Is PBS Compute Manager necessary for using HyperWorks on cluster machine? 1

[msjoey]

Hi everyone.

We're building an eight node cluster machine at our company for running large simulations. Currently we use Abaqus and Altair HyperWorks for FEA / CFD. I have contacted our license provider at Altair regarding the use of RADIOSS and Optistruct solvers. Their response is that while our perpetual license will work with the cluster machine, we will need to install (and purchase from them) PBS Compute Manager to manage job queue on the cluster. I'm not really sold on this because based on past interactions, they are always proposing expensive solutions that we don't really need so that we keep spending on them.

Is this PBS really necessary? Has anyone here successfully run parallel computing with HyperWorks products on cluster using open source HPC management? What software are you using and if it works with both HyperWorks and Abaqus?

thanks in advance!

 

[GregLocock]

I think you are right to be cynical but I'm afraid your particular usage is not something I have experience with.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

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[GodzillaSuit]

You should be totally fine using the open source Torque/MOAB scheduler. They offer less expensive paid support too if you are having issues setting up or running your cluster, which will definitely have occasional outages. PBS pro has some nice features at the expense of having some annoying quirks and being very expensive. Abaqus, Radioss, and Optistruct run on Torque without any issues; honestly the scheduler doesn't care what you are running as long as it can be run from a bash script (or multiple bash scripts, you can do weird stuff like submit jobs from other jobs). If you google around there are a bunch of university wiki pages explaining how they run all of those solvers on Torque clusters.

 

[msjoey]

Thank you Greg & GodzillaSuit!

Will look into Torque, definitely. I am informed that PBS Pro is free / open source (tech support will cost though) unlike PBS Works recommended by our Altair supplier.

On the other hand our Abaqus supplier has assured us that they already offer Remote Solver Manager for free. We just need to install a plug-in which we have already received from them complete with installation instructions. So for Abaqus I have zero worries. We get very good tech support from them.

I'll also read more of SGE. Recommended by our Abaqus support and according to other users works with Altair too.