[Bioclusters] LSF vs SGE

[Ron Chen]

These days, SGE, LSF, and PBSPro (not OpenPBS) can
handle the needs of most people.

SGE can handle over 1000 nodes, several ten thousand
jobs very easily. And SGE is growing very quickly too,
so does LSF.

BTW, LSF follows SGE designs, especially in L$F 5.0,
they have seperated the job container and scheduler,
shame on them... charging people such a high cost.

In terms of support, you are talking about different
things -- you are paying $$ for your LSF support, if
they can't answer your questions, then you should ask
your money back! On the other hand, you can get
commercial support for SGE too.

If you are building a new cluster, you should at least
try SGE first, but if you already have LSF installed,
and you don't mind paying for support+upgrade every
year, then don't bother reinstalling SGE.

Lastly, I hope everyone knows that SGE userbase is
increaing rapidly, it can be easily seen from the
mailing list traffic:

http://gridengine.sunsource.net/servlets/SummarizeList?listName=users

 -Ron

--- Steve Pittard <wsp@emory.edu> wrote:
> 
> LSF vs. SGE
> 
> We've been using Platform LSF to manage our
> BLAST/HMMSEARCH
> cluster for the past year. We've made the cut over
> to Sun Grid Engine and are currently completing
> stress testing 
> after which we will use SGE exclusively. Until then
> we 
> are running LSF and SGE in parallel (no pun
> intended) though 
> our underlying Perl programs refer to enviroment
> varibles
> making it possible for the cluster to use one or the
> packages with just a quick change. In this fashion
> we
> can get back quickly to LSF if SGE is having
> problems.
> 
> I think LSF is an excellent product with lots of
> tunability (
> is that a word ?) and I'm pleased with their support
> of the
> product. None of my questions to Platform tech
> support have
> gone unanswered. On the other hand I wasn't at all
> pleased 
> last year when we shelled out a premium price per
> CPU only
> to find that a mere two months later the price had
> dropped
> to a quarter of what we paid. Frankly I felt price
> gouged.
> Bottom line - make sure you are getting the best
> price
> possible if you go with LSF. If you are buying from 
> a cluster provider (e.g. MiroWay) they usually
> negotiate
> the best price for your environment but make sure
> you check 
> it out.
> 
> SGE is doing the job thus far and most of the
> questions I've
> had were answerable via the internet and the support
> forum.
> If money weren't an issue (when isn't it ?) I would
> renew
> LSF since we've gotten good performance data from it
> and
> know what to expect in terms of functionality. But
> since 
> budget money is tight this year I'm compelled to use
> free 
> software where possible.
> 
> 
> Steve Pittard	 | http://catalina.bimcore.emory.edu
> (HOME PAGE)
> Emory University | wsp@emory.edu,
> wsp@bimcore.emory.edu  (INTERNET) 
> BIMCORE Support	 | 404 727 0038 
> 
> 
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