Container orchestration environments for M&S

Deployment and execution of HLA federates in Docker containers offers many benefits. However, managing the execution of multiple HLA federate containers to run a complete HLA federation across a set of compute nodes in a local area network or in a cloud environment can be time consuming and error prone. A small HLA federation can easily consist of ten or more containers and it quickly becomes impossible to oversee these containers without proper tools to orchestrate them. Tools to support the orchestration of containers exist and reduce the effort required to configure, coordinate, and manage containers. Many of these tools are open source, are freely available and evolve quickly. The most popular ones include Docker Native tools from Docker Inc. and Kubernetes from Google. In an earlier SISO paper (16F-SIW-031), guidelines and best practices for containerizing HLA applications were presented. This paper discusses the topic of container orchestration environments for M&S, in particular for containerized HLA applications. Topics covered in this paper include the following: what is required to effectively deploy a HLA federation via an orchestration tool? What orchestration solutions are available and what benefits/challenges do each provide? By the end of this paper the reader should have a good idea of what is available, what is needed, and how to use orchestration tools to field a HLA federation. This paper provides orchestration solutions that can be equally well used for simulation technology other than the HLA. © Winter Simulation Innovation Workshop, SIW 2018. All rights reserved.