Slurm Cluster in Ubuntu Docker Images Using Docker Compose

This is an installation of a Slurm cluster inside Docker.

The container images support Ubuntu 24.04 and 26.04 and build Slurm 25.11.5 from source during image creation. CI builds and publishes images for both Ubuntu versions.

This is an adaptation of the work done by Rodrigo Ancavil del Pino:

https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/slurm-cluster-with-docker-9f242deee601

There are three containers:

• A front-end container that acts as a Slurm cluster front-end node
• A master container that acts as a Slurm master node
• A node container that acts as a Slurm compute node

These containers are launched using Docker Compose to build a fully functioning Slurm cluster. A docker-compose.yml file defines the cluster, specifying ports and volumes to be shared. Multiple instances of the node container can be used to create clusters of different sizes. The cluster behaves as if it were running on multiple nodes even if the containers are all running on the same host machine.

Quick Start

To start the slurm cluster environment:

docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml up -d

To stop the cluster:

docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml stop

To check the cluster logs:

docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml logs -f

(stop logs with CTRL-c")

To check status of the cluster containers:

docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml ps

To check status of Slurm:

docker exec slurm-frontend sinfo

To run a Slurm job:

docker exec slurm-frontend srun hostname

Building with Custom Base Images

The cluster supports building with different Ubuntu base images and custom image tags for testing and version management.

Configurable Variables

Defaults are set in the .env file and can be overridden via environment variables:

Variable	Default	Description
UBUNTU_BASE	ubuntu:26.04	Ubuntu base image for all containers
IMAGE_TAG	latest	Tag applied to built images
SLURM_CPUS_ON_NODE	8	CPUs per Slurm node

Building with Different Ubuntu Versions

Build with Ubuntu 24.04:

UBUNTU_BASE=ubuntu:24.04 IMAGE_TAG=ubuntu-24.04-slurm-25.11.5 docker compose build

Build with Ubuntu 26.04:

UBUNTU_BASE=ubuntu:26.04 IMAGE_TAG=ubuntu-26.04-slurm-25.11.5 docker compose build

Or edit .env directly to change the defaults.

Running a Specific Build

After building multiple versions, select which to run by setting IMAGE_TAG:

IMAGE_TAG=ubuntu-24.04-slurm-25.11.5 docker compose up -d

This allows multiple builds with different base images to coexist locally for testing purposes.

Security and Image Hygiene

The CI workflow performs vulnerability scans against published images and fails on HIGH/CRITICAL findings that are fixable (ignore-unfixed: true).