Batch Services

Question 1

Compute Nodes

Answer 1

A compute node is an Azure virtual machine (VM) or cloud service VM that is dedicated to processing a portion of your application’s workload.

Question 2

Pool

Answer 2

A pool is a collection of nodes that your application runs on. The pool can be created manually by you, or automatically by the Batch service when you specify the work to be done.

Question 3

Job

Answer 3

A job is a collection of tasks. It manages how computation is performed by its tasks on the compute nodes in a pool.

Question 4

Task

Answer 4

A task is a unit of computation that is associated with a job. It runs on a node. Tasks are assigned to a node for execution, or are queued until a node becomes free. Put simply, a task runs one or more programs or scripts on a compute node to perform the work you need done.

Question 5

How much does Azure Batch Service cost?

Answer 5

It’s free - you just pay for the resources being used by the Batch Service (storage, VMs, etc)

Question 6

What types of node management are supported?

Answer 6

Cloud Services Worker Roles - stateless, good for basic batch jobs
Virtual Machines - stateful, preferred type
Third Party

Question 7

Low Priority Nodes

Answer 7

Reduced resource cost

Tasks are only processed when capacity is available

Question 8

Packed Policy

Answer 8

Used to schedule max tasks per node before spinning up a new node

Question 9

Spread Policy

Answer 9

Evenly distributes new tasks to all available nodes regardless