Using LXC and LXD for bioinformatics

Over the next 2-3 weeks, I will be configuring a server with LXC/LXD (on top of Xen or KVM) to use it for bioinformatics. If you have similar interests, please let me know and we can share notes through our chat-based communication system (self-hosted Slack-like software).

The reason I am doing this is to avoid Docker at all costs. Although Docker provides some advantages in installation of programs, they are far out-weighed by the disadvantages (See Is Docker for Suckers?). However, containers themselves have a number of benefits and the best way to get them is to use unprivileged containers from LXC. Docker does not provide unprivileged containers, and the system becomes insecure as a result.

If the LXC/LXD experiment is successful, I will later put together a blog post to describe the process.