FY 2002 User Survey Results
Many thanks to the 300 users who responded to this year's User Survey -- this
represents the highest response level in the five years we have conducted the
survey. The respondents represent
all five DOE Science Offices and a variety of home institutions:
see User Information.
You can see the FY 2002 User Survey text, in which
users rated us on a 7-point satisfaction scale.
Some areas were also rated on a 3-point importance scale.
| Satisfaction Score | Meaning |
|---|
| 7 | Very Satisfied |
| 6 | Mostly Satisfied |
| 5 | Somewhat Satisfied |
| 4 | Neutral |
| 3 | Somewhat Dissatisfied |
| 2 | Mostly Dissatisfied |
| 1 | Very Dissatisfied |
|
|
| Importance Score | Meaning |
|---|
| 3 | Very Important |
| 2 | Somewhat Important |
| 1 | Not Important |
|
The survey responses provide feedback about every aspect of
NERSC's operation, help us judge the quality of our services, give DOE
information on how well NERSC is doing, and point us to areas we
can improve. The survey results are listed below.
Every year we institute changes based on the survey; this past year's
efforts include:
- With the NERSC User Group we established a queue committee whose task was
to investigate queue issues and recommend improvements.
This year's rating for SP: queue structure went up by
0.7 points.
Based on the committee's recommendations NERSC did the following:
- Improved debug and interactive turnaround during prime time by setting
aside 5% of the SP compute pool for interactive and debug jobs from 5:00 AM to
6:00 PM Pacific Time Monday to Friday. This year's rating
for SP: ability to run interactively went up by 0.8 points.
- Implemented priority aging for regular class jobs: jobs in the
regular class for more than 36 hours will not be preempted by new
premium jobs.
- Provided a new regular_long class with a connect time limit of 24
hours for jobs using 32 nodes or less. Such jobs are not drained for system
outages so self-checkpointing is very important for regular_long jobs.
The NUG queue committee recommended to NOT implement serial queues on Seaborg.
- NERSC provided more performance analysis tools on the SP along with
documentation and training on how to use them. See Programming Tools.
This year's rating for SP: performance and debugging
tools went up by .8 points.
- NERSC installed new visualization tools on the Vis Server, Escher, as well
as on Seabog, and streamlined visualization documentation. See Visualization Packages.
This year's rating for Visualization Services went
up by .3 points.
- NERSC wrote a number of scripts to improve SP management procedures.
This year's rating for SP: uptime went up by 1 point,
the largest increase in satisfaction of the whole survey.
- NERSC started to conduct monthly training sessions on the internet using
Access Grid Node technology. This technology is still not completely mature
and there have been a few rough spots along the way. Satisfaction with
training remains at the same level as last year and we will work to improve our
training program in the upcoming year.
The average satisfaction scores from this year's survey
ranged from a high of 6.6 to a low of 4.8.
Areas with the highest user satisfaction were:
- SP: uptime
- Consulting: timely response
- HPSS: reliability
- PDSF: uptime
Areas with the lowest user satisfaction were:
- PVP: batch wait time
- Visualization services
- Training
The largest increases in satisfaction came from the SP: 9 of the 18
ratings that were significantly higher this year than last year were SP
ratings. Other areas showing significant improvements were the T3E (queue
structure, tools and utilities, uptime), visualization services, hardware and
software configuration, and the New Users Guide.
Only two areas were rated significantly lower this year: PVP performance and
debugging tools, and the allocations process.
92 users answered the question What does
NERSC do well?
71 respondents pointed out that NERSC is a well run center with good hardware.
42 singled out User Support and NERSC's staff, 16 NERSC's
documentation and 13 job scheduling and batch throughput. Some representative
comments are:
Among the supercomputing facilities I tried until now, NERSC excells in most
aspects. I am most satisfied with the overall stability of the system.
This must come from the outstanding competence of the technicians.
I really appreciate the job fron consult. They always did their best to help me
to resolve my technique problems, especially at starting to use seaborg.
NERSC provides access to very high performance computing facilities on a
platform with a simple interface, making development
easy. Information services, training, account management, and consulting are
all excellent.
The available hardware and software is very good. It meets my needs well. There
is an abundance of documentation I have
benefited from. Account support has also been very good. I also appreciate the
seeming concern about security.
66 users responded to What should
NERSC do differently? The following
issues were raised and will be addressed in the upcoming year:
- SP scheduling:
- Could more resources be devoted to the regular_long class (more nodes, a
longer run time, better throughput)?
- Could longer run time limits be implemented across the board?
- Could more services be devoted to interactive jobs?
- Could there be a serial queue?
- SP software:
- Could the Unix environment be more user-friendly (e.g. more editors and
shells in the default path)?
- Could there be more data analysis software, including matlab?
- Computing resources:
- NERSC needs more computational power overall
- Could a PVP resource be provided?
- Could mid-range computing or cluster resources be provided?
- Documentation:
- Provide better searching, navigation, organization of the information.
- Enhance SP documentation.
- Training:
- Provide more training on performance analysis, optimization and
debugging.
- Provide more information in the New Users Guide.
Here are the survey results:
- User Information
- Overall Satisfaction and Importance
-
All Satisfaction Questions and Changes from Previous Years
- Visualization and Grid Computing
- Web, NIM, and Communications
- Hardware Resources
- Software Resources
- Training
- User Services
- Comments about NERSC
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