Altair EDEM 2025/2025.1 crash on Azure VMs with NVIDIA GPUs – any workaround?

FDSITA

Hi everyone,

I am trying to run Altair EDEM 2025 on Azure Virtual Machines but the application crashes immediately on launch. To verify if the issue had been fixed, I also tested with EDEM 2025.1, but the result is the same.

Environment tested:

• Azure VM types with NVIDIA GPUs: T4, A10, A100
• Operating systems:
  • Windows Server 2022 Azure Edition
  • Windows 11 Enterprise (fresh installation performed for testing)
• License is correctly configured via Altair One
• No detailed crash report is generated, only a generic Event Log entry.

From what I have read, it seems others may have faced similar issues with EDEM on Azure, but I could not find a clear solution.

Has anyone successfully managed to run EDEM 2025/2025.1 on Azure VMs with NVIDIA GPUs?

Thanks a lot for any insights or experiences you can share!

Stephen Cole

Hi,

This is most likely to be graphics related. Is there an error message generated by EDEM shown in a window?

If you start EDEM from command prompt and run a simulation with -c (console only) does it run OK?

https://help.altair.com/edem/topics/edem_simulator/using_the_edem_command_line_t.htm

You will likely have to give the full install path to edem.exe found in the install directory /bin folder

Equally if you run with debug-log:

edem.exe —debug-logger c:\location\file.txt

This usually gives some more information. It should show what display is detected. If it's a display issue quite often you see in the log details of the display detected, EDEM then checks the license and tries to open, at this point if it's graphics the crash would occur and the log stop writing.

I don't believe T4, A10, A100 have any display connectivity as they are not designed to have monitors so the system maybe detecting onboard graphics which often isn't supported as EDEM requires the graphics to support OpenGL 2.0 or later.

Its worth noting that Windows Server also isn't a supported operating system, often there are graphics issues. Does windows server have 'desktop experience' installed? https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/get-started/install-options-server-core-desktop-experience