Voyager Software Network Batch System

Voyager's flagship product is called NBS - the Network Batch System. NBS is a suite of executable images and command scripts that implements a distributed load-balanced batch execution system on computer systems running Unix, Linux (ix86, ia64, Intel 64 and Opteron) or Microsoft Windows 2000 or XP. All platform types may participate in a single NBS distributed cluster (for example, you may submit NBS batch jobs from any of the supported platform types to run on any other). NBS supports single-stream, multi-processor (SMP) and distributed or parallel jobs using MPI. NBS includes a high-performance industrial strength queue manager and job scheduler. NBS is in use at both academic and commercial sites in the US and overseas.

NBS documentation

You can view the NBS documentation here. The documentation set is also provided as part of the downloadable kit. A set of hardcopy manuals is also available (see below). You may also download the NBS documentation set in postscript or html. If you are planning an NBS installation, you will need the NBS Installation Guide, which is available in postscript, or via the web as described above. Documentation for older versions of NBS is available here.

Source code for example programs that use the NBS Applications Programming Interface (API) is available here.

How to download NBS

You can download the NBS kit for the latest version of NBS for the following platforms:

or you can browse the available NBS kits here, where you may find kits for additional platforms (although these are not officially supported). Note that Microsoft Windows 2003 and later is currently not supported; such support is expected at a later date.

The kits for Unix are provided in the form of single tar files that contain the complete kit. Each file is available in compressed tar format (.tar.Z), gzipped tar format (.tar.gz) and bzip2 tar format (.tar.bz2). The latter are the smallest and so will download quickest.

The kit for Microsoft Windows is a single self-extracting executable image that contains the setup program (the same kit runs on both Windows 2000 and Windows XP).

Checksums (MD5 and SHA1) are provided so that you may verify download integrity.

To obtain NBS licenses, please contact Voyager Software here. Note that NBS contains a free license key that allows the use of the software on any one single-processor or dual-processor computer at no charge (quad-processor for Linux/x86 systems).

NBS mailing list

You can subscribe to the NBS mailing list by sending an e-mail message to nbs-request@vgersoft.com with a blank subject and a one-line message body containing the word "subscribe". Similarly, you can unsubscribe from from the NBS mailing list by sending an e-mail message to nbs-request@vgersoft.com with a blank subject and a one-line message body containing the word "unsubscribe". If you have downloaded one of the NBS kits, you are encouraged to join the mailing list so that you can learn of any updates. The mailing list is not shared with any third parties.

How much does it cost?

NBS licensing works by maintaining a database of License Units. The NBS component called the Queue Manager maintains this license database. The number of license units consumed by each NBS component varies with the type of component, viz:

The Queue Manager itself consumes 50 license units, independent of platform type or processor count. If a single Queue Manager is controlling multiple clusters, 50 license units are required for the first cluster, and 75 license units for the second and any subsequent clusters.
A Job Execution Server, which is the NBS component that actually runs jobs on compute server systems, consumes 5 license units per physical processor on Linux/x86 platforms and 10 license units per physical processor on all other platform types. For NBS V4.0 and later running Linux, licensing is based on physical processors rather than logical processors: Intel processors with hyperthreading enabled consume license units based on physical processors (that is, one physical processor per two logical processors). Similarly, AMD multi-core processors consume license units per processor socket, not per-core. This makes NBS extremely cost-effective on multi-core processor systems.
NBS client systems, which may submit jobs and query the NBS database, but which do not execute jobs, do not consume any license units. An unlimited number of such systems may be installed at no cost.

All license units are created equal: a pool of license units purchased for a specific set of systems may be used by any other systems under control of the same Queue Manager up to the total number of license units. No identification of specific systems (such as via a host identifier, IP address or MAC address) is required. If a single NBS queue manager system has been configured to control more than one distinct NBS cluster, that queue manager's license pool is shared by the members of all NBS clusters controlled by that queue manager.

The list price of a permanent license unit is $30.00 (US dollars). An annual license, which lasts for one year and must be renewed to continue use of the software, is available at one-third of the permanent license price. Thus, the cost of licensing each component, before any applicable discount, is as follows:

Queue Manager: permanent license $1500.00; annual license $500.00.
Job Execution Server for Linux/x86: permanent license $150.00 per processor; annual license $50.00 per processor.
Job Execution Server for other platforms: permanent license $300.00 per processor; annual license $100.00 per processor.

A hardcopy NBS documentation set is available for $125 (includes shipping). The documentation is included in the kit, however, so you may print it yourself.

Each NBS kit comes with 70 free license units, to enable the use of NBS on any single-processor or dual-processor computer at no charge (quad-processor for Linux/x86). This free license key built in to the software; installation of a license key is not required.

An extremely generous discount is available to accredited academic institutions (except for the hardcopy documentation, which is not discountable): licenses are free of charge for the first 128 processors.

Volume license discounts and site licenses are available.