[Beowulf] Docker in HPC

[Olli-Pekka Lehto]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Bogdan Costescu" <bcostescu at gmail.com>

> Packing only the required libraries (which AFAIU is what the Docker
> containers are doing to keep the size low) is something the HPC scene
> has known for ~10 years... Anyone remembers bproc/Scyld ? It was
> transferring on demand the required libs; sure, one had to keep the
> versioned libs on the master to have them available to the app...

I certainly agree that this is not a new invention and Scyld was a really 
innovative system. A major difference is here is that this time the push 
is coming from the commodity side and is gaining a lot of momentum. Some 
advocates are touting it as the de facto way to deliver complex software 
packages for Linux in the future. 

Thus it might not be a question of choosing to adopt it and sell it to 
the users but rather having to respond to user demand for it. This means 
understanding and dealing with the constraints involved with especially
InfiniBand-based HPC clusters which you outlined pretty well in your mail.

Olli-Pekka