Example Container (TensorFlow)

There are multiple ways to install and run TensorFlow. Our recommended approach is via NGC containers. The containers are available via NGC Registry. In this example we will pull TensorFlow NGC container

1. Build the container:

apptainer build tensorflow-24.03-tf2-py3.simg docker://nvcr.io/nvidia/tensorflow:24.03-tf2-py3

This process will take some time, and once it completes, you should see a .simg file.

Working with Apptainer images requires a significant amount of storage space. By default, Apptainer will use ~/.apptainer as a cache directory, which may exceed your home quota. You can set temporary directories as follows:

export APPTAINER_CACHEDIR=/tmp
export APPTAINER_TMPDIR=/tmp

1. Once the container is ready, request an interactive session with a GPU:

interact -q gpu -g 1 -f ampere -m 20g -n 4

1. To run a container with GPU support:

export APPTAINER_BINDPATH="/oscar/home/$USER,/oscar/scratch/$USER,/oscar/data"
# Run a container with GPU support
apptainer run --nv tensorflow-24.03-tf2-py3.simg

the --nv flag is important. As it enables the NVIDA sub-system

1. Or, if you're executing a specific command inside the container:

# Execute a command inside the container with GPU support
$ apptainer exec --nv tensorflow-24.03-tf2-py3.simg nvidia-smi

1. Make sure your Tensorflow image is able to detect GPUs

$ python
>>> import tensorflow as tf
>>> tf.test.is_gpu_available(cuda_only=False, min_cuda_compute_capability=None)
True

1. If you need to install additional custom packages, note that the containers themselves are non-writable. However, you can use the --user flag to install packages inside .local. For example:

Apptainer> pip install <package-name> --user

Slurm Script:

Here's how you can submit a SLURM job script using the srun command to run your container. Below is a basic example:

#!/bin/bash
#SBATCH --nodes=1               # node count
#SBATCH -p gpu --gres=gpu:1     # number of gpus per node
#SBATCH --ntasks-per-node=1     # total number of tasks across all nodes
#SBATCH --cpus-per-task=1       # cpu-cores per task (>1 if multi-threaded tasks)
#SBATCH --mem-per-cpu=4G        # total memory per node (4 GB per cpu-core is default)
#SBATCH -t 01:00:00             # total run time limit (HH:MM:SS)
#SBATCH --mail-type=begin       # send email when job begins
#SBATCH --mail-type=end         # send email when job ends
#SBATCH --mail-user=<USERID>@brown.edu

module purge
unset LD_LIBRARY_PATH
srun apptainer exec --nv tensorflow-24.03-tf2-py3.simg python examples/tensorflow_examples/models/dcgan/dcgan.py