How do I add existing VM in Azure Batch pool?

Question

We have one Windows 2012 based VM in Azure and want to add this VM into Azure Batch service's pool. Reason behind this is that we have installed one licensed application on this VM. This application provides installation wizard and I am not sure if such application can be installed using application package feature of batch pool.

Can someone please advice on

1. How do I install this installation wizard based application on an compute node of batch service pool?
2. If 1st is not possible then how do I use existing VM in which we have already installed this application?

Since we are only working on PoC, it is fine for us to use only 1 VM in an batch service pool.

Answer 1

You will not be able to use the application packages feature to install a wizard-driven installer. Application packages can be thought of as .zip file equivalents which are automatically unpacked when the compute node is created.

1. How do I install this installation wizard based application on an compute node of batch service pool?

If your installation wizard offers a silent or quiet installation option, you can install this using the pool's start task.

2. If 1st is not possible then how do I use existing VM in which we have already installed this application?

You can use the VNet feature to join the VM to the pool. However, scheduling directly to this VM will not work since it was not created by Batch and there is no scheduling agent on the non-Batch VM.