---
# System prepended metadata

title: ISC'25 tutorial

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# ISC'25 tutorial
 
 - https://isc-hpc.com/submissions/tutorial/
 - https://github.com/EESSI/isc-tutorial
 - submission deadline: ~~**Thu 12 Dec'24, 11:59 PM AoE**~~ **Wed 18 Dec'24, 11:59 PM AoE**
 - acceptance notification: 14 Feb'25
 - tutorial day: Fri 13 June 2025 9am-6pm
 - *"The proposal’s review criteria include originality, significance, timeliness, impact, community interest, attendance in prior years (if applicable), quality, hands-on activity, and clarity."*

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## Sync call 20241217

- PR abstract (https://github.com/EESSI/isc-tutorial/pull/34)
- PR Alan (https://github.com/EESSI/isc-tutorial/pull/35)
- refer to "Best Practices" tutorial + EPICURE EESSI session
- initial submission by Sebastian by noon today

## Sync call 20241213

attending: Sebastian, Kenneth, Alan

- issue with attention points: https://github.com/EESSI/isc-tutorial/issues/31
- authors OK
    - bio missing for Helena + Eli
- abstract doens't mention CernVM-FS yet
- pitch CernVM-FS against GPFS/Lustre in description
- link to MultiXscale Slack
- focus on EESSI Slack, not EasyBuild Slack
- link to https://www.eessi.io/docs/systems
- switch to https://multixscale.github.io/cvmfs-tutorial-hpc-best-practices
- highlight that we'll have at most 3 presenters?
- tutorial passes for 3 presenters (travel for two)
- presenters: Sebastian, Lara, Helena, Alan
    - travel support: Alan, Lara
- prerequisites
    - familiarity with basics of Linux shell environment, incl. concept of environment modules

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## Sync call 20241209

attending: Sebastian, Kenneth, Alan, Lara, Jakob, Valentin, Laura, Eli

### To discuss

- half-day or full-day with half-day option?
- authors for submission
    - combo of EESSI + CernVM-FS tutorials: HPC-UGent (Kenneth, Lara), CECAM (Alan), CERN (Laura, Valentin, Jakob), Sebastian (JSC)
    - plus HPCNow (Eli, Helena) + RUG (Bob)
- puzzling submission together
    - editing (Mon-Tue-Wed): Kenneth, Sebastian
    - reviewing (Wed-Thu): Valentin, Laura, ...
- hands-on via VMs in cloud @ JSC

### Outline

- mix of CernVM-FS + EESSI?
    - based on https://multixscale.github.io/cvmfs-tutorial-hpc-best-practices

09:00-09:30 (30min) Introduction to EESSI: Motivation + goals (10min), High-level design + in-
spiration, incl. CernVM-FS (15min), EuroHPC MultiXscale CoE (funding) (5min)


09:30-10:00 (30min) Using EESSI, incl. hands-on: Using a native installation (10min), Hands-on (20min)
    - hands-on exercise with installing/configuring CernVM-FS + running GROMACS via EESSI

10:00-10:15 (15min) Use cases - hands-on demos
    - training via throwaway cluster with Magic Castle, AWS ParallelCluster
    - EESSI in CI (GitHub, GitLab)

10:15-10:45 (30min) Testing software in EESSI, EESSI test suite, collab with developers - hands-on
    - 10min talk about CI testing, EESSI test suite, etc.
    **- 15min hands-on exercise running one specific test on VM via ReFrame (GROMACS)**
    - 5min hands-on demo with test suite on Slurm cluster

10:45-11:00 (15min) Adding software to EESSI, incl. hands-on demo

11:00-11:30 (30min coffee break)

11:30-12:00 (30min) Building software on top of EESSI - hands-on
    - with EESSI-extend

12:00-12:15 (15min) GPU support in EESSI - hands-on demo

12:15-12:30 (15min) Alternative access mechanisms: containers, cvmfsexec (15min) - hands-on demo

12:30-12:50 (20min) Performance tuning (host injections, startup perf by tuning CernVM-FS)

12:50-13:00 (10min) Q&A + closing remarks


### TODO

- [ ] revise text
    - [ ] pitch CVMFS vs GPFS/Lustre as shared filesystem for hosting software
- [ ] revise outline
- [ ] mention online CernVM-FS + EESSI tutorial with over 120 attendees (?)
- [ ] mention growing adoption of EESSI in EuroHPC community
- [x] mention HPCWire award
- [ ] EESSI vs Spack/EasyBuild
- [ ] containers aspect
    - [ ] EESSI vs containers (perf issue)
    - [ ] hosting containers in CernVM-FS (size issue)


---
---

## Reviews submission ISC'24

### CernVM-FS tutorial

Average scores:

- Relevance: 2.7 / 4
- Timeliness: 2.7 / 4
- Length: 5.0 / 5
- Hands-on: 2.7 / 4
- Subject: 1.3 / 3
- Impact: 2.0 / 3
- Confidence: 3.7 / 5
- Overall: 4.0 / 7

#### Reviewer 1

- Relevance: Highly relevant (4)
- Timeliness: Highly timely (4)
- Length: Definitely appropriate (5)
- Hands-on: Good (3)
- Subject: Topic that expands broader community engagement (2)
- Impact: Medium (2)
- Confidence: High (4)
- Overall: This is a very good Tutorial. I have a few very minor concerns but still in favor of acceptance (6)

##### Review

This tutorial introduces CernVM-FS, which can help streamline data and software distribution across a number of distributed clients. The software has a number of capabilities that can be useful to a broad range of application and software development users.

##### Areas of Improvement

None at this time, the only question is the interest of the ISC audience.

#### Reviewer 2

- Relevance: Somewhat relevant (2)
- Timeliness: Somewhat timely (2)
- Length: Definitely appropriate (5)
- Hands-on: Fair (2)
- Subject: Traditional/ historic HPC topic (1)
- Impact: Medium (2)
- Confidence: Medium (3)
- Overall: This is a good Tutorial, but I have a few concerns with the current proposal. I will not argue against accepting it if there is a room or if it is fully revised (4)

##### Review

This submission proposes a tutorial on how to use, configure, and troubleshoot CernVM-FS, a distributed file system designed for propagating large read-only software repositories across distributed systems.

The technology is interesting and the presenters are well-qualified to present it.

I'm a little concerned about how many people may be interested in attending this at a general HPC conference like ISC. It's obviously valuable if you are working on a project that already uses CernVM-FS (like a CERN project or EESSI). Is this a large enough community in person at ISC?

The tutorial only briefly covers how to configure CernVM-FS servers from scratch, so it does not seem targeted at administrators that want to introduce it as a new capability within their organization.

##### Areas of Improvement

Since the majority of the tutorial information seems to be about using client software or incorporating an existing repository into your local facility, maybe more emphasis on the value of the actual repositories and what use cases one might have for them?

#### Reviewer 3

- Relevance: Somewhat relevant (2)
- Timeliness: Somewhat timely (2)
- Length: Definitely appropriate (5)
- Hands-on: Good (3)
- Subject: Traditional/ historic HPC topic (1)
- Impact: Medium (2)
- Confidence: High (4)
- Overall: I have some concerns that can not be addressed in the current proposal, I recommend to reject it (2)

##### Review

This proposal talks about a tool to do continuous delivery for software to a not completely clear environment. The idea of such a fluid environment is a bit scary. Having stability and the ability to test a deployment seems to be a separate topic. The scenarios where this would be useful is not well explained. It would be helpful to understand where CD is important and useful and what CD actually means. Is it truly slowly evolving software across some set of resources or is it a cluster management tool? These kinds of questions are unanswered.

##### Areas of Improvement

As described in the review, a lot of details about how and when this is useful. We need to understand what CD means and how that works in practice.

---

### EESSI tutorial

Average scores:

- Relevance: 3.0 / 4
- Timeliness: 2.7 / 4
- Length: 4.3 / 5
- Hands-on: 3.7 / 4
- Subject: 1.7 / 3
- Impact: 2.3 / 3
- Confidence: 4.0 / 5
- Overall: 5.3 / 7

#### Reviewer 1

- Relevance: Somewhat relevant (2)
- Timeliness: Somewhat timely (2)
- Length: May be appropriate (3)
- Hands-on: Good (3)
- Subject: Traditional/ historic HPC topic (1)
- Impact: Medium (2)
- Confidence: High (4)
- Overall: This is a good Tutorial, but I am in favor of accepting another Tutorial on the same topic (3)

##### Review

This tutorial introduces the EESSI software stack. Some of the authors **also proposed a tutorial on CernVM-FS**, and there is **overlap with this submission**, so I would recommend rejecting this one.

##### Areas of Improvement

explain **why this is different or better** than the other proposed tutorial.

#### Reviewer 2

- Relevance: Highly relevant (4)
- Timeliness: Highly timely (4)
- Length: Definitely appropriate (5)
- Hands-on: Excellent (4)
- Subject: Topic on innovative and emerging HPC technologies (3)
- Impact: High (3)
- Confidence: Medium (3)
- Overall: This is an excellent Tutorial, I strongly recommend to accept it (7)

##### Review

This tutorial introduces participants to the European Environment for Scientific Software Inatallations (EESSI) project and provides opportunity and guidance for them to understand how to use Easy Build to install software on top of a compatibility layer and CernVM-FS to distribute the software installations to client systems. The goal is a common stack of optimized scientific software installations across laptops, HPC systems, and cloud infrastructures. This project, its tools, and their use are all highly relevant both in content and topic to the ISC HPC community.

The proposed length of a half day seems appropriate to the proposed content and while the authors have not given this tutorial at ISC they have given other tutorials that form the basis for this one and hence are aware of their content and the time required to present including use of hands-on materials to impart greater understanding to participants. Their hands-on components are all performed in a pre-configured environment on virtual machines reached by participants using ssh.

I would categorize this topic as being on innovative and emerging HPC technologies with the potential for High impact to the ISC HPC community as use of this approach would represent a dramatic shift from current approaches with potential for large gains in performance and productivity.

I strongly recommend accepting this tutorial.

##### Areas of Improvement

I like the tutorial content, format, flow, and hands-on content. I like that the participants participate by connecting to pre-configured VMs as opposed to loading software on their laptops which can make for a lot of troubleshooting and wasted tutorial time.

I have no suggestions for improvements.

#### Reviewer 3

- Relevance: Reasonably relevant (3)
- Timeliness: Somewhat timely (2)
- Length: Definitely appropriate (5)
- Hands-on: Excellent (4)
- Subject: Traditional/ historic HPC topic (1)
- Impact: Medium (2)
- Confidence: Expert (5)
- Overall: This is a very good Tutorial. I have a few very minor concerns but still in favor of acceptance (6)

##### Review

The tutorial introduces EuropeanEnvironment for Scientific Software Installations (EESSI), a collaboration between various European HPC sites & industry partners, with the common goal of creating a shared repository of scientific software installations that can be used on a variety of systems, regardless of which flavor/version of Linux distribution or processor architecture is used. EESSI is build on top of EasyBuild and automation tool for scientific software installation.

The tutorial layout is well structured with multiple hands-on components.

The workshop claims to have a **broader audience, however realistically HPC sys admins will be the main target audiance**. Nonetheless the fact that the project is **already adopted outside of Europe** it makes it a relevant tool worth exploring as it reached a certain critical mass.

##### Areas of Improvement

**Comparison with other tools** would make the presentation better.