Please don't retire the Azure ML Classic version

Question

I've been using the Classic version of Azure ML to teach my graduate-lvel professional MBA/EMBA students. It was fantastically easy for them to set up and run their very first experiment in 10 minutes or less. They were also able to run each step of the experiment individually, which is really helpful for succeeding steps have access to the results of the previous steps and don't require the student to type in names of variables.

The new version of Azure ML is a disaster. Tech savvy as I am (with 35 years of experience as a software engineer and executive), it was monstrously difficult to set it up. After final set up, I couldn't get even one experiment to run. Even starting up the compute instance took several minutes.

I kept getting this error:
"Failed to execute command group with error An unexpected error occurred while executing command due to: Failed to pull Docker image mcr.microsoft.com/azureml/runtime/cap/lifecycler/installed:eastus2-stable due to: None"

At this point, I'm throwing in the towel. Even if this is solvable, I'm sure there will be hundreds of variations on this and other types of errors. All this has nothing to do with learning ML. My students will get stuck in the weeds of Cloud configuration, instead of actually learning ML.

Retiring the Classic version is a terrible decision by Microsoft, not well thought out at all. You've basically lost your best influencer advocates - the MBA/EMBA students, who would have influenced buying decisions in their companies.

If you can, please retain the Classic free version for students with 'edu' emails. Please contact me for further feedback or to discuss.

Answer 1

Hi @Garimella, Kiran,

Thank you for sharing your experience and concerns regarding the transition from the Classic version of Azure ML to the new version. We understand the challenges you’ve faced and various technical issues, such as the one you encountered with Docker image execution. To address these concerns, I recommend you to submit a request through the Azure Feedback Forum. Here's the link to the Azure Feedback Forum: Post idea · Community (azure.com).

Your input as an experienced professional and educator is invaluable in shaping tools that better serve the academic community.

Regarding your error, please see similar issue reported here: Failed to pull Docker image.

Thank you for understanding.

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If this answers your query, do click Accept Answer and Yes for was this answer helpful.

Answer 2

Hello Garimella, Kiran,

Thanks for your question and suggestion.

I will suggest you post this on the feedback link https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/ as if it gathers many votes one of the engineers can look into it.

For the error message, see similar issue here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/1695804/failed-to-execute-command-group-with-error-an-unex

You can mark it 'Accept Answer' if this helped.

Regards,

Abiola