hands-on tutorial

Containerise data analysis with Docker and Apptainer

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The course will give an introduction to containers (Docker & Apptainer) which are great components to achieve portability and reproducibility of your analysis. You will learn how to use containers and how to build a container from scratch, share it with others and how to re-use and modify existing containers. After an extensive explanation on Docker containers, the Apptainer application, previously Singularity, and its use in the HPC will be highlighted as well.

Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

Keywords: Apptainer, Computing environment, Container, Docker

Target audience: Life scientists with programming skills

Resource type: hands-on tutorial

Version: 1.0

Learning objectives:

  • Define what containers are and articulate the differences between Docker and Singularity.
  • Discuss case studies to justify the selection of Docker or Singularity for specific deployment scenarios.
  • Identify the components of a Docker recipe and correlate with the layers within a Docker image.
  • List the benefits of containerization, considering reproducibility, usage and installation.
  • Recognize the use cases where Docker is the preferred method for deploying applications.

Date created: 2026-03-14

Authors: Alexander Botzki, Bruna Piereck Moura

Contributors: Tuur Muyldermans, VIB

Scientific topics: Docker image, Software engineering

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