Microsoft Machine Learning Server (R Server) retirement on July 1, 2022

Published: June 30, 2021

Please go here to search for your product's lifecycle.

Microsoft Machine Learning Server, previously called Microsoft R Server, will retire on July 1, 2022*. This date reflects a 12-month support extension, providing existing customers with the opportunity to migrate.

Microsoft R-Open (MRO) is Microsoft's distribution of the R runtime. Azure SQL and SQL Server will also begin to phase out usage of MRO in favor of the CRAN distribution of R. Version 4.0.2 will be the last release of the MRO runtime, and the operationalization of machine learning models using MRO in the app pool of SQL Server Big Data Clusters will be retired.

The next version of SQL Server will not include the Machine Learning Server (Standalone) role as part of the setup experience. SQL Machine Learning Services will not be impacted by this change.

Customers are encouraged to explore programming in R using Azure SQL Managed Instance or SQL Server 2019 with SQL Machine Learning Services for native scoring. For distributed processing of R customers, Microsoft recommends using SQL Server Big Data Clusters which includes SparkR and sparklyr as part of its Apache Spark distribution. Customers using MRO as their R runtime should transition to the CRAN distribution of R. Go here for more detail and a full list of migration options and recommended paths forward.

* Version 9.4.7 will be the last release.