NIH HPC News & Announcements
Software container application Singularity is now installed on Biowulf
Date: 04 October 2016 11:10:58
From: Helix Systems Staff
The NIH HPC staff is pleased to announce the availability of
Singularity software containers on Biowulf.
Software containers are conceptually similar to small,
light-weight virtual machines. Using software containers,
you can build custom Linux environments and install your own
applications into them. After building a container, you can
move it from one machine to another and easily run your
applications on a new system. Docker, a popular container
application, is not appropriate for Biowulf, but most Docker
containers can be converted to Singularity.
Here are some scenarios for using Singularity:
- You want to use an application but it requires a
newer/older/different version of Linux than the version
installed on Biowulf (Centos 6).
- You have a complicated pipeline or an application with
lots of dependencies and you want to ensure your
collaborator can use it with ease.
- You finish a project and want to archive your analysis so
that it can still run on a new computer 10 years from now.
- You want to run an application on Biowulf, but it's
distributed as a Docker container. In this case you can
simply convert the Docker container to Singularity format.
- You would like to create a reproducible analysis or
workflow by providing fixed versions of analysis tools along
with the workflow and the data.
You can find out more about running Singularity on Biowulf
here:
https://hpc.nih.gov/apps/singularity.html
If you have questions or comments, please contact the
NIH HPC staff at staff@helix.nih.gov.
NIH HPC Staff
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