Survey of adaptive containerization architectures for HPC

Abstract: Containers offer an array of advantages that benefit research reproducibility and portability across groups and systems. As container tools mature, container security improves, and High-performance computing (HPC) and cloud system tools converge, supercomputing centers are increasingly integrating containers in their workflows. The technology selection process requires sufficient information on the diverse tools available, yet the majority of research into containers still focuses on cloud environments. We consider an adaptive containerization approach, with a focus on accelerating the deployment of applications and workflows on HPC systems using containers. To this end, we discuss the specific HPC requirements regarding container tools, and analyze the entire containerization stack, including container engines and registries, in-depth. Finally, we consider various orchestrator and HPC workload manager integration scenarios.