Software management with Spack on the cluster Aries at UniMoRe for CNR-NANO

In 2023, the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia upgraded its computational infrastructure with Aries, a high-performance system to support research, teaching, and training. The Istituto Nanoscienze of CNR tasked me with designing a software installation methodology for the cluster. The methodology, centred on Spack, a powerful HPC package manager, was implemented successfully and made accessible to UniMoRe and CNR researchers. Training sessions were conducted for system administrators, covering configuration details and Spack usage. This report summarises the setup process, its benefits for the research community, and provides a guide for replicating the approach on other clusters.