PBS Works 10.4 Increases Accuracy and Predictability for HPC Capacity Planning and Forecasting

Latest release of PBS Professional and PBS Analytics introduces redesigned backfill scheduling, job start time intelligence, and a new license analytics module.

TROY, Mich – PBS Works, a division of Altair Engineering, Inc. and a global leader in software solutions that make high performance computing (HPC) faster, simpler and smarter, announced today the availability of PBS Works™ 10.4, the company’s suite of on-demand computing technologies. PBS Works 10.4 provides customers new capabilities to streamline workload management, allowing easy creation of intelligent policies for managing distributed, mixed-vendor computing assets, including applications, as a single unified system.

The new version of PBS Professional®, the foundation for PBS Works, offers customers a next-generation backfill scheduling system with the ability to accurately predict job start times. PBS Analytics 10.4 introduces a new standalone resource utilization data analysis and visualization module, License Analytics. License Analytics can be deployed within any IT environment and is an easy-to-use solution that supports data-driven planning and decision-making. Together, the enhancements allow customers to maximize information technology (IT) investments by enabling more accurate forecasting and capacity planning decisions.

The improved backfill scheduling system ensures that multiple top-priority jobs start as soon as possible, regardless of backfilling by smaller jobs, honoring enterprise policies while maximizing throughput.

The estimated job start time feature offers customers more control and predictability of job schedules and timelines by informing users of the time a job will start, taking into account all aspects of site scheduling policies. The PBS status command “qstat” displays jobs by run priority, making it very simple for users to understand their job’s place in the queue.

“With this release, we have invested significantly to provide businesses with more visability and planning tools for all levels throughout the enterprise,” said Dr. Bill Nitzberg, chief technical officer for PBS Works.

The new license analytics module in PBS Analytics enables customers to maximize software license use by allowing chargebacks to cost centers, greater accuracy in capacity growth planning, and reduction of spending via sharing of licenses. While most analytics software measures use only by time period, the license analytics module integrates data from multiple sites and sources, including usage data by software, vendor, feature, project, group and cost center, into a cohesive interactive dashboard view.

“With reduced IT budgets, it is increasingly important for companies to get the most out of their IT assets, and PBS Analytics helps them achieve this,” said Nitzberg. “Measuring use, denials, costs and performing what-if simulations provides customers with the information they need to make smart decisions about their IT spending. ”

PBS Works 10.4 also includes an updated version of PBS Catalyst, a tool that simplifies the submission and management of jobs running on PBS Professional compute nodes. Since there are no complicated commands to learn or scripts to write and maintain, PBS Catalyst increases productivity for users by allowing more time for value-added research and analysis. To best meet demanding and varied requirements, PBS Catalyst comes in two forms: a Web-based version that allows users to easily submit work to remote PBS Professional compute nodes, as well as a powerful desktop client version that enables users to submit jobs to local and remote systems.

PBS Works 10.4 is now available from Altair and its channel partners. Visit www.pbsworks.com to learn how PBS Works makes high-performance computing faster, smarter and more productive.