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Docker, a type of virtualization for software distribution, has been adopted for integrating software that runs on the Discovery Environments Environment's Compute Cluster. This allows users to create a DockerfileDocker file, which describes the steps needed to create a Docker Image containing the software requested by the user, and have iPlant rapidly deploy it to the Discovery Environment. This is much faster and easier than the previous way of having to download and install software from source onto iPlant's computational grid (Condor Cluster). In addition, using Docker Images permits bundling complicated software dependencies and keep keeping them separated (avoids avoiding software conflicts), permits versioning of software more easily, and makes it easy to redeploy the Docker Images on different compute environments (XSEDE, Amazon, etc.)
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