1.4.2. Software deployment

In this section we will focus on different methods to deploy software to the worker nodes.

Examples used in this section can also be found under 2-software-deployment/ in this repository relative to this file.

The de facto way to deploy software on CERN compatible grid system including Blackett where our data centre resides in is via CVMFS. Container technologies are also available, but HTCondor imposes a huge limitation as universes are mutually exclusive, and therefore you cannot put a job in docker/container universe while in parallel universe. As multi-nodes parallelism is important for CMB data analysis, we will not cover container here, although you are welcome to try as a developer. Note that CVMFS is mounted as read-only on the worker nodes, and can only deployed by people with elevated privilege. So CVMFS is for production only and is of limited use for development. Lastly, we will also mention a recommended way to deploy any softwares by packaging things in a tarball and transfer it to the worker nodes.

Deployment Method	Description	Suitable For	Limitations	Support level
Tarball	Packaging software and its dependencies in a compressed format, then transferring to worker nodes.	Custom software	Manual management; Transfer overhead.	Documentation provided to enable you as a developer to control your stack.
CVMFS	Standardized software distribution system used in CERN’s grid.	Production software	Read-only; Needs elevated privilege for deployment.	Software deployment is centrally maintained, deployed periodically. You can requests softwares to be included, and approvals will be granted based on technical limitations.
Containers	Use of technologies like Docker to encapsulate software in isolated environments.	Development, Testing	Cannot be used with the parallel universe in HTCondor.	Not supported but you can feel free to try when multi-node parallelism is not needed.[1]

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[1]

Blackett’s support of container is copied from here as below:

• The docker universe won’t work because there’s no docker on the worker nodes.

• The worker nodes have Apptainer installed though. Jobs can use it to run their workloads inside a container.

• Running containers in a vanilla universe job works fine.

• No experience with doing the same in parallel universe jobs. There might be communication problems between the MPI processes if MPI is running inside a container.

Note that while Apptainer (formerly Singularity) is supported by Blackett to a certain capacity, this is not supported by us, the SO:UK Data Centre. Again, feel free to experiment with it, and even contribute to this documentation in the developer guide when you find it useful.