Container for UDA Server

[Louwrensth]

At ITER (at least for the SimDB test-server) we would like to have an UDA server running in a container.

Is there a good image available? I looked and saw the dockerfiles for the client.

I suppose I can begin with adding a server.ubuntu.22.04.dockerfile and see how far I get.

BTW, I'm making this issue because of the contribution guidelines.

[mkowsiak]

For IMAS + Docker I definitely suggest containers developed by ACH-04 team at PSNC.

We have a complete IMAS software stack inside Docker. At the moment we also have fully Open Source solution that you can find here:

https://gitlab.eufus.psnc.pl/ach-open-source/imas-docker

We have successfully based on this one: our SimDB installation, Data Management Plan, pre/post processing apps, CI/CD plans.

This is a fully IMAS ready container with incrementally added features. You can start with imas-minimal (just IMAS) and finish with fully blown container with UDA server/client.

You can also use legacy installation that is available here: https://gitlab.eufus.psnc.pl/containerization/imas/uda-demo (EUROfusion account is needed here).

And here you can find a demo that was shown by Bartek "Sunny" at ITER in 2024:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1YsXwe5s1EBKmDWZGGnKYlMOmpbYXWwMv7G5nyQblXEI

[bpogodzinski]

Some additional info that might be useful

• uda-server readme located here
• comes with two prebuilt flavours in container registry, intel and gcc
• Open source components start from DD >= 3.42.2, AL >= 5.5.1

[Louwrensth]

Hey guys! It has been a while 👋

Thanks for the super fast reply 👍

I've been browsing via your links and it is interesting to see what you've built. I think it probably works well for you as a predictable deployment management solution, going for strict declarative control.

For my use case at hand however, I seek a minimalist approach and wish to remain agnostic to choices of environment where the container may be running in. To provide exclusively the UDA Server in a container, I only want to see the necessary (build)dependencies for the UDA server. I would not even want to include the UDA Client in this container.

I picture that (some tools of) IMAS optionally use UDA, as a backend library or as a transport mechanism. The other way around, UDA (as Universal Data Access) doesn't care about if it is IMAS Data or some other Data (please correct me if I am wrong). Therefore, a base image without mention of IMAS (nor DD) makes sense to me.

I also would not want to introduce Spack if I can avoid it. (Nor EasyBuild for that matter.) Similarly, I want other services (eg simdb etc) to be provided via their own containers and where they need IMAS libs or tooling, only those they require should be imported, not all of the IMASuite/ecosystem.

In a testing environment, it would be great to have different (development) versions of the same services present, to be able to test their interaction at will. Containers are useful to allow virtual copies (e.g. branches of development) of services to run in parallel on one host, each having their own sandbox, accessible at different ports or sockets. They may be launched by different users even, with unpredictable configuration settings. This scenery is not declared up front, nor centrally.

For a central point of access (e.g. the public IP/DNS) to (test) run the production server, I'm thinking to use Traefik to handle the SSL connection and provide proxied locations to the containered services. Traefik can dynamically make routes to containers based on their labels, defined at run/compose time of those containers, or by watching a directory for routes configuration snippets.

Comments welcome! 😄

Would the UDA team welcome a .dockerfile for the uda-server in this repo?

[stephen-dixon]

Yes absolutely! A very welcome contribution.

if it helps there are a few basic, bare-bones versions kicking around if they're helpful for you to start from, e.g.
https://gist.github.com/stephen-dixon/c91f8ee26f24d5dfa476b4f4a3c48f4e
https://github.com/ukaea/UDA/blob/feature/build-binaries/docker/Dockerfile.ubuntu24.04

but I've only really used for small local tests rather than targeting anything production-ready like the great system the PSNC team maintains. Just that my examples probably won't be complete or follow best practices well.

Don't hesitate if you have any questions.