diff --git a/azure-pipelines.yml b/azure-pipelines.yml
index 52475bb4b3..a1e35ac35a 100644
--- a/azure-pipelines.yml
+++ b/azure-pipelines.yml
@@ -36,7 +36,7 @@ jobs:
     #container: "pytorchlightning/pytorch_lightning:base-cuda-py$[ variables['python.version'] ]-torch1.6"
     container:
       # base ML image: mcr.microsoft.com/azureml/openmpi3.1.2-cuda10.2-cudnn8-ubuntu18.04
-      image: "pytorchlightning/pytorch_lightning:base-cuda-py3.7-torch1.6"
+      image: "pytorchlightning/pytorch_lightning:base-cuda-py3.8-torch1.6"
       #endpoint: azureContainerRegistryConnection
       options: "--runtime=nvidia -e NVIDIA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=all"
 
diff --git a/dockers/base-cuda/Dockerfile b/dockers/base-cuda/Dockerfile
index 12df4a74db..10446282c0 100644
--- a/dockers/base-cuda/Dockerfile
+++ b/dockers/base-cuda/Dockerfile
@@ -114,7 +114,8 @@ RUN \
 
 RUN \
     # install DeepSpeed
-    pip install deepspeed>=0.3.14
+    # TODO(@SeanNaren): 0.3.15 is broken - skipping to unblock
+    pip install 'deepspeed>=0.3.14,!=0.3.15'
 
 RUN \
     # Show what we have
diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index cb56c98a60..6fa400cb3f 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -7,6 +7,6 @@ future>=0.17.1  # required for builtins in setup.py
 PyYAML>=5.1, !=5.4.*  # OmegaConf requirement >=5.1
 tqdm>=4.41.0
 fsspec[http]>=0.8.1
-tensorboard>=2.2.0
+tensorboard>=2.2.0, !=2.5.0  # 2.5.0 GPU CI error: 'Couldn't build proto file into descriptor pool!'
 torchmetrics==0.2.0
 pyDeprecate==0.2.0