The Integration Runtime (IR) is the compute infrastructure used by Azure Data Factory and Azure Synapse pipelines to provide the following data integration capabilities across different network environments:
Data Flow: Execute a Data Flow in a managed Azure compute environment.
Data movement: Copy data across data stores in a public or private networks (for both on-premises or virtual private networks). The service provides support for built-in connectors, format conversion, column mapping, and performant and scalable data transfer.
Activity dispatch: Dispatch and monitor transformation activities running on a variety of compute services such as Azure Databricks, Azure HDInsight, ML Studio (classic), Azure SQL Database, SQL Server, and more.
SSIS package execution: Natively execute SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) packages in a managed Azure compute environment.
Data Factory offers three types of Integration Runtime (IR), and you should choose the type that best serves your data integration capabilities and network environment requirements. The three types of IR are:
Azure
Self-hosted
Azure-SSIS