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E2E Deployment and Operations Guide with Scalable Networking: Microsoft HCI Solutions from Dell Technologies
Deployment Introduction Solution Overview Solution Deployment
Solution Deployment
Solution deployment introduction
Deployment prerequisites
Predeployment configuration
Operating system deployment
Install roles and features
Verifying and updating firmware and software compliance with the Azure Stack HCI catalog
Change the hostname
Joining cluster nodes to an Active Directory domain
Configuring firewall settings
Scalable Architecture with Network ATC GPU Integration Day 1 operations Managing and monitoring clusters with Windows Admin Center Dell OpenManage Integration with Windows Admin Center Updates and maintenance References

Operating system deployment

Operating system deployment

  • These instructions are for manual deployment of the Azure Stack HCI operating system version on AX nodes from Dell Technologies. Unless otherwise specified, perform the steps on each physical node in the infrastructure that will be a part of Azure Stack HCI.


    Manual operating system deployment

    A step-by-step procedure for deploying the operating system is not within the scope of this guide.

    This guide assumes that:
    • You have access to the iDRAC virtual console of the physical server.
    Note: For information about installing the operating system using the iDRAC virtual media feature, see the Using the Virtual Media function on iDRAC 6, 7, 8 and 9 Dell Knowledge Base article.

    Note: The Azure Stack HCI operating system is based on Server Core and does not have the full user interface. For more information about using the Server Configuration tool (Sconfig), see Deploy the Azure Stack HCI operating system Microsoft article.


    Factory-installed operating system deployment

    If the cluster nodes are shipped from Dell Technologies with a preinstalled operating system, complete the out-of-box experience (OOBE):

    • Select language and locale settings.
    • Accept the Microsoft and OEM EULAs.
    • Set up a password for the local administrator account.
    • Update the operating system partition size, and shrink it as needed.
      Note: Partition size adjustment is not available with the factory-installed Azure Stack HCI operating system.

    For a factory-installed Azure Stack HCI OS, required features are pre-installed. For more information refer to https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure-stack/hci/deploy/create-cluster-powershell?branch=pr-en-us-11615#step-13-install-roles-and-features.

    The Azure Stack HCI operating system factory image has multilingual support for these languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Korean, Japanese, Polish, and Italian. To change language:

    • Run the following PowerShell commands. <LANGUAGE> can be en-US, fr-FR, ja-JP, ko-KR, de-DE, pl-PL, it-IT, or es-ES.

      • Set-WinUserLanguageList <LANGUAGE>
      • Set-WinSystemLocale -systemlocale <LANGUAGE>
    • Reboot after running the commands.
    Note: For all of the languages except Polish, the main screen changes to the appropriate font. For Polish, the English font is used.

    If you purchased a license for a secondary operation system to run your virtual machines, the VHD file is located in the C:\Dell_OEM\VM folder. Copy this VHD file to a virtual disk in your Azure Stack HCI cluster and create virtual machines using this VHD.

    Note: Do not run your virtual machine with the VHD file residing on the BOSS device (for example, c:\). It should always be on c:\clusterstorage\<VD1>


    Configure host networking

    Identify the network adaptors to be used for the management/compute traffic and assign IP address to the first port.
    Note: This step is not needed if you have DHCP in your environment. Ensure the hosts are assigned IPs in the correct VLAN. 

    Login to the host console of each system using iDRAC Virtual Console and assign host IPs and respective VLANs

    Disbale the DHCP on the management adaptors
    Set-NetIPInterface -InterfaceAlias "Integrated NIC 1 Port 1-1",”Integrated NIC 1 Port 2-1” -Dhcp Disabled 

    Disbale disconnected network adaptors

    Get-NetAdapter | Where-Object {$_.status -eq "disconnected"} | Disable-NetAdapter New-NetIPAddress -InterfaceAlias "Integrated NIC 1 Port 1-1" -IPAddress 192.168.11.11 -PrefixLength 24
    -AddressFamily IPv4 –Verbose
    Get-NetAdapter -Name "Integrated NIC 1 Port 1-1" | Set-NetAdapter -VlanID 202 -Confirm:$false
    Note: Perform the above steps for all nodes by incrementing the IP address for each node.

    Upgrade using sConfig (Standalone systems)

    Using a sconfig menu (Server Configuration from command prompt), you can update the servers one at a time. Customers who receive HCI OS 21H2 can update to 22H2 using this method so that a cluster can be created on 22H2 without having to upgrade after cluster creation.

    1. On the sconfig menu, select option 6 and update all quality updates.
    2. Once all quality updates are completed, go to Feature Updates on the sconfig menu and perform an OS upgrade from 21H2 to 22H2. After completing the OS upgrade, perform step 1 to install all the quality updates for 21H2 and 22H2. You may have to run this multiple times to get to the latest cumulative update.
    3. Use Windows Admin Center to update each node to the latest hardware support matrix. See Dell Integrated System for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI: End-to-End Deployment - Cluster Creation Using Windows Admin Center.
    4. When the operating system on all nodes is updated to the latest CU of 22H2, you may go to creating the cluster using PowerShell or Windows Admin Center.
      Note: To get the operating system and latest hotfix versions, run the following commands: 
      Get-ComputerInfo  | select OSDisplayVersion,WindowsProductName
      get-hotfix