Thanks to the efforts of Sylabs, open-source containers are starting to focus on high-performance computing—providing new ways of working for enterprise IT organizations.
Open-source containers are moving in a direction that many of us never anticipated.
Long recognized as providing an effective way to package applications with all of their required components, some are also tackling one of the most challenging areas in the compute world today — high-performance computing (HPC). And while containers can bring a new level of efficiency to the world of HPC, they’re also presenting new ways of working for enterprise IT organizations that are running HPC-like jobs.
How containers work
Containers offer many advantages to organizations seeking to distribute applications. By incorporating an application’s many dependencies (libraries, etc.) into self-sustainable images, they avoid a lot of installation problems. The differences in OS distributions have no impact, so separate versions of applications don’t have to be prepared and maintained, thus making developers’ work considerably easier.
Source: Network World