Evaluation and Benchmarking of Singularity MPI containers on EU Research e-Infrastructure

Linux Containers with the build-once run-anywhere principle have gained huge attention in the research community where portability and reproducibility are key concerns. Unlike virtual machines (VMs), containers run the underlying host OS kernel. The container filesystem can include all necessary non-default prerequisites to run the container application at unaltered performance. For this reason, containers are popular in HPC for use with parallel/MPI applications. Some use cases include also abstraction layers, e.g. MPI applications require matching of MPI version between the host and the container, and/or GPU applications require the underlying GPU drivers to be installed within the container filesystem. In short, containers can only abstract what is above the OS kernel, not below. Consequently, portability is not completely granted. This paper presents the experience of PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computer in Europe) in supporting Singularity containers on HPC clusters and provides notes about possible approaches for deploying MPI applications using different use cases. Performance comparison between bare metal and container executions are also provided, showing a negligible overhead in the container execution.