Comparison of cluster software explained

The following tables compare general and technical information for notable computer cluster software. This software can be grossly separated in four categories: Job scheduler, nodes management, nodes installation and integrated stack (all the above).

General information

Software	Maintainer	Category	Development status	Latest release	ArchitectureOCS	High-Performance / High-Throughput Computing	License	Platforms supported	Cost	Paid support available
	Amoeba			No active development				MIT
	Base One Foundation Component Library							Proprietary
class="table-rh"	DIET	INRIA, SysFera, Open Source	All in one			GridRPC, SPMD, Hierarchical and distributed architecture, CORBA	HTC/HPC	CeCILL	Unix-like, Mac OS X, AIX	Free
	DxEnterprise	DH2i	Nodes management	Actively developed	v23.0			Proprietary	Windows 2012R2/2016/2019/2022 and 8+, RHEL 7/8/9, CentOS 7, Ubuntu 16.04/18.04/20.04/22.04, SLES 15.4	Cost	Yes
class="table-rh"	Enduro/X	Mavimax, Ltd.	Job/Data Scheduler	actively developed		SOA Grid	HTC/HPC/HA	GPLv2 or Commercial	Linux, FreeBSD, MacOS, Solaris, AIX	Free / Cost	Yes
class="table-rh"			Monitoring	actively developed				BSD	Unix, Linux, Microsoft Windows NT/XP/2000/2003/2008, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonflyBSD, Mac OS X, Solaris, AIX, IRIX, Tru64, HPUX.	Free
		Univa (formerly United Devices)	Job Scheduler	no active development		Distributed master/worker	HTC/HPC	Proprietary	Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris	Cost
class="table-rh"		Apache		actively developed				Apache license v2.0	Linux	Free	Yes
class="table-rh"		Adaptive Computing	Job Scheduler	actively developed			HPC	Proprietary	Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, AIX, OSF/Tru-64, Solaris, HP-UX, IRIX, FreeBSD & other UNIX platforms	Cost	Yes
class="table-rh"		Runtime Design Automation		actively developed			HTC/HPC	Proprietary	Unix-like, Windows	Cost
class="table-rh"	OpenHPC	OpenHPC project	all in one	actively developed	v2.61		HPC		Linux (CentOS / OpenSUSE Leap)	Free	No
class="table-rh"	OpenLava	None. Formerly Teraproc	Job Scheduler	Halted by injunction		Master/Worker, multiple admin/submit nodes	HTC/HPC	Illegal due to being a pirated version of IBM Spectrum LSF	Linux	Not legally available	No
class="table-rh"	PBS Pro	Altair	Job Scheduler	actively developed		Master/worker distributed with fail-over	HPC/HTC	AGPL or Proprietary	Linux, Windows	Free or Cost	Yes
class="table-rh"	Proxmox Virtual Environment	Proxmox Server Solutions	Complete	actively developed				Open-source AGPLv3	Linux, Windows, other operating systems are known to work and are community supported	Free	Yes
	Rocks Cluster Distribution	Open Source/NSF grant	All in one	actively developed	(Manzanita)		HTC/HPC	OpenSource	CentOS	Free
	Popular Power
	ProActive	INRIA, ActiveEon, Open Source	All in one	actively developed		Master/Worker, SPMD, Distributed Component Model, Skeletons	HTC/HPC	GPL	Unix-like, Windows, Mac OS X	Free
	RPyC	Tomer Filiba		actively developed				MIT License	nix/Windows	Free
	SLURM	SchedMD	Job Scheduler	actively developed	v23.11.3		HPC/HTC	GPL	Linux/*nix	Free	Yes
class="table-rh"		IBM	Job Scheduler	actively developed		Master node with failover/exec clients, multiple admin/submit nodes, Suite addOns	HPC/HTC	Proprietary	Unix, Linux, Windows	Cost and Academic - model - Academic, Express, Standard, Advanced and Suites	Yes
		Altair	Job Scheduler	active Development moved to Altair Grid Engine		Master node/exec clients, multiple admin/submit nodes	HPC/HTC	Proprietary	nix/Windows	Cost
	Some Grid Engine / Son of Grid Engine / Sun Grid Engine	daimh	Job Scheduler	actively developed (stable/maintenance)		Master node/exec clients, multiple admin/submit nodes	HPC/HTC	Open-source SISSL	nix	Free	No
	SynfiniWay	Fujitsu		actively developed			HPC/HTC	?	Unix, Linux, Windows	Cost
class="table-rh"		Techila Technologies Ltd.	All in one	actively developed		Master/worker distributed	HTC	Proprietary	Linux, Windows	Cost	Yes
		Adaptive Computing	Job Scheduler	actively developed				Proprietary	Linux, *nix	Cost	Yes
class="table-rh"		Univa	All in One	Functionality and development moved to UniCloud (see above)						Free	Yes
	UNICORE
	Xgrid	Apple Computer
	Warewulf		Provision and clusters management	actively developed	v4.4.1		HPC	Open Source	Linux	Free
	xCAT		Provision and clusters management	actively developed	v2.16.5		HPC	Eclipse Public License	Linux	Free
Software	Maintainer	Category	Development status	Latest release	Architecture	High-Performance/ High-Throughput Computing	License	Platforms supported	Cost	Paid support available

Table explanation

• Software: The name of the application that is described

Technical information

Software	Implementation Language	Authentication	Encryption	Integrity	Global File System	Global File System + Kerberos	Heterogeneous/ Homogeneous exec node	Jobs priority	Group priority	Queue type	SMP aware	Max exec node	Max job submitted	CPU scavenging	Parallel job	Job checkpointing	Python interface
class="table-rh"		C/C++	OS Authentication	GPG, AES-128, SHA1	None	Any cluster Posix FS (gfs, gpfs, ocfs, etc.)	Any cluster Posix FS (gfs, gpfs, ocfs, etc.)	Heterogeneous	OS Nice level	OS Nice level	SOA Queues, FIFO	Yes	OS Limits	OS Limits	Yes	Yes	No	No
class="table-rh"		C++	GSI, SSL, Kerberos, Password, File System, Remote File System, Windows, Claim To Be, Anonymous	None, Triple DES, BLOWFISH	None, MD5	None, NFS, AFS	Not official, hack with ACL and NFS4	Heterogeneous	Yes	Yes	Fair-share with some programmability	basic (hard separation into different node)	tested ~10000?	tested ~100000?	Yes	MPI, OpenMP, PVM	Yes	Yes, and native Python Binding
class="table-rh"		C/Python	OS Authentication, Munge			Any, e.g., NFS, Lustre, GPFS, AFS	Limited availability	Heterogeneous	Yes	Yes	Fully configurable	Yes	tested ~50,000	Millions	Yes	MPI, OpenMP	Yes	Yes
class="table-rh"		C/C++	OS authentication	None		NFS		Heterogeneous Linux	Yes	Yes	Configurable	Yes			Yes, supports preemption based on priority	Yes	Yes	No
class="table-rh"		C	Munge, None, Kerberos					Heterogeneous	Yes	Yes	Multifactor Fair-share	yes	tested 120k	tested 100k	No	Yes	Yes	PySlurm
class="table-rh"	Spectrum LSF	C/C++	Multiple - OS Authentication/Kerberos	Optional	Optional	Any - GPFS/Spectrum Scale, NFS, SMB	Any - GPFS/Spectrum Scale, NFS, SMB	Heterogeneous - HW and OS agnostic (AIX, Linux or Windows)	Policy based - no queue to computenode binding	Policy based - no queue to computegroup binding	Batch, interactive, checkpointing, parallel and combinations	yes and GPU aware (GPU License free)	> 9.000 compute hots	> 4 mio jobs a day	Yes, supports preemption based on priority, supports checkpointing/resume	Yes, fx parallel submissions for job collaboration over fx MPI	Yes, with support for user, kernel or library level checkpointing environments	Yes
	Torque	C	SSH, munge			None, any		Heterogeneous	Yes	Yes	Programmable	Yes	tested	tested	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Software	Implementation Language	Authentication	Encryption	Integrity	Global File System	Global File System + Kerberos	Heterogeneous/ Homogeneous exec node	Jobs priority	Group priority	Queue type	SMP aware	Max exec node	Max job submitted	CPU scavenging	Parallel job	Job checkpointing

Table Explanation

• Software: The name of the application that is described
• SMP aware:
  • basic: hard split into multiple virtual host
  • basic+: hard split into multiple virtual host with some minimal/incomplete communication between virtual host on the same computer
  • dynamic: split the resource of the computer (CPU/Ram) on demand

See also

• List of volunteer computing projects
• List of cluster management software
• Computer cluster
• Grid computing
• World Community Grid
• Distributed computing
• Distributed resource management
• High-Throughput Computing
• Job Processing Cycle
• Batch processing
• Fallacies of Distributed Computing