Use of Containers for High-Performance Computing

Abstract

The past decade, virtual machines emerged to solve many infrastructure problems and practical use of computing resources. The limitations of this type of technology, are in the sense of resource overload because each virtual machine has a complete copy of an operating system plus different libraries needed to run an application. Containers technology reduces this load by eliminating the hypervisor and the virtual machine for its operation, where each application is executed with the most elementary of a server, plus a shared instance of the operating system that hosts it. Container technology is already an essential part of the IT industry, as it is a simpler and more efficient way to virtualize Micro-Services with workflow’s creations support in development and operations (DevOps). Unlike the use of virtual machines, this solution generates much less overhead in the kernel host and the application, improving performance. In the high-performance computing (HPC) there is a willingness to implement this solution for scientific computing purposes. The most important and standard technology in the industry is Docker, however is not a trivial and direct adoption of this standard for the requirements of scientific computing in a HPC environment. In the present study, a review of research works focused on the use of containers for the HPC will be carried out with the objective of familiarizing the user and system administrator of HPC in the use of this technology, and how scientific research projects can get benefit from this type of technology in terms of mobility of compute and reproducibility of workflows.