputil.exe -i -a "C:\Temp\MR_WIndows Driver-07.727.03.00\Win2022_Server_LTSC_x64\megasas35.inf"
We will now install the Hyper-V role using the command below or we will receive later on the error you see in the below screenshot:
Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Hyper-V -All
We will now list all the network adapters using the below command:
Get-NetAdapter
We will rename the 25Gbps adapters to Storage 1 and Storage 2 using the following command:
Rename-NetAdapter -Name "Ethernet 6" -NewName "Storage1"
Rename-NetAdapter -Name "Ethernet 7" -NewName "Storage2"
We will rename the 1Gbps I350 adapters to Backup 1 and Backup 2 using the following command:
Rename-NetAdapter -Name "Ethernet 2" -NewName "Backup1"
Rename-NetAdapter -Name "Ethernet 4" -NewName "Backup2"
And finally we rename the 1Gbps I210 adapters to Compute 1 and Compute 2 using the following command:
Rename-NetAdapter -Name "Ethernet 3" -NewName "Compute1"
Rename-NetAdapter -Name "Ethernet 4" -NewName "Compute2"
Please note that in the screenshot it says Management1 and Management2, but this is because in this scenario we will combine compute and management traffic.
We will now register the nodes to Azure Arc. We start by executing the following command:
Register-PSRepository -Default -InstallationPolicy Trusted
We will now install the required modules.
#Install Arc registration script from PSGallery
Install-Module AzsHCI.ARCinstaller
#Install required PowerShell modules in your node for registration
Install-Module Az.Accounts -Force
Install-Module Az.ConnectedMachine -Force
Install-Module Az.Resources -Force
We will now connect the nodes to Azure, make sure to replace the variables with your own.
#Define the subscription where you want to register your server as Arc device
$Subscription = "SUBSCRIPTIONID"
#Define the resource group where you want to register your server as Arc device
$RG = "RESOURCEGROUPNAME"
#Define the region you will use to register your server as Arc device
$Region = "westeurope"
#Define the tenant you will use to register your server as Arc device
$Tenant = "TENANTID"
#Connect to your Azure account and Subscription
Connect-AzAccount -SubscriptionId $Subscription -TenantId $Tenant -DeviceCode
We will now enroll the nodes into Arc.
#Get the Access Token for the registration
$ARMtoken = (Get-AzAccessToken).Token
#Get the Account ID for the registration
$id = (Get-AzContext).Account.Id
#Invoke the registration script. Use a supported region.
Invoke-AzStackHciArcInitialization -SubscriptionID $Subscription -ResourceGroup $RG -TenantID $Tenant -Region $Region -Cloud "AzureCloud" -ArmAccessToken $ARMtoken -AccountID $id
It will take several minutes and then we will see the nodes show up in Azure Arc on the Azure portal.
Here we will need to enter the nodes and check the status of the extensions.
Once the 4 extensions are in status Succeeded, we can proceed on creating the cluster.
Lets prepare the OU where the nodes will be AD joined by blocking GPO inheritance.
We will now go back to the Azure portal and select Deploy cluster.
We will fill in the information required for our cluster, select the resource group where the Azure Stack HCI nodes are located and select Validate selected servers and click on Next.
Under Configuration, we will select New configuration and click on Next.
Because we have a 2-node switchless cluster we will select No switch for storage.
At the bottom of the page we will select the adapters for the traffic type and continue down.
We will now enter the IP information for our Azure Arc services and click Next.
We will now enter the information to AD join the cluster and click on Next.
We stick with the recommended security settings and click on Next.
Under Advanced we leave the default and click on Next.
Under Tags we create the mandatory Tags and click on Next.
Azure will now validate if the cluster objects are created.
We can now click on Start validation and Azure will start validating the cluster.
Once this is done you can click on Review + Create and the cluster will be deployed.
In AD we can see that the cluster is now being domain joined and that a failover object is created in the OU.
And we can now see that the cluster is deployed succesfully.
