IBM Spectrum LSF with Singularity

Configure and use LSF to run jobs in Singularity containers on demand. LSF manages the entire lifecycle of jobs that run in the container as common jobs.

Note: Apptainer is the re-branded product name for Singularity. As of Fix Pack 13, to accommodate this name change, LSF supports running LSF jobs in either named containers, accepting either singular[] or the apptainer[] keyword as a value for the CONTAINER parameter configuration in LSF application profiles and batch queues. See lsb.applications and lsb.queues for container configuration details.

LSF launches containers for a parallel job. LSF also launches the related MPI service (such as orted) inside the container instead of launching only the task in the container and not the MPI service. This ensures that the container uses a pure image MPI environment, which is easier to maintain.