If you choose the Disconnect from Azure option, you can deploy and use Microsoft Azure Stack Hub without a connection to the Internet. Choose this option if you:
Options | Physically disconnected | Physically connected |
Billing | Must be capacity Enterprise agreements (EA) only | Capacity or consumption EA or Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) |
Identity store | Must be ADFS | AAD or ADFS |
Marketplace syndication | Not applicable | Supported “Bring your own” licensing of syndicated images |
Registration | Not applicable | Automated |
Patch and update | Required, requires removable media and a separate connected device | Automated |
With a disconnected deployment, you are limited to an ADFS identity store and a capacity-based billing model.
A disconnected deployment means that you will not have connectivity to Azure during deployment, or you do not want to use AAD as your identity store. However, you can later connect your Azure Stack Hub instance to Azure for hybrid scenarios for tenant virtual machines (VMs).
If you want to have connectivity to Azure after deployment, regardless of what you want to use as your identity store, choose the Connect to Azure deployment option.
With a connected deployment, you can choose between AAD and ADFS for your identity store. A disconnected deployment can only use ADFS.
Your identity store choice has no bearing on tenant VMs, the identity store, and accounts that they use, whether they can join an Active Directory Domain, and so on.
For example, you can deploy IaaS tenant VMs on top of Azure Stack Hub and join them to a corporate Active Directory domain, from which you can use accounts. You are not required to use the AAD identity store for those accounts.
When you use AAD for your identity store, you need two AAD accounts. These accounts can be the same account or different accounts. While using the same account might be simpler and useful if you have a limited number of Azure accounts, your business needs might require two accounts—global and billing:
Choose this option if you want to: