Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and compatible clones are widely supported by most CAE and CFD solvers, but not all versions work with new versions of the operating system, and this post is to help clients look at their current applications and plan to migrate to newer releases that will be required on new HPC clusters.
Most older HPC systems deployed in the field are running RHEL 7.9 which is supported by Red Hat until June 30, 2024. New HPC systems are on RHEL 8.X which will be supported by Red Hat until May 2029.
in some industries it is not uncommon to be baselined on a solver version that is 3-5 years old or on versions that are not technically supported but still work. Note that in some cases “not supported” also now means “won’t even work” on RHEL8, and so this post can help for planning.
This table is not a comprehensive list, we will update this post as needed.
| Application Name | Minimum App Version | First RHEL8 Supported Version | First RHEL8 ONLY App Version |
| Abaqus | 2021 (FP2117 & above) | RHEL 8.1 & above | 2024 |
| Tosca | 2022(FP2205) | RHEL 8.1 | 2024 |
| Isight | 2022(FP2205) | RHEL 8.1 | 2024 |
| Dymola | 2023 | RHEL 8.2 | |
| Altair Optistruct | 2020.1 | RHEL 8.X | 2021.2 |
| Ansys Fluent | 2021 R1 | RHEL 8.1 | 2024R2 |
| Ansys Mechanical | 2021 R1 | RHEL 8.1 | 2024R2 |
| Ansys CFX | 2021 R1 | RHEL 8.1 | 2024R2 |
| Ansys Polyflow | 2021 R1 | RHEL 8.1 | 2024R2 |
| Ansys Electronics Desktop | 2021 R1 | RHEL 8.1 | 2024R2 |
| Ansys Forte | 2021 R1 | RHEL 8.1 | 2024R2 |
| Ansys Slwave | 2021 R1 | RHEL 8.1 | 2024R2 |
| COMSOL | 5.5 | RHEL 8.0 | RHEL7 still supported on 6.2 |
| CONVERGE | 3.1.6, 3.2.2 | RHEL 8.4 | RHEL7 still supported on 4.0 |
| CST Studio | 2022 | RHEL 8.x | 2024 |
| Mathworks Matlab | 2019b & above | RHEL 8.x | RHEL7 still supported on 2024a |
| MSC Nastran | 2022 | RHEL 8.4 | 2024 |
| MSC Adams | 2022 | RHEL 8.4 | 2024 |
| MSC Simufact | 2022 | RHEL 8.4 | 2024 |
| Polyumod | 6.5.1 | RHEL 8.X | |
| Star-CCM+ | 2022.1 & above | RHEL 8.3 & above | 2402 |
| LS-DYNA | 9.3.1 for Intel MPI 2018 support | RHEL 8.X | RHEL7 still supported on R15.02 |
Note while RHEL9 is the latest release of RHEL, we do not recommend RHEL9 at this time, there is very little to no support for it at the time of this writing by CAE solvers.
Note that Abaqus 2021 with all hotfixes on RHEL8 will still require kernel modifications on RHEL8 to work which is not required with Abaqus 2022.
Last Update 4/24/2024