Crescoware: A Container-Based Gateway for HPC and AI Applications in the ENEAGRID Infrastructure

The purpose of this work is to introduce Crescoware, a container-based gateway for HPC/AI applications in the ENEAGRID infrastructure. Crescoware is a web application created to facilitate the migration of CRESCO users' workloads to Singularity containers, bringing all the necessary actions to work with containers within a visual environment capable of abstracting many complex command-line operations, typically executed over multiple terminal sessions. Among the features offered by Crescoware there are: a collaborative catalog of Singularity containers; a workspace for the creation of new containers, based on centralized build servers; and a web-based SSH client to test these containers. After reviewing the advantages offered by containers if compared to a traditional bare-metal approach, this work also focuses on how the problem of enabling users to create and launch Singularity containers has been dealt with, having in mind the goal of enabling a frictionless experience on ENEAGRID/CRESCO systems.

Automated summary

This paper introduces Crescoware, a container-based gateway for HPC/AI applications in the ENEAGRID infrastructure. Crescoware offers various features such as a collaborative catalog of Singularity containers, a workspace for creating new containers, and a web-based SSH client. By migrating workloads to Singularity containers, users can perform container operations in a visual environment, eliminating the need for complex command-line operations.