Does Julia run in Azure?

General Usage
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I confess – I have never used Azure, and know little of it. My understanding is that it involves using a web browser as a terminal window, and run code via distant log-in – using pre-installed software, and with flexibility wrt. what hardware I run the code on.

I was just in a meeting with a local energy company for possible co-operation. They want to give me and colleagues access to their tools in MS Azure. The scripting options they offer are Python and R. I’m not really interested in taking up work in Python/R, therefore I ask for advice…

  • Is it possible to run Julia in Azure? In other words: could MS make Julia with packages available in Azure?
  • From what they showed me, it looked like one can run code in something similar to Jupyter Notebook (DataBricks??).
  • The file format they use for the data is *.arvo. I was told there is a Python package to read from *.arvo files. Any Julia packages for this? (Some sort of binary format, they claimed.)
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I guess it depends on what Azure services they are give you access to. It certainly is possible to create a base Linux (e.g. Ubuntu) VM and install Julia manually.

Azure also offers data science VMs with Julia and Jupyter pre-installed. I believe that they are also Virtual Desktops for Windows and Linux.

I have not used Azure, but I’ve done homework on it. I currently use Google Cloud.

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The thing to remember about Azure (and Google Cloud and AWS and …) is that it’s just a computer. It’s someone else’s computer. With a nearly limitless amount of configurability and infrastructure.

So, yes, Julia happily runs on Azure, but it all depends on how their things are configured. If they’re using the Windows Data Science VM, then it has JuliaPro already installed. Otherwise you could potentially install it yourself.

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In this case, I have to go with the tools the external partner uses… :-o

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Good to know it is possible.

Last time I tried to use Julia Pro (academic/free version), I was not allowed to add the packages I needed to use. I don’t know why. Perhaps it is only allowed to install packages that have been quality assured??

Anyway, this energy company apparently has decided to use Python. But still they offer R. I’ll check again whether they are willing to open up to include Julia in their list of tools.