Azure and Sylabs announced today a new collaboration which enables Singularity container images to be stored in registries supporting the Open Container Initiative (OCI) Distribution Specification. Singularity version 3.0 defines a new secure Singularity Image Format (SIF).
Azure Container Registry supports storing Helm, CNAB, and other cloud native artifacts in OCI distribution based registries, by working with the OCI Registry as Storage (ORAS) project as a common library to enable various artifact types to be stored. Leveraging the same common library, Singularity Image Format container images can now be stored in Azure Container Registry and other OCI distribution-based registries.
“Compliance with standards emerging from the Open Containers Initiative (OCI) has been a matter of emphasis in some of our most-recent releases of Singularity,” stated Singularity founder and Sylabs CEO Gregory Kurtzer. “In fact, Singularity is compliant with both the image and runtime specifications championed by the OCI. To really drive adoption of these standards however, the matter of distributing containers also needs to be addressed. Fortunately, ORAS addresses this significant gap, and significantly lowers the barrier to widespread enterprise adoption. We are delighted to be collaborating on an ongoing basis with Azure to ensure that Singularity is ‘ORAS aware’. Through our initial efforts, SIF container images can now be stored and retrieved in Azure Container Registry as well as other OCI distribution-based registries. For those seeking to leverage standards-compliant containers in Azure Container Registry, support for ORAS via Singularity represents a significant advancement.”
Sylabs and the Singularity community have always been focused on interoperability and this new integration extends the concept to create a broader solution-set for the container community. For customers that already use Azure Container Registry or other OCI distribution-based registries, this new collaboration will allow for an integrated path towards adopting SIF containers in their workflows.
The work done in collaboration with Sylabs enables customers using Singularity to leverage their investments in Azure Container Registry and other OCI complaint registries, without having to run and maintain another SIF distribution library.
Learn more by visiting, “Using OCI Compliant Registries as Artifact Registries” on GitHub.