The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis
The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis
Poster Type: ACM Student Research Competition, Undergraduate
Author: Zahra Temori (University of Delaware), Paul Marshall (UChicago Department of Computer Science), Kate Keahey (Argonne National Laboratory (ANL))
Supervisor: Paul Marshall (UChicago Department of Computer Science)
Abstract: Reproducibility is a challenge in HPC and research. HPC experiments are resource-intensive and depend on complex software environments. Snapshotting addresses this issue, captures the complete state of a system in a single step, allowing researchers to automatically rebuild and restore identical environments. However, concerns remain about snapshot efficiency and usability. To improve snapshotting in HPC research, the tools need to be straightforward to use and perform quickly on large bare metal environments. Therefore, we improved usability and evaluated the performance of cc-snapshot, a tool on the Chameleon Cloud testbed. Usability enhancements included new command line options, modular code, and automated tests. To optimize performance, we benchmarked alternative image formats and compression algorithms. The results show that zstd delivered up to 80% faster compression time during snapshot creation compared to zlib. These findings demonstrate that snapshotting can be a practical and effective tool to support reproducibility in HPC experiments.
Best Poster Finalist (BP): no
Poster: PDF
Poster Summary: PDF