Oar is an open source batch scheduler which provides a simple and flexible exploitation of a cluster.

It manages resources of clusters as a traditional batch scheduler (as PBS / Torque / LSF / SGE / SLURM). In other words, it doesn't execute your job on the resources but manages them (reservation, acces granting) in order to allow you to connect to these resources and use them.

Its design is based on high level tools:

• relational database engine MySQL or PostgreSQL,
• scripting language Perl,
• confinement system mechanism with the Linux cgroup features,
• scalable exploiting tool Taktuk.

It is flexible enough to be suitable for production clusters and research experiments. It currently manages over than 5000 nodes and has executed more than 10 million jobs.

OAR advantages:

• No dependence on specific computing libraries like MPI. We support all sort of parallel user applications.
• CGROUP (2.6 linux kernel) integration which restricts the jobs on assigned resources (also useful to clean completely a job, even parallel jobs).
• Can use the taktuk command (a large scale remote execution deployment): http://taktuk.gforge.inria.fr/.
• Hierarchical resource requests (handle heterogeneous clusters).
• Gantt scheduling (so you can visualize the internal scheduler decisions).
• Full or partial time-sharing.
• Checkpoint/resubmit.
• Licences servers management support.
• Best effort jobs : if another job wants the same resources then it is deleted automatically (useful to execute programs like SETI@home).
• Environment deployment support (Kadeploy): http://kadeploy.imag.fr/.

See http://oar.imag.fr/installation/2.5/