Comparing Univa Grid Engine
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See What Univa has done with Grid Engine
To see what open source Sun Grid Engine 6.2U5 is missing, read what Univa has done to Grid Engine. Learn about the more than 200 differences between Sun Grid Engine 6.2U5 – the last open source version of Grid Engine – and Univa Grid Engine 8.0.1, our latest release.
That’s nearly 1 improvement per day since Univa hired the core Grid Engine engineering team.
The following comparison is designed to help Grid Engine users understand the difference between Univa Grid Engine and open source Grid Engine 6.2U5 or Oracle Grid Engine.
Comparing Univa Grid Engine to Open Source
Typically, open source software is viewed as a low cost alternative to commercial software. However, there are often additional costs that accompany the open source model that may not be accounted for in direct comparisons. In order to understand the total cost comparison, account must be taken for support in the form of installation and configuration, bug fixes and day-to-day care and feeding. These amenities create the assurance that there are dedicated resources standing behind the product ensuring its production-worthy status, as well as the confidence that it can be recovered within a reasonable period of time (in the event of a major bug or outage).
Univa Grid Engine is based on Grid Engine 6.2U5, the last open source version of Grid Engine. Univa adds the following technical improvements to this open core to build Univa Grid Engine.
Bug Fixes
With the release Univa Grid Engine 8.0.1, Univa has implemented more than 200 bug fixes and improvements to the 6.2U5 code. These changes are documented in the Release Notes of the product. Many of the bugs have fixed significant performance or stability issues for production clusters.
Feature Set
In addition to bug fixes and improvements, Univa has implemented or re-implemented the following major features.
- New Job Submission Verifier Extensions
- New HWLOC Library for Core Binding on Linux
- New CUDA Load Sensor for NVIDIA GPUs
- With version 8.0.1 UniSight reporting and analytics is now bundled
- Additional technical improvements
- New Documentation
Details of the new feature set can be read here
Add-on Capabilities
Univa has been building orchestration and cloud capabilities for Grid Engine for years. More information can be found here
Comparing Univa Grid Engine to Oracle
In addition to reactive support, the model must address feature enhancements (many times referred to as engineering change requests), integrate with other products, and proactively address future demand - so that features and capabilities are available at day one of delivery for technology innovation outside of the product. Each of these capabilities has an escalating cost, benefit, and quality of service impact.
| Features | Univa Grid Engine | Open Source Grid Engine | Oracle Grid Engine |
| Current Version Number | 8.0.1 | 6.2U5+ | 6.2U7 |
| License | Commercial | SISSL | Commercial |
| Base Core | 8.0.0 | 6.2U5 | 6.2U7 |
| Organization Type | Corporation | Project | Corporation |
| Qualification versus Existing Binaries | Certified compatible | None | Compatible as of today |
| Commercial Entity | |||
| Professional Grid Engine Developers on Staff | Yes, Core Team | No | Yes(1) |
| Published Roadmap | Yes | No | No |
| Offer Commercial Version | Yes | No | Yes(2) |
| Level of Support Available | Full, Enterprise Class Support | Community | Passive/Break-fix(3) |
| Professional Services Available | Yes | No | Limited(4) |
| Add-on Product Feature Set | |||
| Automated Cluster Configuration | Yes, UniCloud | No | No |
| Automated Cloud Configuration | Yes, UniCloud | No | Yes, Limited(5) |
| Reporting | Yes, UniSight | No | Yes, Limited(6) |
Oracle has Grid Engine developers on staff working on various projects which are outlined in this public webinar Notes:
- Oracle offers commercial licenses to a product for which there is no HPC or technical computing roadmap - see this public webinar
- Oracle's commercial support is limited to break/fix at the time of this writing
- Oracle's professional services do not include offerings around Grid Engine or HPC at the time of writing this
- Oracle bundles SDM which provides rudimentary cloud 'node' configuration
Oracle includes Arco which provides rudimentary reporting capabilities