I am excited to introduce you to my Unofficial Azure Adaptive Cloud Lab Kit x Arc Jumpstart. Do you need a home lab for Azure Arc, Kubernetes, Windows Server, IoT and much more? The Unofficial Azure Adaptive Cloud Lab Kit x Arc Jumpstart allows you to test various kinds of Azure Adaptive Cloud solutions for hybrid cloud and edge computing, using technologies such as Azure Arc, Azure Stack HCI, and Azure IoT. It provides a physical NUC compute unit running Windows Server 2025 with a virtualization environment specially designed to work with home labs and edge scenarios. It also provides automated zero-to-hero scenarios for Azure Arc and Azure IoT using the Arc Jumpstart.
The lab environment provides you with a virtual lab environment, including a physical Hyper-V server running Windows Server 2025 which allows you to run virtual machines. This allows you to leverage this as a platform to run Arc Jumpstart scenarios to try adaptive cloud solutions for hybrid cloud and edge scenarios. It also includes the possibilities to test Azure services such as:
- Arc-enabled servers
- Arc-enabled SQL Server
- Arc-enabled Kubernetes
- Arc-enabled data services
- Arc-enabled app services
- Arc-enabled machine learning
- Arc, Edge, and Azure IoT Operations
- Arc and Azure Lighthouse
- AKS enable by Azure Arc, AKS Edge Essentials
- and more
Check out the Arc Jumpstart Drop on the Arc Jumpstart website:
Note: This project is not supported by Microsoft and only has community support. This project is not sponsored by any third-party.
Get started
The Azure Adaptive Cloud Lab Kit x Arc Jumpstart consists of two components: the lab environment and the self-guided Arc Jumpstart scenarios. The Arc Jumpstart scenarios are directly hosted on the Arc Jumpstart website and can be used for creating your labs.
Important Things to Know
- This lab kit contains evaluation software that is designed for IT professionals interested in evaluating Windows Server and Azure solutions and tools on behalf of their organization. We do not recommend that you install this evaluation if you are not an IT professional or are not professionally managing corporate networks or devices.
- Additionally, the lab environment is intended for evaluation purposes only. It is a standalone virtual environment and should not be used or connected to your production environment.
- The Windows Server 2025 Evaluation version expires 180 days after the lab is provisioned.
- This project is a community project and is not sponsored by any third-party.
- The unofficial Adaptive Cloud Lab Kit is not supported by Microsoft and only has community support.
- You are welcome to support the project and contirbute to it.
- Windows Server 2025 Evaluation licenses should only be used for evaluation porpuses.
- By enabling additional Azure services, additional costs may apply.
Prerequisites
To get started with the Azure Adaptive Cloud Lab Kit you need the following:
- Lab Kit Hardware (Intel ASUS NUC or similar)
- Windows Server 2025 Evaluation version
- USB Flash Drive
- Azure Subscription
- Internet Connectivity
Lab Kit Hardware
The Azure Adaptive Cloud Lab Kit x Arc Jumpstart consists of, and is built by using an Intel NUC, NUC stands for Next Unit of Computing and is a line of small-form-factor barebone computer kits designed by Intel. The advantage of this machine is the small formfactor, low power consumption and almost no fan noise.
Note: Also other hardware systems with similar specifications can be used.
- 1x ASUS NUC 13 Pro Kit NUC13ANHi5 (Intel Core i5-1340P)
- 1x WD Black SN850X 1000 GB, M.2 2280
- 2x Corsair Vengeance 32GB, 3200 MHz, DDR4-RAM, SO-DIMM
Note: The Intel ASUS NUC hardware doesn’t provide any drivers for Windows Server operating systems. Therefore, networking drivers need to be added with a workaround.
System Requirements
The lab environment used with this lab guide supports the 64-bit editions of Windows Server 2025 or later.
The Hyper-V Host on which the lab needs to be imported must meet the following minimum specifications:
- Hyper-V role installed
- Administrative rights on the device
- 500 GB of free disk space (1TB recommended)
- High-throughput disk subsystem
- 32GB of available memory (64 GB recommended)
- High-end processor for faster processing (Intel Core i5 or higher)
Windows Server 2025 Evaluation version
Download the latest Windows Server 2025 Evaluation version here: Evaluaton Center
Azure Subscription
To use Azure services, you will need to use an Azure subscription. If you don’t have an Azure subscription check out the following links:
Internet Connectivity
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Azure Adaptive Cloud Lab Kit Installation Guide
You can follow these basic steps to set up your unofficial Azure Adaptive Cloud Lab Kit feat. Arc Jumpstart with the following steps.
Build your NUC hardware
If your hardware is not yet built, you will need to set up SSD storage and memory in your Intel ASUS NUC.
Install Windows Server 2025
Install Windows Server 2025 on your Intel NUC. You can create a bootable USB drive to install Windows Server 2025 using the following guide.
Install Network Driver
If you are using an Intel NUC, Windows Server will not detect the network driver automatically. You will need to download the Windows 11 network driver from the official support site and follow the following guide to install it.
As a workaround you can also use a USB to Ethernet adapter.
Set name of your Azure Adaptive Cloud LabKit
Run the following command to change the server name of your Adaptive Cloud Lab Kit:
Rename-Computer -NewName "AdaptiveCloudLabKit01" Set up Hyper-V
After you have successfully installed the network driver for your machine, make sure you installed the latest Microsoft Updates.
Now you can enable the Hyper-V role, which will allow you to create virtual machines running on your Azure Adaptive Cloud Lab Kit. You can use the following PowerShell command to install the Hyper-V role. After running this command you will need to restart your Lab Kit.
Install-WindowsFeature -Name Hyper-V -IncludeAllSubFeature -IncludeManagementToolsOnboard Azure Adaptive Cloud Lab Kit to Azure using Azure Arc
You can start the Azure Arc Setup wizard in different ways on a Windows Server machine. One way is to click on the system tray icon at the bottom of the screen. This icon appears when the Azure Arc Setup feature is turned on, which is the default setting. Another way is to open the pop-up window in the Server Manager. A third way is to go to the Windows Server Start menu and select the wizard from there.
You can follow the folloing guide: Azure Arc Setup on Windows Server
Your Adaptive Cloud Lab Kit is now ready to run virtual machines, Kubernetes clusters and other workloads and connect them using Azure Arc and deploy Arc Jumpstart scenarios.
Jumpstart Scenarios
With the Azure Adaptive Cloud Lab Kit hardware in place, you’re now equipped to dive into a variety of Arc Jumpstart scenarios. This setup enables you to thoroughly evaluate hybrid cloud and edge computing environments. Utilizing services like Azure Arc, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure Stack HCI, and Azure IoT, you can explore and test the integration and management capabilities of Azure across different infrastructures, ensuring a seamless and scalable deployment of applications and services.
Check out the following Arc Jumpstart scenarios:
- Arc-enabled servers
- Arc-enabled Kubernetes
- Arc-enabled SQL Server
- Arc, Edge, and IoT Operations
- Arc and Azure Lighthouse
- Arc-enabled data services
- and more on ArcJumpstart.com
Resources
You can find more information on related topics for the Unofficial Azure Adaptive Cloud Lab Kit x Arc Jumpstart with the following links:
To learn about Microsoft’s Azure Adaptive Cloud approach, get started with our homepage.
- Azure Arc Documentations
- Azure Stack HCI Documentations
- Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) enabled by Azure Arc Documentations
- Azure IoT Documentations
Contribute
The Azure Adaptive Cloud Lab Kit Guide is hosted on GitHub. Please feel free to contribute to this community project.
Tags: adaptive cloud, ASUS NUC, Azure, Cloud, Hyper-V, Intel, Intel NUC, Jumpstart, Lab Kit, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Virtualization, Windows Server, Windows Server 2025 Last modified: July 31, 2024
