Monthly HPC Café: The Power of Workflow Systems on HPC Clusters—An Introduction to Snakemake (January 14, hybrid event)

A cup of coffee and a plate with a sweet piece of pastry on it in front of a computer keyboard.

The first HPC Café in 2025 will take place on January 14, at 4:00 p.m. as a hybrid event. As always, there will be plenty of time to get in touch with your favorite HPC group. We invite you to come to NHR@FAU to enjoy coffee, cake, and computing.

The event starts at 4:00 p.m. with an open coffee chat, and at 4:30 p.m., we will start the presentation.

Room: RRZE (Martensstr. 1, 91058 Erlangen), Seminar room 2.049 (2nd floor)

Zoom linkhttps://go-nhr.de/hpc-cafe

Topic: The Power of Workflow Systems on HPC Clusters—An Introduction to Snakemake

Speaker: Dr. Christian Meesters, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz

Abstract: 

This talk highlights the benefits of using workflow management systems, with a focus on Snakemake, for multistep data analysis on high-performance computing (HPC) clusters. It shows how workflows can streamline research by automating tasks, managing software environments (e.g., Conda, containers, module files), and handling HPC-specific requirements like resource allocation and job submission.

We introduce the Snakemake workflow catalog, a resource for prebuilt workflows to save time and avoid reinventing the wheel. Parameterization enables workflow flexibility and scalability. Finally, the talk will explore how Snakemake facilitates reproducibility, from deployment to comprehensive workflow reports with execution statistics and publication-ready outputs.

Material from past events is available at: https://hpc.fau.de/teaching/hpc-cafe/