ACES: Fundamentals of Containers
Overview
Instructor(s): Richard Lawrence
Time: Tuesday, October 21, 2025 — 1:30PM-4:00PM CT
Location: Online using Zoom
Prerequisite(s): 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.
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Registration will open up on this webpage the week before the class.
Course Materials
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