StarDock: Shipping Customized Computing Environments to the Data

Surging data volumes make it increasingly unfeasible to transfer astronomical datasets to the local systems of individual scientists. Centralized pipelines offer some relief, but lack flexibility to fulfill the needs of all users. We have developed a system that leverages the Docker container application virtualization software. Along with a suite of commonly used astronomy applications, users can configure a container with their own custom software and analysis tools. Our StarDock system will move the users container to the data, and expose the requested dataset, allowing our users to safely and securely process their data without needlessly transferring hundreds of gigabytes.