Forum Discussion
Runtime installations on Azure Functions
We have a serverless requirement to run an ETL tool jobs from Azure Functions. The run time utility package for the ETL tool, would need to be installed on the azure functions, so it can run those u...
There isn’t a built-in mechanism to “install a runtime on every invocation” in Functions – that pattern would add a lot of cold-start and isn’t how the platform is designed. Instead, the usual approaches are:
- Ship the ETL runtime with the Function app – place the binaries/scripts under your function app’s file system (for example under tools/ in the app content) and call them from Python. This follows the guidance for bringing binary dependencies into Functions. Microsoft Learn+1
- Package everything in a custom container and run the Function in a Premium / Dedicated plan. The ETL runtime is baked into the image, so it’s always available when the function starts. Microsoft Learn+1
- Call out to Informatica as a managed service (REST API / Cloud runtime) so the Function only orchestrates, instead of hosting the ETL engine itself.
In all of these options the utility is deployed with the app, not installed dynamically on each trigger, which tends to be much more reliable and predictable in production.