Batch

Cloud-scale job scheduling and compute management

Scale to tens, hundreds, or thousands of virtual machines
Cloud-enable batch and HPC applications
Stage data and execute compute pipelines

Choose Linux or Windows to run jobs
Autoscale on work in the queue
Pay for what you use with no capital investment

Get batch computing power when you need it

Batch processing began with mainframe computers and punch cards. Today it still plays a central role in business, engineering, science, and other pursuits that require running lots of automated tasks—processing bills and payroll, calculating portfolio risk, designing new products, rendering animated films, testing software, searching for energy, predicting the weather, and finding new cures for disease. Previously only a few had access to the computing power for these scenarios. With Azure Batch, that power is available to you when you need it, without any capital investment.

Choose your operating system and tools

Choose the operating system and development tools you need to run your large-scale jobs on Batch. Batch provides a consistent job scheduling and management experience whether you select Windows Server or Linux compute nodes, but lets you take advantage of the unique features of each environment. With Windows, use your existing Windows-based code, including .NET, to run large-scale compute jobs in Azure. With Linux, choose from popular distributions including CentOS, Ubuntu, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server to run your compute jobs, or use Docker containers to lift and shift your applications. Batch provides SDKs and supports a range of development tools including Python and Java.

Cloud-enable your cluster applications

Batch runs the applications that you use on workstations and clusters today. It’s easy to cloud-enable your executables and scripts to scale out. Batch provides a queue to receive the work that you want to run and executes your applications. Describe the data that need to be moved to the cloud for processing, how the data should be distributed, what parameters to use for each task, and the command to start the process. Think about this like an assembly line with multiple applications. Batch makes it easy to share data between steps and manage the execution as a whole.

Imagine running at 100x scale

You use a workstation today, maybe a small cluster, or you wait in a queue to run your jobs. What if you had access to 16 cores, 100 cores, 10,000 cores, or even 100,000 cores when you needed them, and only had to pay for what you used? With Batch you can. Avoid the bottlenecks and waiting that limit your imagination. What could you do on Azure that you can’t do today?

Tell us what to execute

At the core of Batch is a high-scale job scheduling engine, available to you as a managed service. Use the scheduler in your application to dispatch work. Batch can also work with cluster job schedulers or behind the scenes of your SaaS service. You don’t need to write your own work queue, dispatcher, or monitor. Batch provides this as a service.

Let Batch take care of scale for you

When you're ready to run a job, Batch starts a pool of compute virtual machines for you, installing applications and staging data, running jobs with as many tasks as you have, identifying failures and re-queuing work, and scaling down the pool as work completes. You have control over scale to meet deadlines, manage costs, and run at the right scale for your application.

Deliver solutions as a service

Batch processes jobs on demand, not on a pre-defined schedule, so users run jobs in the cloud when they need to. Manage who can access Batch and how many resources they can use, and ensure that requirements such as encryption are met. Rich monitoring helps you to know what’s going on and identify problems. Detailed reporting helps you track usage.

Learn how Towers Watson delivered its Risk Agility FM insurance solution using Batch

Render animations quickly and easily

Run your rendering jobs in the cloud using Batch. Avoid the complexities of managing resources and reduce the time needed to complete your jobs. Check out the set of samples that let you use Batch together with Blender, a free open-source 3D animation suite that supports all of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation and motion tracking, and even game creation. Whether you’re an individual or a studio, you can rely on Batch for photorealistic rendering, fast rigging, and amazing simulations and game creation. Batch provides the resources to render animation in a realistic timeframe to meet project deadlines.

Learn how to use the samples

Check out the samples on GitHub