<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=iso-8859-1"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Yes, Pete, Guy and I have been debating this stuff for some time, together with some of our informatics coders. Should virtualisation ever also be necessary (for example to ship a software stack to another site to analyse some of their data), it's also a very small step further from Docker to that, so using this sort of approach opens up a lot of possibilities in the future.<div><br></div><div>Regards,</div><div><br></div><div>Tim<br><div>
<div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Arial; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Arial; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Arial; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">-- <br>Dr Tim Cutts<br>Acting Head of Scientific Computing</div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Arial; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute<br><br><br></div></div></div></div>
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<br><div><div>On 27 Nov 2013, at 12:18, John Hearns <<a href="mailto:hearnsj@googlemail.com">hearnsj@googlemail.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><br><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On 27 November 2013 12:01, Peter Clapham <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:pc7@sanger.ac.uk" target="_blank">pc7@sanger.ac.uk</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote style="BORDER-LEFT:#ccc 1px solid;MARGIN:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;PADDING-LEFT:1ex" class="gmail_quote">
<div class="HOEnZb">
<div class="h5"><br>In the bio-informatics arena the local software half life is<br>approximately 6-12 months. This, along with the wide range of<br>applications in use rapidly creates an environment where users can cross<br>
link or pick up binaries or libraries that they weren't expecting.<br>Rolling containers with predefined environments would not only<br>potentially alleviate these potential pitfalls BUT they could provide an<br>environment in which data can be re-analysed at a future date in against<br>
the same pre-defined environment.<br></div></div></blockquote>
<div>Peter, that's very very interesting!</div>
<div> </div>
<div>I must say that I first started thinking along these lines when working in High Energy Physics.</div>
<div>Predating Docker by a loooooongggg way, I though VMs.</div>
<div>At the time, the CERN LHC analysis depended on running on Redhat Linux, on a version which </div>
<div>was going out of date, or had already gone out of date (can;t remember the version).</div>
<div>Hence the creation of Fermi/CERN Linux.</div>
<div>I thought that instead of physically installing what was soon to be an out-of-date distro on 1000s' of machines,</div>
<div>wouldn't it be better to have a VM which you were sure would haev all the libraries and dependencies for your</div>
<div>environment, and then ship it off to remote centres.</div>
<div>Of course this is being done today.</div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Regarding ISV codes, today you frequently see a vendor supplying an entire tree of software,</div>
<div>complete with an MPI plus a version of Python with libraries, plus X, Y,Z.</div>
<div>They do this because they have to ship software which works to users, and don't want the inevitable</div>
<div>'Oh - my sysadmin installed Python 2.7 and your software does not work with that' type of query.</div>
<div>I don't see that it is that far a step to packaging up Docker containers.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>(Sorry - don't mean to single out Python here - I've just been workign with it for the past few days).</div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
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