Dell Hybrid Management: Azure Policies for HCI Compliance and Remediation

Dell Hybrid Management: Azure Policies for HCI Compliance and Remediation

Companies that take an “Azure hybrid first” strategy are making a wise and future-proof decision by consolidating the advantages of both worlds—public and private—into a single entity.

Sounds like the perfect plan, but a key consideration for these environments to work together seamlessly is true hybrid configuration consistency.

A major challenge in the past was having the same level of configuration rules concurrently in Azure and on-premises. This required different tools and a lot of costly manual interventions (subject to human error) that resulted, usually, in potential risks caused by configuration drift. 

But those days are over.

We are happy to introduce Dell HCI Configuration Profile (HCP) Policies for Azure, a revolutionary and crucial differentiator for Azure hybrid configuration compliance.

Figure 1: Dell Hybrid Management with Windows Admin Center (local) and Azure/Azure Arc (public)

So, what is it? How does it work? What value does it provide?

Dell HCP Policies for Azure is our latest development for Dell OpenManage Integration with Windows Admin Center (OMIMSWAC). With it, we can now integrate Dell HCP policy definitions into Azure Policy. Dell HCP is the specification that captures the best practices and recommended configurations for Azure Stack HCI and Windows-based HCI solutions from Dell to achieve better resiliency and performance with Dell HCI solutions.

The HCP Policies feature functions at the cluster level and is supported for clusters that are running Azure Stack HCI OS (21H2) and pre-enabled for Windows Server 2022 clusters.

IT admins can manage Azure Stack HCI environments through two different approaches:

• At-scale through the Azure portal using the Azure Arc portfolio of technologies
• Locally on-premises using Windows Admin Center

Figure 2: Dell HCP Policies for Azure - onboarding Dell HCI Configuration Profile

By using a single Dell HCP policy definition, both options provide a seamless and consistent management experience.

Running Check Compliance automatically compares the recommended rules packaged together in the Dell HCP policy definitions with the settings on the running integrated system. These rules include configurations that address the hardware, cluster symmetry, cluster operations, and security.

Figure 3: Dell HCP Policies for Azure - HCP policy compliance

Dell HCP Policy Summary provides the compliance status of four policy categories:

• Dell Infrastructure Lock Policy - Indicates enhanced security compliance to protect against unintentional changes to infrastructure
• Dell Hardware Configuration Policy - Indicates compliance with Dell recommended BIOS, iDRAC, firmware, and driver settings that improve cluster resiliency and performance
• Dell Hardware Symmetry Policy - Indicates compliance with integrated-system validated components on the support matrix and best practices recommended by Dell and Microsoft
• Dell OS Configuration Policy - Indicates compliance with Dell recommended operating system and cluster configurations

Figure 4: Dell HCP Policies for Azure - HCP Policy Summary

 

To re-align non-compliant policies with the best practices validated by Dell Engineering, our Dell HCP policy remediation integration with WAC (unique at the moment) helps to fix any non-compliant errors. Simply click “Fix Compliance.”

Figure 5: Dell HCP Policies for Azure - HCP policy remediation

Some fixes may require manual intervention; others can be corrected in a fully automated manner using the Cluster-Aware Updating framework.

Conclusion

The “Azure hybrid first” strategy is real today. You can use Dell HCP Policies for Azure, which provides a single-policy definition with Dell HCI Configuration Profile  and a consistent hybrid management experience, whether you use Dell OMIMSWAC for local management or Azure Portal for management at-scale.

With Dell HCP Policies for Azure, policy compliance and remediation are fully covered for Azure and Azure Stack HCI hybrid environments.

You can see Dell HCP Policies for Azure in action at the interactive Dell Demo Center.

Thanks for reading!

Author: Ignacio Borrero, Dell Senior Principal Engineer CI & HCI, Technical Marketing

Twitter: @virtualpeli