Microsoft is teasing enterprises with its hardware requirements for running the preview of Azure Stack, its upcoming on-premise hybrid version of the Azure cloud.

The Redmond-based tech giant first revealed its plans for the Azure Stack at its Ignite conference last May, but has been somewhat tight-lipped about it since.

At the time of its announcement, the company said the stack will be optimized for the deployment of enterprise applications such as SQL Server, Exchange, and SharePoint. It’s essentially a new “private cloud” solution that makes it easier for developers to scale applications across their existing data centers, with the option to pull in extra resources from the cloud when necessary.

Azure Stack is a competitive play by Microsoft against Amazon Web Services’ and Google’s clouds, because neither of them provide options for hosting your own service.

The Azure Stack is actually quite similar to the hybrid cloud angle VMware has been chasing since 2013, when it launched its vCloud Hybrid Service (later renamed as vCloud Air) that promised a virtual extension of customer’s on-premise environments to the cloud.

It’s well known that Microsoft has been working with its hardware partners to deliver pre-integrated packages that allow for a quick set up of private Azure clouds. Now, the company has unveiled the minimum hardware specifications required for those who wish to try out the upcoming Azure Stack preview when it’s released.

According to Microsoft, the requirements aren’t all that: users will need a single server, ideally a Hewlett-Packard Enterprise DL 360 Gen 9 or a Dell R630, packed with a minimum 96GB of RAM and 12 cores. The Redmond firm said it’s releasing the specs now to help customers plan their technical preview deployments in the new year, although it’s yet to give an exact release date.

Here’s a video from Microsoft’s Jeffrey Snover explaining the requirements in more detail:

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