Azure Local
Azure Local Buyer's Guide — 2026
Hardware sizing, AKS-on-Local design patterns, Arc/Entra integration, total deployment cost across 4-node, 8-node, and 16-node clusters. Vendor comparison (Dell, HPE, Lenovo).
32 pages· PDF· Infrastructure Architect, IT Director
What's inside
Bringing Azure services into your own facility is now a credible alternative to full public-cloud lift-and-shift — but the buyer's market is opaque, and vendor sizing tools optimize for vendor margin, not your workload. This guide is the field-tested sizing model we use across deployments at 4-node, 8-node, and 16-node scales, with line-item vendor pricing, AKS-on-Local design patterns, and Arc/Entra integration playbooks.
Table of contents
- Workload sizing model: how to right-size before the vendor demo
- 4 / 8 / 16-node reference designs with line-item BOMs
- AKS on Azure Local — networking, storage, lifecycle
- Arc + Entra ID identity integration patterns
- Vendor comparison: Dell APEX, HPE ProLiant, Lenovo ThinkAgile
- Operational handoff: monitoring, patching, capacity
Pairs well with
Private Cloud
Private Cloud TCO Worksheet
Editable spreadsheet (Notion-shareable) that takes your public cloud bill and produces a side-by-side Ultiblob proposal. Same math we run for free TCO assessments.
AI Startups
AI Infrastructure Stack Blueprint
Reference architecture for an AI startup at seed → Series A → Series B. GPU sizing (L40S vs H100), inference runtime (vLLM vs TensorRT-LLM), vector DB selection, RAG patterns, observability.