Learner Profiles

Here we provide some example profiles of people who represent the target audience for this lesson. These example scenarios are designed to give you an idea of the different reasons people might want to learn Docker and the types of roles that they might hold.

The profiles provided here and the individuals described are fictional but they represent the lesson developers’ experiences of teaching members of the research community about Docker and other container technologies over a period of several years. They also incorporate feedback from instructors involved in pilot runs of this course.

Note that containers are applicable across a wide range of use cases within the research and High Performance Computing communities. These profiles are not intended to cover all areas but rather to offer some examples of the types of roles people learning this material might hold and their reasons for learning about containers.

Individual learner profiles

Nelson is a graduate student in microbiology. They have experience in running Unix shell commands and using libraries in R for the bioinformatics workflows they have developed. They are expanding their analysis to run on 3000 genomes in 200 samples and they have started to use the local cluster to run their workflows. The local research computing facilitator has advised them that Docker could be useful for running their workflows on the cluster. They’d like to make use of existing containers that other bioinformaticians have made so they want to learn how to use Docker. They would also be interested in creating their own Docker images for other lab members and collaborators to re-use their workflows.

Caitlin is a second year undergraduate in computer science examining Docker for the first time. She has heard about Docker but does not really know what it achieves or why it is useful. She is reasonably confident in using the Unix shell, having used it briefly in her first year modules. She is keen to find jump-off points to learn more about technical details and alternative technologies that are also popular, having heard that container technologies are widely used within industry.

Xu, a materials science researcher, wants to package her software for release with a paper to help ensure reproducibility. She has written some code that makes use of a series of Python libraries to undertake analysis of a compound. She wants to (or is required to) make her software available as part of the paper submission. She understands why Docker is important in helping to ensure reproducibility but not the process and low-level detail of preparing a container and archiving it to obtain a DOI for inclusion with the paper submission.

Bronwyn is a PhD student running Python/R scripts on her local laptop/workstation. She is having difficulty getting all the tools she needs to work because of conflicting dependencies and little experience with package managers. She is also keen to reduce the overhead of managing software so she can get on with her thesis research. She has heard that Docker might be able to help out but is not confident to start exploring this on her own and does not have access to any expertise in this within her local research group. She currently wants to know how to use preexisting Docker containers but may need to create her own containers in the future.

Virat is a grad student who is running an obscure bioinformatics tool (from a GitHub repo) that depends on a number of other tools that need to be pre-installed . He wants to be able to run on multiple resources and have his undergrad assistant use the same tools. Virat has command line experience and has struggled his way through complex installations but he has no formal CS background - he only knows to use containers because a departmental IT person suggested it. He is usually working from a Windows computer. He needs to understand how to create his own container, use it locally, and train his student to use it as well.

Group profiles

In addition to our individual learner profiles above, we also look at three more general groups who may want to learn about containers. This is intended to help you get a perspective of the different types of skills and expertise that learners engaging with this material may have:

  • Researchers: For researchers, even those based in non-computational domains, software is an increasingly important element of their day-to-day work. Whether they are writing code or installing, configuring and/or running software to support their research, they will eventually need to deal with the complexities of running software on different platforms, handling complex software dependencies and potentially submitting their code and data to repositories to support the reproduction of research outputs by other researchers, or to meet the requirements of publishers or funders. Software container technologies are valuable to help researchers address these challenges.

  • RSEs: RSEs – Research Software Engineers – provide software development, training and technical guidance to support the development of reliable, maintainable, sustainable research software. They will generally have extensive technical skills but they may not have experience of working with or managing software containers. In addition to working with researchers to help build and package software, they are likely to be interested in how containers can help to support best practices for the development of research software and aspects such as software deployment.

  • Systems professionals: Systems professionals represent the more technical end of our spectrum of learners. They may be based within a central IT services environment within a research institution or within individual departments or research groups. Their work is likely to encompass supporting researchers with effective use of infrastructure and they are likely to need to know about managing and orchestrating multiple containers in more complex environments. For example, they may need to provide database servers, web application servers and other services that can be deployed in containerized environments to support more straightforward management, maintenance and upgradeability.