Cisco has decided to “retire” its Azure Local offering due to changes Microsoft made to the hardware and partnerships it supports for the on-prem hyperconverged cloud stack.

The networking giant quietly announced the change in a July 24 end of life and end of sale notice that reveals Cisco will stop selling its Azure Local bundles in October.

That notice states Cisco will not offer a direct replacement for the product, but “does encourage customers to evaluate alternative HCI solutions with Cisco Compute.”

A Cisco spokesperson referred The Register to a June 16 Microsoft blog post as the reason for its decision to quit Azure Local.

In that post, Microsoft explains that it has removed the option to run Azure Local on “Validated Nodes.”

Microsoft pre-sales Azure technical architect Sarah Lean, writing on her personal blog, rates Validated Nodes as the most flexible way to run Azure Local. “You can choose to purchase a complete setup from a hardware vendor, or build your own using individual components from the validated list,” she wrote. “You're in full control with a validated node, the hardware, deploying the software, managing firmware, driver updates and keeping the Azure Local operating system up to date.”

The other two options to run Azure Local are “Premier Solutions” and “Integrated Solutions.” Both of those options see Microsoft and the solution builder integrate their support services.

The Register understands that Cisco’s Azure Local products were Validated Nodes.

Now that Microsoft doesn’t allow Validated Nodes, Cisco appears to have decided not to step up to offer a Premier Solution or an Integrated Solution. Microsoft may not be crying into its cloud about that decision, given Cisco is a niche player in the x86 server market and its recent decision to pitch Azure Local as a sovereign cloud rather than HCI.

Beyond the fact that Microsoft no longer supports its Azure Local offering, Cisco hasn’t said why it’s chosen to walk away from Azure Local. Independent analyst Michael Warrilow might have one reason, as he last week shared his view that the Microsoft product “is not yet a suitable candidate for traditional data centre requirements.” Cisco may therefore feel it’s not worth investing in the work needed to get its hardware ready to run Microsoft’s stack.

Hyperconverged infrastructure has been a tricky category for Cisco, which in 2023 decided to discontinue its own HyperFlex offering and recommend Nutanix instead. ®