[Bioclusters] LSF vs SGE

[chris dagdigian]

I really should stay out of this as the last thing I need right now is 
to be percieved as a Platform LSF flunky but I don't think anyone else 
is going to respond to this...

Just to get my credentials out on the table here -- I've actually been 
called at home (at night) by a senior Platform Computing person who 
proceeded to yell at me for comments I made about the LSF product on 
this forum. Sun can sometimes be equally unhappy with me.

Ron- I've been an avid reader of your posts for a long time both on this 
forum and the sge-users mailing list. For a long time you were one of 
the few non-Sun people who could coherently talk about what a great 
product Grid Engine is has become.  It was refreshing to see people 
spreading the gospel out through the beowulf and other lists.

Over the last few months though your pro-SGE cheerleading has crossed 
some sort of threshold for me. Rather than positively promoting what is 
a very, very good product (SGE) your posts now remind me of some of 
those idiot slashdot posters & trolls who spew factless FUD-inspired 
invective and insults against "the enemy".  Trust me -- this is not 
making anyone think more positively about choosing Grid Engine.

Now I read your posts and try to figure out just what exactly is the 
personal axe you are trying to grind.

Your advocacy efforts have the potential to do the same harm to Grid 
Engine as the rabid "if it's not GNU/Linux it's shit!" crowd.  You 
obviously know what you are talking about and your effort is really 
important but in recent times some sort of other personal agenda or 
vendetta has been creeping into your posts and tainting your message.

Platform Computing is not "the enemy".

Commercial software is not "the enemy".

Choosing a DRM layer is one of the single most important decisions made 
for any given clustering project. The decision should be made after 
carefully evaluating the options and choosing the one that works best 
for the project, budget, use cases and situation. As I said in a 
previous post I use both SGE and LSF in my daily work.

More comments below...

Ron Chen wrote:
> IMO, Platform is not that friendly. They like to
> spread FUD about other products, e.g. They said that
> PBS can't handle over 5000 jobs, and someone told me
> that they said similar things about SGE.
> 

Platform techies, engineers, developers and support staff have always 
been friendly and professional. I've had developers in Beijing and 
Toronto go _way_ out of their way to help me out whenever I've needed a 
hand. Same with the SGE developers and people on the sge mailing lists. 
Techies in general are Good People.

Platform salespeople on the other hand have sometimes been arrogant and 
complacent. For a long time they had a lock on what was unquestionably 
the best product in the space and they charged and acted accordingly.

This has changed now that there is way more competition especially in 
the Linux clustering space. The salespeople are hungry and responsive 
now. Trust me :)

Platform sales people have never been as aggressive or as creepy as EMC 
salespeople though. Wow those dudes were like a cult.

Regarding FUD

Much of the FUD comes from salespeople who have been given competitive 
briefing information on other products that is usually not up-to-date.

OpenPBS _did_ have problems handling more than 5,000 jobs at a time

OpenPBS _did_ have documented problems with submitted jobs just 
*vanishing* from the system -- a critical flaw in my mind.

GridEngine did have its growing pains; even in the biocluster space

The real problem (I think) was that by the time this news filtered out 
from the community and into the hands of the Platform salespeople the 
initial bugs/issues had been fixed.

So the problem really with the salespeople is that they know their own 
product in its current incarnation extremely well but have been briefed 
on "old" products put out by the competition. This makes them look bad 
when talking to super-educated customers.

The best way to fight FUD is with the truth. If anyone has recent FUD 
stories to share from a recent Platform sales pitch I'd love to hear 
about it in this forum.


> (In fact, since LSF is not free, they should compare
> LSF with PBSPro. And also, I started using SGE from
> the very beginning, and I know that even early
> versions of SGE can handle many more jobs than that!)

The reason everyone has to compare/contrast against OpenPBS is that 
every single lame-ass wannabe cluster vendor seems to have just lazily 
stuck a OpenPBS RPM into their cluster image and started calling it a 
"turnkey solution".

SGE has also had its growing pains and bad deployment stories which is 
where I'm sure some of the SGE FUD is coming from. I do think however 
that SGE is improving and adding new functionality at a totally amazing 
rate.

> 
> http://www.beowulf.org/pipermail/beowulf/2001-October/001486.html
> http://bioinformatics.org/pipermail/bioclusters/2001-October/000035.html
> 

> Also, both PBS and SGE follow DRMAA, but Platform
> pushes NPI -- the LSF API as the "standard".
> 

Both DRMAA and NPI seem to be coming from the Global Grid Forum (GGF) 
these days. I know Platform is involved at some level with GGF.

Anyone from Platform or GGF who can chime in on what the current 
situation is? What's up with NPI vs DRMAA?


> Do you think we should support these kind of
> companies?
> 
>  -Ron

Platform is not evil. Selling & supporting good software is not wrong.

You complain about FUD and bad practices but I can't help getting the 
sense that your primary reason for not liking LSF is that they did not 
give it to you for free.

Just my $.02


-- 
Chris Dagdigian, <dag@sonsorol.org>
BioTeam Inc. - Independent Bio-IT & Informatics consulting
Office: 617-666-6454, Mobile: 617-877-5498, Fax: 425-699-0193
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