SCVMM Now Supports Azure Stack HCI 23H2 Here is What You Need to Know

The System Center team has announced support for the latest Azure Stack HCI, version 23H2, in System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM). Azure Stack HCI 23H2 enhances cloud-based management with Azure Arc capabilities, and many large-scale data center customers rely on System Center VMM for their virtualization needs. Here’s a look at the supported scenarios with SCVMM for managing Azure Stack HCI.

Supported Azure Stack HCI Scenarios with System Center

SCVMM will support the following scenarios for managing Azure Stack HCI 23H2:

• Addition, creation, and management of Azure Stack HCI clusters.
• Provisioning and deploying Virtual Machines (VMs) on Azure Stack HCI clusters, including VM lifecycle operations.
• Networking setup on Azure Stack HCI clusters.
• Deployment and management of SDN network controller on Azure Stack HCI clusters.
• Management of storage pool settings, creation of virtual disks, cluster shared volumes (CSVs), and application of QoS settings.
• Migration of VMware and Windows Server workloads to Azure Stack HCI.
• Management of Azure Stack HCI clusters using the same PowerShell cmdlets as Windows Server clusters.
• Azure-based VM self-serve capabilities and Azure management services via Azure Arc-enabled SCVMM.

Supported Azure Stack HCI Scenarios through Azure and WAC

The following scenarios will continue to be supported via the Azure Portal/WAC for managing Azure Stack HCI 23H2:

• Creation of Azure Stack HCI clusters.
• Registration and deregistration of Azure Stack HCI clusters from VMM.
• Upgrading Azure Stack HCI 22H2 clusters to 23H2.
• Enabling Azure benefits on VMs running on Azure Stack HCI clusters.
• Operations on Azure Stack HCI clusters deployed with Windows Defender Application Control (WDAC).
• New Azure Stack HCI 23H2 features like GPU-Partitioning and SDN Multi-site.
• Azure Stack HCI features previously unsupported by SCVMM, such as Stretched clustering.

Availability of Azure Stack HCI 23H2 Support in System Center

Support for Azure Stack HCI 23H2 will be included in the next LTSC version of System Center. This release will coincide with the General Availability of Windows Server 2025.