Abstract:
The Virtual Open Science Collaboration Environment project worked on different
use cases to evaluate the necessary steps for virtualization or containerization
especially when considering the external dependencies of digital workflows. Virtualized
Research Environments (VRE) can both help to broaden the user base of an
HPC cluster like NEMO and offer new forms of packaging scientific workflows as
well as managing software stacks. The eResearch initiative on VREs sponsored by
the state of Baden-Württemberg provided the necessary framework for both the
researchers of various disciplines as well as the providers of (large-scale) compute
infrastructures to define future operational models of HPC clusters and scientific
clouds. In daily operations, VREs running on virtualization or containerization
technologies such as OpenStack or Singularity help to disentangle the responsibilities
regarding the software stacks needed to fulfill a certain task. Nevertheless,
the reproduction of VREs as well as the provisioning of research data to be computed
and stored afterward creates a couple of challenges which need to be solved
beyond the traditional scientific computing models.