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.
Regards, Tim -- Dr Tim Cutts Acting Head of Scientific Computing Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute On 27 Nov 2013, at 12:18, John Hearns <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On 27 November 2013 12:01, Peter Clapham <[email protected]> wrote: > > In the bio-informatics arena the local software half life is > approximately 6-12 months. This, along with the wide range of > applications in use rapidly creates an environment where users can cross > link or pick up binaries or libraries that they weren't expecting. > Rolling containers with predefined environments would not only > potentially alleviate these potential pitfalls BUT they could provide an > environment in which data can be re-analysed at a future date in against > the same pre-defined environment. > Peter, that's very very interesting! > > I must say that I first started thinking along these lines when working in > High Energy Physics. > Predating Docker by a loooooongggg way, I though VMs. > At the time, the CERN LHC analysis depended on running on Redhat Linux, on a > version which > was going out of date, or had already gone out of date (can;t remember the > version). > Hence the creation of Fermi/CERN Linux. > I thought that instead of physically installing what was soon to be an > out-of-date distro on 1000s' of machines, > wouldn't it be better to have a VM which you were sure would haev all the > libraries and dependencies for your > environment, and then ship it off to remote centres. > Of course this is being done today. > > > Regarding ISV codes, today you frequently see a vendor supplying an entire > tree of software, > complete with an MPI plus a version of Python with libraries, plus X, Y,Z. > They do this because they have to ship software which works to users, and > don't want the inevitable > 'Oh - my sysadmin installed Python 2.7 and your software does not work with > that' type of query. > I don't see that it is that far a step to packaging up Docker containers. > > (Sorry - don't mean to single out Python here - I've just been workign with > it for the past few days). > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Beowulf mailing list, [email protected] sponsored by Penguin Computing > To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit > http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf -- The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is operated by Genome Research Limited, a charity registered in England with number 1021457 and a company registered in England with number 2742969, whose registered office is 215 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE.
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