Containers Tutorial Session @ ISC High Performance 2026 (ISC26)
Date: Monday, 22 June 2026 2:00PM - 6PM (Europe/Berlin)
Location: Hamburg, Germany
Keywords: Containerized HPC, System Software and Runtime Systems, Scientific Software Development, DevOps, AI
Prerequisites
This is a hands-on tutorial. Participants should bring a laptop. We will use a AWS instances for the main exercises.
See also the Setup page.
Questions
You can ask questions verbally or with this Google Doc. Please append your question below the others in the document.
We have also created a Slack Team for this. The invitation link is here.
| Setup | ||
| 14:00 | 1. Introduction and update on Linux containers |
What is a container and how is it different from a virtual machine?
What are some of the benefits of containers and how can containers help me do my job better? |
| 14:10 | 2. Building and running Docker containers |
How can I use Docker to run a container?
How do I create an image from scratch? How can I share an image between systems? Is Docker the only tool for building containers? |
| 14:40 | 3. HPC and containers | What are the limitations of industry-standard container approaches in an HPC environment? |
| 14:50 | 4. Running HPC jobs with containers |
How can I execute commands in a container with Singularity or Shifter?
How are variables and directories shared between host and container? Is it possible to simplify the container user experience? |
| 15:20 | 5. Containers with E4S |
How can I use the E4S full featured containers?
What packages can I load using Spack? How can I compile and test an MPI application? |
| 15:45 | 6. Q & A session | |
| 15:55 | 7. BREAK | |
| 16:25 | 8. Container services and Kubernetes |
How should services like databases or portals be deployed?
What is different about deploying services versus HPC applications? |
| 17:05 | 9. Agentic AI |
How do I quickly develop and deploy agents in Kubernetes?
How do multi-agent systems communicate? |
| 17:45 | 10. Final Q & A and wrap-up | Any final questions |
| 17:55 | Finish |
The actual schedule may vary slightly depending on the topics and exercises chosen by the instructor.