Docker container for ROMS?

[rsignell]

Has anyone developed a Docker container for ROMS?

I'm thinking the Dockerfile would be quite similar to WRF:
https://github.com/NCAR/container-wrf/b ... Dockerfile

[shchepet]

What is the motivation for doing this? I inspected WRF file and it looks like this
is just another layer of software toward black-boxing it one level further. What is
wrong with standard build procedures?

[tarankalra]

One of the advantages of containerization is to readily deploy it on cloud environments rather than going through
the standard procedure of installing all the required libraries.

[rsoutelino]

@rsignell,

Has anyone developed a Docker container for ROMS?

I've actually uploaded this image to dockerhub https://hub.docker.com/r/rsoutelino/ubuntu.roms/, which I use with students. It can be used interactively as below.

Code: Select all

docker pull rsoutelino/ubuntu.roms
docker run -ti rsoutelino/ubuntu.roms /bin/bash

At /root/myroms. There is a pre-compiled upwelling test case with OpenMP and Mpich with gfortran.

This was built in 2014 and unfortunately, I haven't setup a Dockerfile, versioning and automated builds (using platforms such as a github) at that stage.

We have a much more mature image that we use here at MetOcean nowadays to run ROMS in our internal systems. Ripping out the system-dependent stuff to create an opensource general purpose one wouldn't be too far fetched. I'd be happy to collaborate if there is interest.


@shchepet,

What is the motivation for doing this?

There are many advantages of the docker approach, especially for scientific collaboration and reproducibility. Containerization itself has been around for ages, but docker opened an interesting avenue by creating the registry. With github+dockerhub, versioning and sharing software reached a deeper level of abstraction all the way to the OS. Model implementations can be stored and shipped between colleagues, groups, students, running in different architectures, minimizing the nitty-gritty of getting things to work. Our experience here has been great so far. The only requirement for a server OSs now is to "have docker installed". Different model versions can co-exist easily without conflicts, extending on what @tarankalra mentioned.

[andres]

Hi,

I would be very interested in our Dockerfile for ROMS. I am currently using Virtual Machines for teaching, this seems a good alternative, Let's talk...

[jpringle]

A naive question. For multi-threaded or multi-process programs like ROMS, is there any significant performance penalty for using something like docker?

Jamie

[rsoutelino]

Docker is a very lightweight form of virtualization if the host OS is Linux. In our experience, there is no detectable loss of performance. If your host OS is MacOS or Windows, docker will add a virtual machine as an abstract layer in between, then you have performance loss.

[rsignell]

We have a much more mature image that we use here at MetOcean nowadays to run ROMS in our internal systems. Ripping out the system-dependent stuff to create an opensource general purpose one wouldn't be too far fetched. I'd be happy to collaborate if there is interest.

@rsoutelino, that would be fantastic! We would excited to collaborate on this! What is the next step?