Changes between Initial Version and Version 1 of BoincDocker

Timestamp:

Jul 15, 2016, 2:28:05 PM (8 years ago)

Author:

davea

Comment:

--

BoincDocker

@@ +1 @@
+= BOINC and Docker =
+
+[http://www.docker.com Docker] is a system that lets you develop apps
+in the environment of your choice (OS, system software, libraries etc.)
+and then package up the environment and run it on hosts with different native environments.
+
+It's sort of like traditional virtual machines (VMware, !VirtualBox) but differs in several ways:
+
+ * Efficiency: Docker images are generally much smaller,
+   they can be instantiated much faster,
+   and they have less runtime overhead.
+ * There are better tools for creating Docker images.
+ * There's a free [https://hub.docker.com Docker hub] where you can host and distribute images.
+ * Docker images can run only on modern (3.10+ kernel) 64-bit Linux hosts
+ 
+Efforts are underway to use Docker to simplify BOINC - in particular to simplify
+the tasks of creating a BOINC project,
+and of deploying applications in BOINC.
+
+Eventually we expect this to be the standard way for scientists to use BOINC.
+In the meantime, this page serves to link to information on development efforts.
+
+== Docker-based BOINC server ==
+
+Marius Millea has packaged the BOINC server as a Docker application.
+This is described here:
+https://github.com/marius311/boinc-server-docker/blob/master/docs/cookbook.md
+
+In this implementation, the server consists of three Docker "containers":
+ * The MySQL database
+ * The Apache web server
+ * The BOINC back-end programs and command-line tools.
+The project's state is stored in Docker "volumes" that are shared between these containers.
+
+== Docker-based BOINC applications ==
+
+You can also use Docker to deploy your Linux-based applications on BOINC.
+The preferred way to do this is:
+
+ * Your various applications are run under a single BOINC application,
+   which we'll call the "universal Docker application".
+ * Your Docker image and job input files are all part of the BOINC workunit.
+   The image files are "sticky" so they're downloaded only once.
+
+Docker only runs on recent Linux, so on Win and Mac the universal Docker application
+uses a !VirtualBox virtual machine to host Docker containers.
+
+Support for this is included in the BOINC server package described above.
+
+With this system, running a job under BOINC is as simple as running a Docker container
+(i.e. it's a single command).
+
+The caveats are that Docker jobs will on only run on hosts that:
+
+ * are 64-bit Intel-compatible
+ * have VM extensions in hardware (almost all do)
+ * have these extensions enabled in BIOS
+ * have !VirtualBox installed
+
+Also, as of now you can't run GPU applications in this framework.