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.

  • 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