Stop and start Azure Stack Hub

For various reasons—including maintenance, updates, or troubleshooting—you may need to stop and start your Azure Stack Hub environment. This procedure is critical, and administrators preparing for the AZ-600 exam should be familiar with the right steps to manage the Azure Stack Hub infrastructure effectively.

Stopping Azure Stack Hub

Stopping the Azure Stack Hub should be done with caution and typically is performed during planned maintenance windows. Before you begin the process, you should ensure all tenant workloads are de-allocated or shut down properly to avoid data loss or corruption.

Here is the general procedure for stopping Azure Stack Hub:

1. Login into the Azure Stack Hub Administrator Portal: This is typically done through the portal URL which is in the format: https://adminportal.local.azurestack.external.
2. Notify Tenants: Communication with tenants about the downtime is crucial to prevent impact on their services. Tenants should be given enough time to prepare for the maintenance window.
3. Close User Sessions and Deallocate Resources: Ensure no active user sessions are in progress and deallocate virtual machine resources properly through Azure Resource Manager (ARM) to ensure a clean shutdown.
4. Shut Down Infrastructure Roles: From the Administrator portal, shut down infrastructure roles and services. If there are specific instructions for the order of shutting down services in your version of Azure Stack Hub, follow those instructions carefully.
5. Power Off The Physical Machines: Once all services have been stopped within the Azure Stack Hub, proceed to power off the physical machines that host your Azure Stack Hub. This is done via the hardware lifecycle host, and the process can vary depending on the hardware vendor’s specific instructions.
6. Check The Status: Before performing the next steps, make sure that all components are fully shut down and there are no active sessions.

Starting Azure Stack Hub

Starting the Azure Stack Hub involves multiple steps to ensure that all components are running as they should be.

1. Power On The Physical Machines: Begin by powering on the hardware that hosts your Azure Stack Hub. Once the hardware is online, the Azure Stack Hub software components will start booting up.
2. Verify Health and Status of Infrastructure Role Instances: You can monitor the health and status of the infrastructure role instances from the hardware lifecycle host, ensuring all components come up correctly.
3. Start Infrastructure Roles and Services: Using the Administrator portal, start the infrastructure roles and services. Confirm that all the necessary services are up and running.
4. Run Test Workloads (Optional): As a precautionary step, you might want to run test workloads to ensure the system is operating properly before notifying tenants that the system is back online.
5. Notify Tenants: Once you have confirmed that Azure Stack Hub is running and stable, inform tenants that they can start using the services again.
6. Monitor System Health: Continuous monitoring after starting Azure Stack Hub is crucial. Check for any alerts or issues that may arise during startup.

Best Practices

• Always have a comprehensive backup strategy in place before performing any stop/start operations.
• Understand the implications of taking down Azure Stack Hub services, especially in a production environment where tenant workloads can be impacted.
• Follow your hardware vendor’s best practices for stopping and starting the system.
• Make sure to have proper monitoring in place to detect any issues during the stopping and starting process.
• Utilize automation tools and Azure Stack Hub’s administrative features to streamline the process.

Understanding how to properly stop and start Azure Stack Hub is crucial for ensuring the reliability, availability, and resiliency of the services provided. The AZ-600 exam will test your ability to perform these tasks while minimizing service interruption and maintaining the integrity of tenant data.