Virtual SLURM HPC cluster in a Docker Compose
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I'm the main developer behind vHPC, a SLURM HPC cluster in a docker compose.As part of my job, I'm working on a software solution that needs to interact with one of the largest Italian HPC clusters (Cineca Leonardo, 270 PFLOPS). Of course developing on the production system was out of question, as it would have led to unbearably long feedback loops. I thus started looking around for existing containerised solutions, which were always lacking some key ingredient in order to suitably mock our target system (accounting, MPI, out of date software, ...).I thus decided that it was worth it to make my own virtual cluster from scratch, learning a thing or two about SLURM in the process. Even though it satisfies the particular needs of the project I'm working on, I tried to keep vHPC as simple and versatile as possible.I proposed the company to open source it, and as of this morning (CET) vHPC is FLOSS for others to use and tweak. I am around to answer any question.
HN · launched Nov 19, 2025 · 57 upvotes (top 15%) · 0 views
Niche: software development environments · 117 launches, 12 in the last 7 days ▲ +9% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Dev tools
- Developer
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
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More like this: all 117 launches in software development environments →
Could you build this?
Partial The basic Docker Compose and container setup is achievable, but accurately emulating a multi-node SLURM HPC environment with realistic networking, munge auth, and cgroup resource tracking requires deep Linux and HPC admin knowledge.
What it would actually take: The stack comprises containerized SLURM daemons (slurmctld, slurmd, slurmdbd), MySQL for accounting, MUNGE for inter-node cryptographic authentication, and shared NFS mounts. The hard part is managing container systemd/init systems, multi-node cgroups for CPU/memory isolation, and emulating MPI networking without bare-metal hardware. Requires seasoned Linux systems administration and HPC cluster engineering expertise.
Discussion
17 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: SGE (Sun Grid Engine), LSF (Load Sharing Facility), OpenOnDemand, AWS ParallelCluster, NVIDIA Base Command Manager
Concerns raised: SLURM uses 4 ports per job, limiting simultaneous jobs to thousands before controller TCP port exhaustion, Long queuing times and 2FA requirements on shared reference clusters, SLURM poorly suited for automated testing workflows with large job counts, Command-line tools feel outdated with very small default column widths, Array jobs and fire-and-forget submission are janky workarounds for large workloads
Feature requests: Modern replacement to SLURM with better handling of large job counts, Better support for programmatic job submission and output handling, Improved command-line interface with sensible defaults, Native support for nested jobs without workarounds
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 55 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #10 of 56 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 2 days after the earliest competitor.
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