CISL 2007 annual report banner

Supporting supercomputer users

 
 
Tickets resolved

These graphs show CISL support statistics from a new tiered customer support system. Blue bars show frontline customer support, while red indicates advanced consulting. Frontline support resolved 1,692 tickets between September 2006 and August 2007. In that same time, advanced support resolved an additional 968 contacts, for a total of 2,660.
 
Log entries

The average number of log entries per ticket was 4.9; communication was highest with users on complex cases.
 
Response time

Average response time for frontline support was about 70 minutes, while a longer average response time of about 3.3 hours was required for more complex issues. Unusually long frontline response times seen in July-August were due to a larger-than-usual number of tickets for which resolution stalled.
 
Staff per ticket

The average number of staff who worked on tickets was 1.81, demonstrating cross-team cooperation in resolving issues. Use of tiered consulting has made 24x7 customer response feasible, while a tracking system has made it easier to route questions and deal with them efficiently.
 

In today's challenging computational environment, excellent customer support is essential to making progress in computational and scientific research. That support begins the moment an investigator decides to use NCAR resources, and the collaboration may continue over months or years until results are achieved. This work supports NCAR's strategic goal to "Provide robust, accessible, and innovative information services and tools" to our customers. CISL provides end-to-end service using the full capability of the divisional staff.

In FY2007, CISL further enhanced a new tiered customer support system. The key to making this project succeed was expansion of the consulting service to include other groups within CISL who could provide frontline assistance as well as in-depth expertise. Contacts are tracked using an ExtraView HelpDesk trouble ticket system.

A benefit of tiered customer support has been greater efficiency, freeing CISL staff to begin supplying customized, one-on-one service for special projects such as 2007's innovative Breakthrough Science program, which provided opportunities for capability computing projects requiring hundreds of thousands of processor hours. We also began preparing consulting and documentation support for users joining the TeraGrid via NCAR.

In FY2008, we anticipate further growth in this type of scientific support and plan to begin logging these using ExtraView.

This ongoing service is supported by NSF Core funds, including CSL funding.