Software distribution between multiple running environments can be tricky these days. There are multiple locations where users could run they’re workloads (multiple HPC systems, cloud, containers, …) and it can be difficult to keep all those environments in sync. It is also difficult for users in big companies to run their application in other business units compute facilities, as not all the software they use exists there.
CernVM File System provides a scalable, reliable and low-maintenance software distribution service. By using aggressive caching on the clients it reduces number of accesses to the central application repository while ensuring availability of the whole application stack in any environment. As CernVM-FS is based on a union file system, it is also possible to present multiple versions of the same repository to the final customer, ensuring reproducibility (from the software point of view) of workloads at any time.
