Azure Batch Service Update - Dec., 2015

We are excited to announce the first major service update of Azure Batch since the service GA in July, 2015. This service update brings multiple new features.

  • Multi-instance task support. Batch service now support MPI type of workloads. Only Windows and MS-MPI combination is fully supported but we are working hard on other OS and MPI implementations. For detail, check this blog post.
  • Take node offline without deleting it. Our customers have been asking for this feature for a long time. With the Dec., 2015 service update, it's possible to disable a node from scheduling any new tasks without deleting it. ThisĀ feature can be accessed from Microsoft.Azure.Batch.PoolOperations.DisableComputeNodeScheduling and Microsoft.Azure.Batch.PoolOperations.EnableComputeNodeScheduling.
  • Change autoscale formula evaluation interval. By default, the Batch service adjusts a pool's size according to its autoscale formula every 15 minutes. This interval is configurable now through the property of CloudPool.AutoScaleEvaluationInterval. The minimum interval is 5 minutes, and the maximum is 168 hours. If an interval outside this range is specified, the Batch service will return a Bad Request (400) error.

All features mentioned above are available across all regions immediately. To access those features, the REST API version should be "2015-11-01.2.1" or using Azure Batch Client Library 3.0.0. All earlier version of REST and .NET API are still available. We will not obsolete them for now.