HTCondor vs Kueue

HTCondor is a free high-throughput computing system that coordinates networked machines to run submitted jobs. It finds available machines, matches their resource offers to job requirements and preferences through ClassAds, and can restart a job elsewhere if its current machine becomes unavailable. It is suited to submitting large batches, including thousands of runs across different data sets, and can use otherwise idle machines in a pool. Users do not need login accounts on machines running their jobs; file transfers and split execution support that model. HTCondor can draw on clusters, cloud resources, and international grids, and flocking can connect multiple installations. It supports transfers to and from S3-compatible storage, including Google Cloud Storage through its S3 interoperability API, but not entire buckets or directories. The software is licensed under Apache License 2.0, includes Python bindings, and offers user and administrator guides. Community support is available through a mailing list; paid contract support offers guaranteed resolution and faster turnaround. Security fixes cover current feature and LTS versions, with the previous LTS supported for approximately twelve months after a new LTS release.

Kueue is a free Kubernetes project that manages quotas and job resource consumption, deciding when workloads wait, start, or are preempted. It installs on a standard Kubernetes cluster without replacing existing components. Its scheduling tools include priority-based queues, fair sharing, quota borrowing between teams, resource flavor fungibility, preemption policies, and all-or-nothing scheduling. Built-in integrations cover Kubernetes Jobs and Pods, Kubeflow training jobs, Ray jobs and clusters, JobSet, AppWrapper, Deployments, StatefulSets, and LeaderWorkerSet. MultiKueue can find capacity and dispatch workloads across clusters, while topology-aware scheduling accounts for data center layout to improve communication throughput between pods. Kueue provides Prometheus metrics and an endpoint for viewing pending workloads. Installation instructions cover kubectl, Helm, and source builds. The guide recommends Kubernetes 1.34 or newer and officially supports and tests only those versions. Kueue also provides administrator and user ClusterRoles, with resource-specific roles that can be composed into custom roles. Its webhook server includes internal certificate management, and the installation guide links to cert-manager instructions.