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OpenPBS

openpbs.org

Free plan macOSLinuxAPISelf-hosted
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Spec score 7.8 #10 of 26 in Job Scheduler Software

What it is

OpenPBS schedules jobs and manages workloads in high-performance computing environments, including clusters, clouds, and supercomputers. Its policy-driven scheduling balances job turnaround time and system utilization while selecting job placements. The system is designed for millions of cores and has been tested beyond 50,000 nodes. A plugin framework provides administration visibility and supports customized extensions. Health checks monitor faults and can mitigate them automatically; the fail-over architecture is designed to avoid a single point of failure and keep jobs running through failures. OpenPBS is self-hosted and free under the AGPL 3.0 open-source license, while PBS Pro is also dual licensed commercially. Public-sector organizations such as academic and research facilities generally choose the open-source license. Community help comes through a volunteer forum, without a guarantee of answers or bug fixes. OpenPBS is integrated into the OpenHPC software stack. The installation guide states that SELinux is not supported, and critical and high security fixes are delivered in the next major release.

Spec sheet

Purpose
OpenPBS optimizes job scheduling and workload management in high-performance computing environments.Read 1 Oct 2026 · openpbs.org
Audience
Public-sector organizations such as academia and research facilities generally opt for the open-source license.Read 1 Oct 2026 · openpbs.atlassian.net
Community support
Community support is provided through a volunteer forum with no fee and no guarantee that questions will be answered or bugs addressed.Read 1 Oct 2026 · openpbs.atlassian.net
Deployment environments
OpenPBS supports HPC clusters, clouds, and supercomputers.Read 1 Oct 2026 · openpbs.org
Health checks
The health-check framework monitors and automatically mitigates faults.Read 1 Oct 2026 · openpbs.org
Integration
OpenPBS is integrated into the OpenHPC software stack, a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project.Read 1 Oct 2026 · github.com
Licensing
The PBS Pro software is dual licensed as commercial software and under the AGPL 3.0 open-source license.Read 1 Oct 2026 · openpbs.atlassian.net
Plugin framework
Its flexible plugin framework provides administration visibility and extensibility for customized implementations.Read 1 Oct 2026 · openpbs.org
Project support channels
The project provides a community forum, contributor portal, source code repository, and issue tracker.Read 1 Oct 2026 · openpbs.org
Resiliency
Automatic fail-over architecture has no single point of failure, and jobs continue running despite failures.Read 1 Oct 2026 · openpbs.org
Scalability
OpenPBS supports millions of cores and has been tested beyond 50,000 nodes.Read 1 Oct 2026 · openpbs.org
Scheduling
Policy-driven scheduling balances job turnaround time and utilization with optimal job placement.Read 1 Oct 2026 · openpbs.org
Security updates
Security updates are primarily delivered as minor-version patches, and known critical and high issues are fixed in the next major release.Read 1 Oct 2026 · openpbs.atlassian.net
SELinux limitation
The OpenPBS installation guide states that OpenPBS does not support SELinux.Read 1 Oct 2026 · github.com

Plans and prices

OpenPBS open-source edition Free AGPL 3.0 license · community forum support has no guarantees Read 1 Oct 2026 · openpbs.atlassian.net

Every OpenPBS plan and price →

Strong points and limits

Strong points

  • Designed to scale to millions of cores.
  • Policy-driven scheduling balances turnaround and utilization.
  • Health checks can mitigate faults automatically.
  • Fail-over design avoids a single point of failure.

Limits

  • SELinux is not supported.
  • Volunteer forum support has no response guarantee.
  • Critical and high security fixes come in the next major release.

Who it suits

OpenPBS is suited to organizations managing HPC workloads across clusters, clouds, or supercomputers. Academic and research facilities are among the public-sector users that generally opt for its open-source license.

Verdict

OpenPBS provides a self-hosted scheduler for large HPC environments under a free AGPL license. Teams should weigh the SELinux limitation and informal community support against its scaling and recovery features.

Where Specifiction places it

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