Installing the Microsoft R Client

The RevoScaleR package is a Microsoft offering and it is not available on CRAN. To get RevoScaleR and its full functionality, we need a license for Microsoft R Server. However, we can get a free, light-weight version of Microsoft R Server by installing the Microsoft R Client. Microsoft R Client gives us an installation of R which has the RevoScaleR library built into it, and loaded by default when we start an R session. Once we install it all we need to do is point our IDE (Visual Studio or RStudio) to the Microsoft R Client installation instead of any other installation of R (if there is no other installation of R, the IDE usually automatically detects the R Client installation). Using Microsoft R Client, we can develop code in R that leverages the RevoScaleR functions. This is a great way to learn how to use RevoScaleR and what functionality is offered. However, because Microsoft R Client is a free and light-weight version of Microsoft R Server, we are still bound by some limitations mainly around data-size and performance.

Please follow the steps in the link provided above to get Microsoft R Client installed. Additionally, we need an R IDE such as Visual Studio with RTVS or RStudio.