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

Presentation slides

The presentation slides are available as downloadable PDF files.

• Fundamentals of Containers (Fall 2025): PDF

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• Fundamentals of Containers (Spring 2025): PDF
• Fundamentals of Containers (Fall 2024): PDF
• Fundamentals of Containers (Spring 2024): PDF
• Fundamentals of Containers (Fall 2023): PDF
• Charliecloud Tutorial Prelude (Spring 2023): PDF
• Charliecloud Tutorial (Spring 2023): PDF

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