I am working on a startup addressing this exact problem. Docker sounds really exciting although I haven't played much with it yet. Limmeau's concern below is

I am working on a startup addressing this exact problem. Docker sounds really exciting although I haven't played much with it yet. Limmeau's concern below is a valid one. With the popularity of cloud computing centered around VMs, it seems like a wise choice to at least offer a VM as a worst-case option for recomputing an experiment. As mentioned in the article, performance should be secondary when thinking about recomputation. A reasonable solution to the large downloads necessary is to spin up the VM on the server side and allow access to it either through the browser or through a terminal login.