Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Releases CentOS-Based 'Linux Data Science Virtual Machine' For Azure (betanews.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft has announced a CentOS-based VM image for Azure called 'Linux Data Science Virtual Machine'. The VM has pre-installed tools such as Anaconda Python Distribution, Computational Network Toolkit, and Microsoft R Open. It focuses on machine learning and analytics, making it a great choice for data scientists. "Thanks to Azure's worldwide cloud infrastructure, customers now have on-demand access to a Linux environment to perform a wide range of data science tasks. The VM saves customers the time and effort of having to discover, install, configure and manage these tools individually. Hosting the data science VM on Azure ensures high availability, elastic capacity and a consistent set of tools to foster collaboration across your team", says Gopi Kumar, Senior Program Manager, Microsoft Data Group.
.. does it run ... oh, I see what you did there.
As someone who does a fair bit of (what the world now calls) data science --300GB/day of new stuff coming in -- I have to compliment Microsoft on the toolset they have chosen for this image. I know firsthand that it's a pain to set all that stuff up. Just getting that damned R kernel working for Jupyter has cost me many countless hours (albeit mainly on OSX).
There have been AWS scientific computing images available here and there over the last few years, but none have been all that great.
What in blazes is Microsoft R Open? A Microsoft rebranding of R?
Embrace.
Too late, SystemD already did that.
THAT'S value-add, by-gummity.
I think maybe they don't get how easy it is to install/maintain software on Linux. Makes sense, since they've always made it so much harder than it has to be.
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
another debian freak :))
"It feels like I'm at the Zoo when reading this thread - I'm frightened, but it's interesting" (c)
Wouldn't that be Xenix?
Perhaps Microsoft could work on the basics for their VM cloud services?
I don't know, like maybe... One click snapshot images?
Simple VM backup management?
Instead right now on Azure, they're requiring people to learn and write hundreds of lines in PowerShell scripts to do it. There aren't even working practical examples of how to do this on Azure RM and their own support doesn't know how to write the scripts themselves. The performance is surprisingly poor at the lowest system configurations, particularly because similar configurations else where are more performant. It's a travesty.
If this was a provider sitting on it's own, without the Microsoft name, nobody would use it. The API is terrible, the web interface is terrible, the PowerShell cmdlets are terrible.
You would be hard pressed to find anyone that would use this over other providers. The slightly cheaper pricing to other providers like Amazon in certain circumstances just isn't worth all the loss of functionality, ease of use and time for Azure's VM offerings.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
why would you ask that here? You're lucky you got a straight answer.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.