Comparing job-management systems: the user's perspective

The goal of job-management systems is to efficiently manage the distributed computing power of workstations, servers, and supercomputers. Effectively controlling these resources according to site-defined policies requires robustness, configurability, and allocation and scheduling mechanisms to maximize job throughput. There are now many highly functional job-management software packages in both the commercial marketplace and public domain. This comparison of job-management systems has highlighted the degrees to which these products fulfil end-user requirements. While all are highly functional, the user must decide whether ease of use is a more critical requirement than the extended functionality and flexibility found in the more complex systems. The relative costs of acquiring, installing, configuring, maintaining, and supporting these products are also important selection criteria that have merely been implied in this study and would be interesting considerations in future comparisons.