Virtualized Research Environments on the bwForCluster NEMO

Abstract

The bwForCluster NEMO offers high performance computing resources to three quite different scientific communities (Elementary Particle Physics, Neuroscience and Microsystems Engineering) encompassing more than 200 individual researchers. To provide a broad range of software packages and deal with the individual requirements, the NEMO operators seek novel approaches to cluster operation [1]. Virtualized Research Environments (VREs) can help to both separate different software environments as well as the responsibilities for maintaining the software stack. Research groups become more independent from the base software environment defined by the cluster operators. Operating VREs brings advantages like scientific reproducibility, but may introduce caveats like lost cycles or the need for layered job scheduling. VREs might open advanced possibilities as e.g. job migration or checkpointing.