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 Amoeba active development Base One Foundation Component Library DIET INRIA, SysFera, Open Source All in one GridRPC, SPMD, Hierarchical and distributed architecture, CORBA HTC/HPC Unix-like, Mac OS X, AIX DxEnterprise DH2i Nodes management developed v23.0 Windows 2012R2/2016/2019/2022 and 8+, RHEL 7/8/9, CentOS 7, Ubuntu 16.04/18.04/20.04/22.04, SLES 15.4Cost Enduro/X Mavimax, Ltd. Job/Data Scheduler developed SOA Grid HTC/HPC/HA GPLv2 or Commercial Linux, FreeBSD, MacOS, Solaris, AIX Free / Cost Ganglia Monitoring developed Unix, Linux, Microsoft Windows NT/XP/2000/2003/2008, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonflyBSD, Mac OS X, Solaris, AIX, IRIX, Tru64, HPUX. Grid MP Univa (formerly United Devices) Job Scheduler active development Distributed master/worker HTC/HPC Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris Apache Mesos Apache Retired in August 2025 Linux Moab Cluster Suite Adaptive Computing Job Scheduler developed HPC Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, AIX, OSF/Tru-64, Solaris, HP-UX, IRIX, FreeBSD & other UNIX platforms NetworkComputer Runtime Design Automation developed HTC/HPC Unix-like, Windows OpenClusterScheduler Open Cluster Scheduler all in one developed 9.0.8 HTC/HPC SISSL / Apache License Linux (distribution independent / CentOS 7 to Ubuntu 24.04), FreeBSD, Solaris OpenHPC OpenHPC project all in one developed v2.61 HPC Linux (CentOS / OpenSUSE Leap) OpenLava 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 PBS Pro Altair Job Scheduler developed Master/worker distributed with fail-over HPC/HTC AGPL or Proprietary Linux, Windows or Cost Proxmox Virtual Environment Proxmox Server Solutions Complete developed Linux, Windows, other operating systems are known to work and are community supported Rocks Cluster Distribution Open Source/NSF grant All in one developed (Manzanita) HTC/HPC CentOS Popular Power ProActive INRIA, ActiveEon, Open Source All in one developed Master/Worker, SPMD, Distributed Component Model, Skeletons HTC/HPC Unix-like, Windows, Mac OS X RPyC Tomer Filiba developed *nix/Windows SLURM SchedMD Job Scheduler developed v23.11.3 HPC/HTC Linux/*nix Spectrum LSF IBM Job Scheduler developed Master node with failover/exec clients, multiple admin/submit nodes, Suite addOns HPC/HTC Unix, Linux, Windows and Academic - model - Academic, Express, Standard, Advanced and Suites Oracle Grid Engine (Sun Grid Engine, SGE) Altair Job Scheduler active Development moved to Altair Grid Engine Master node/exec clients, multiple admin/submit nodes HPC/HTC *nix/Windows Some Grid Engine / Son of Grid Engine / Sun Grid Engine daimh Job Scheduler developed (stable/maintenance) Master node/exec clients, multiple admin/submit nodes HPC/HTC *nix SynfiniWay Fujitsu developed HPC/HTC Unix, Linux, Windows Techila Distributed Computing Engine Techila Technologies Ltd. All in one developed Master/worker distributed HTC Linux, Windows TORQUE Resource Manager Adaptive Computing Job Scheduler developed Linux, *nix TrinityX ClusterVision All in one developed v15 HPC/HTC v3 Linux/*nix UniCluster Univa All in One Functionality and development moved to UniCloud (see above) UNICORE Xgrid Apple Computer WarewulfProvision and clusters management developedv4.6.4 HPCLinux xCATProvision and clusters management developedv2.17.0 HPC Eclipse Public LicenseLinux Software Maintainer Category Development statusLatest release Architecture High-Performance/ High-Throughput Computing License Platforms supported Cost
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 Enduro/X C/C++ OS Authentication GPG, AES-128, SHA1 cluster Posix FS (gfs, gpfs, ocfs, etc.) cluster Posix FS (gfs, gpfs, ocfs, etc.) Heterogeneous OS Nice level OS Nice level SOA Queues, FIFO OS Limits OS Limits HTCondor C++ GSI, SSL, Kerberos, Password, File System, Remote File System, Windows, Claim To Be, Anonymous None, Triple DES, BLOWFISH None, MD5 None, NFS, AFS Heterogeneous Fair-share with some programmability basic (hard separation into different node) tested ~10000? tested ~100000? MPI, OpenMP, PVM https://github.com/dasayan05/condor, and native Python Binding PBS Pro C/Python OS Authentication, Munge , e.g., NFS, Lustre, GPFS, AFS Limited availability Heterogeneous Fully configurable tested ~50,000 Millions MPI, OpenMP https://github.com/prisms-center/pbs OpenLava C/C++ OS authentication NFS Heterogeneous Linux Configurable , supports preemption based on priority Slurm C Munge, None, Kerberos Heterogeneous Multifactor Fair-share tested 120k tested 100k PySlurm Spectrum LSF C/C++ Multiple - OS Authentication/Kerberos - GPFS/Spectrum Scale, NFS, SMB - 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 and GPU aware (GPU License free) > 9.000 compute hots > 4 mio jobs a day , supports preemption based on priority, supports checkpointing/resume , fx parallel submissions for job collaboration over fx MPI , with support for user, kernel or library level checkpointing environments https://github.com/IBMSpectrumComputing/lsf-python-api Torque C SSH, munge None, any Heterogeneous Programmable tested tested https://github.com/jkitchin/python-torque 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
References