ACES: Fundamentals of Containers
Overview
Instructor: Richard Lawrence
Time: Tuesday, October 15, 2024 — 10:00AM-12:30PM CT
Location: Online using Zoom
Prerequisites: Current ACCESS ID, basic Linux/Unix skills
This course introduces core concepts of containerization and covers basic and advanced containerization tasks with a focus on understanding best practices for containers on HPC systems. The course is intended to cultivate an in-depth general-purpose understanding of containers for an audience who may be unfamiliar with containers or may have previously used containers only in a specific context. Topics include building containers images, working with container repositories, and container features necessary for using containers on HPC systems. Exercises will be performed on the ACES cluster, a composable accelerator testbed at Texas A&M University, using the Charliecloud and Singularity container engines.
Registration will open up on this webpage the week before the class.
Course Materials
Presentation slides
The presentation slides are available as downloadable PDF files.
Learning Objectives and Agenda
In this class, participants will:
- Use both Singularity and Charliecloud runtimes
- Retrieve a container image from an online repository
- Inspect container images and execute software found therein
- Build and modify containers by hand or from a recipe
- Save container images in HPC-friendly file formats
This session will address the following topics:
- Overview of containers
- Singularity and Charliecloud
- Getting a container image
- Container usage basics
- Building and modifying containers
- Containers for HPC