Spin

Spin services are built with Docker containers that can easily access NERSC systems and storage.

The system underlying Spin, Rancher, is a management and orchestration framework for Kubernetes clusters. The current Rancher system offers many of the same features that Kubernetes users will find familiar, but with an intuitive web-based user interface. Provided alongside Rancher is a container image registry based on the popular Harbor system.

How scientists use Spin

The flexibility of Docker makes Spin useful for many projects. A few examples include the following:

• The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) project operates databases and tools for data movement that support continuous workflows.

• ESS-DIVE is a data repository that facilitates the sharing and discovery of earth sciences data sets using the Metacat research data catalog system on top of NERSC storage.

• The LZ Dark Matter Experiment has built custom workflow tools and science gateways that help collaborators organize the experiment and analyze and visualize notable detector events.

• Phytozome, a project of the Joint Genome Institute, offers a comprehensive library of plant genomics data.

• ScienceSearch provides deep search into research data sets by generating robust metadata from ML techniques that incorporate user tagging and training.

NERSC also uses Spin as a front-end for some of its most popular services, such as JupyterHub.