PBS PROFESSIONAL VS. MICROSOFT HPC PACK On the Microsoft Windows Platform PBS Professional offers many features which are not supported by Microsoft HPC Pack. SOME OF THE IMPORTANT ADVANTAGES OF PBS PROFESSIONAL ARE: Support of Windows and Linux platforms More job ordering and job priority options More queuing options Time slot allocation and job classes Professional support provided A comprehensive comparison between PBS Professional and MS HPC Pack is provided below. PBS PRO VS. MS HPC S. NO. FEATURES SUB-FEATURES MS HPC PBS PRO 1 PLATFORM SUPPORT Windows Unix/Linux 2 HIGH AVAILABILITY/ FAILOVER SUPPORT Built-in support? HPC Server 2008 R2 HPC Server 2012 Supported through Windows HA functionality Supported only on Datacentre and Enterprise additions which is expensive 3 EXTREME SCALABILITY / PERFORMANCE Scales to hundreds of thousands of cores numbers published 4 NETWORK TOPOLOGY SUPPORT Flexible?. Only 5 fixed configurations are supported. 5 JOB ORDERING Priority based FCFS Strict Ordering Round Robin Queue order By Queue order Job Sort Formula Multiple Queues and Queue Priorities Starving Jobs Fairshare Sorting jobs on one or more keys e.g. resource 6 FINE GRAINED CONTROL Server Level Limits Queue Level Limits Individual Limits Generic Limits. support for Multiple queues.
7 MPI SUPPORT Intel MPI MPICH2 MS MPI Extensible to other MPI implementations? 8 SYSTEM HEALTH REPORTING 9 USER ROLES Access to the Server Access to the Queue Access to the Reservation 10 QUEUES Multiple Queues Queue Priorities Routing Queues Express Queues Queue Attributes Queue-based Access Control Lists Queue Limits 11 JOB PRIORITY Different execution and pre-emption priorities Prioritizing jobs using wait time Job sort formula Sorting Jobs using key Using Queue Priority while computing Job Priority Fairshare Sorting Jobs using requested Priority 12 CUSTOM RESOURCES Static Resources Dynamic Resources Server Level Resources Host Level Resources Shared Resources 13 DEPENDENCY Job Level Dependency Task Level Dependency 14 JOB PLACEMENT OPTIMIZATION de grouping / Placement sets Peer Scheduling Load Balancing SMP Cluster Distribution Cycle Harvesting. On Windows 7. On limited editions.
15 SHARED AND EXCLUSIVE RESOURCES 16 SHARED AND EXCLUSIVE NODE 17 CLOUD BURST Supported Extensible to any cloud 18 PREEMPTION Preemption Priority Preemption Level Preemption Priority different than Job Execution Priority Method: Checkpointing Method: Suspension Method: Requeueing Graceful and immidiate Preemption 19 BACKFILLING Backfill look ahead Estimated Start time Primetime Support 20 FILTERS Submission Filters Activation/execution filters Run various other hooks triggered at other events e.g. job change, job move, and also at server and host level Periodic hooks 21 TIME SLOT ALLOCATION Standing Reservations Advanced Reservations Prime time Dedicated time Holidays 22 JOB CLASSES Reservation Starving Suspended Express. Only Azure. Has better methods of preemption as listed above 23 NODE ORDERING (node_sort_key) 24 LICENSE AWARE SCHEDULING 25 RE-RUNNABLE JOBS 26 JOB SCHEDULER INTERFACE API SUPPORT
27 NODE PREP AND RELEASE (Prologue and Epilogue) 28 PARAMETRIC SWEEP (Array Jobs) 29 LOGGING, TRACING, DIAGNOSIS, DEBUGGING SUPPORT 30 SECURITY CERTIFICATION EAL3+ 31 JOB SUBMISSION AND MONITORING GUI 32 ANALYTICS 33 JOB TASKS Task Based Granularity Attach task to a Job API Interface to manage tasks 34 ADAPTIVE SCHEDULING 35 JOB HISTORY 36 MAIL NOTIFICATIONS 37 SUSPEND/RESUME JOB 38 OS PROVISIONING 39 INTERACTIVE JOBS 40 OVERRIDE SCHEDULING Via filters Run Job manually, immediately Hold a running job manually Change Formula on the fly Dedicated time 41 ADMIN GUI Beta 42 CLI DOS Power Shell 43 INSTALLATION, CONFIGURATION Silent Installation Automatic installation Migration Upgrade Ease of Installation and Configuration Cumbersome Easy 44 COST Price OS Licences OEM Support Free Software OS Server licenses required OEM support available Charged minal per core, High volumes negotiable OS Desktop and Server licences supported Professional OEM support provided
SUMMARY - PBS PROFESSIONAL PBS Professional is an excellent solution as a job management system for Windows and Linux platforms. PBS PROFESSIONAL PROVIDES: Ease of use Efficient and adaptable job scheduling on large clusters, supercomputers and cloud based systems Full technical support PBS Professional can be installed on existing Windows and Linux HPC Clusters and replace legacy job management systems, with a modern fully supported system.