Bootstrapping your use of Containers

Overview

Teaching: 5 min
Exercises: 60 min

Questions

• How can I get started using containers in my research?

• Where can I get help to start using containers?

Objectives

• Get help to get your work up and running using containers

• Understand where you can get help from in the future

Now you hopefully know enough about containers to start to explore how to use them in your work and to understand what the potential benefits are to you. You may also have ideas around where the barriers and difficulties may lie and have further questions on how you can start using and/or trying containers in your research.

This session is designed to give you the opportunity to explore these questions and issues. The instructors and helpers on the course will be on hand to answer your questions and discuss next steps with you.

Potential discussions

Things you could discuss with the instructors and helpers could include:

• Your research workflow and where containers could help
• How to get access to facilities that support Singularity containers for your work
• How to get help and support to use containers for your work. For example, software development, further training, access to local expertise

Options for this session

There are a number of different options for practical work during this session. These include: exploring your own workflow with containers with support from instructors and helpers or discussing topics with the instructors/helpers (as described above). The idea of the session is to help you bootstrap your use of containers and what this means will differ from individual to individual!

Exploring your work using HPC

If you have a practical example of something from your area of work that you would like help with getting up and running using containers, this is great! Please feel free to discuss this with us and ask questions (both technical and non-technical).

Getting further help

Beyond the obvious documentation and tutorials that are available on the web, you may want access to support to help you use containers in your research. This is where Research Software Engineers (RSEs) come in. RSEs are people who have the technical experience to help researchers use a variety of tools and technologies in their research in a sustainable and reproducible way. Many different countries and institutions now have RSE organisations and groups that researchers can contact for help and support. A good place to start is the website of the Society of Research Software Engineering which has links to international RSE organisations and local UK RSE groups.

Key Points

• Understand the next steps for you in using containers.

• Understand how you can access help and support to use containers.