Arcpy in the cloud

[TjibbeWubbels]

In our workflows we often wish to run arcpy script in the cloud. Currently this is only possible by either installing ArcGIS Pro or ArcGIS Server on a virtual machine. ArcGIS Pro will give you problems with the license, ArcGIS Server comes with way too much overhead. 

I understand arcpy cannot be installed as a stand-alone Python module as it depends on the Pro runtime. But it would be great if besides ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Server there was a third option: ArcGIS Pro runtime engine (similar to geoanalytics engine). It should offer the possibility to un arcpy scripts on this engine and handle licensing in a way similar to ArcGIS Server.

With ArcGIS Pro runtime engine you would be able to run arcpy on a VM, in a docker container, locally, etc. You would finally be able to run arcpy in the cloud.

[JoshuaBixby]

Although I agree ArcGIS Pro, and especially ArcGIS Server, has lots of unnecessary overhead if you only want to run ArcPy, what are the licensing issues you run into with ArcGIS Pro in the cloud? 

[TjibbeWubbels]

We use ArcGIS Online as license server for ArcGIS Pro. So on named user basis. When using Arcpy in the cloud with an ArcGIS Pro installation, we need either a concurrent license or take a license offline. For this we would need to create a generic ArcGIS Online account with a creator (or higher) UT. It will work, but it's against our company's (and Esri's) policy"no generic account. Also: I now have all the functionality of ArcGIS Online I don't need and all the UI functionality of ArcGIS Pro I don't need. Also, I need to use a windows VM to make this work, while docker containers would be preferable.

I know it's technically possible to make it work using ArcGIS Pro (and ArcGIS Server). But I would welcome the opportunity to have a smaller install, that can run in a docker container, and simply allows me to run my ArcPy scripts.