web: What Support Should we Offer? Application vs. User

web: Overview What support should we provide: Application vs. User David Wallom (Facilitator), Tim Parkinson (scribe) David Wallom, Tim Parkinson, Pascal Ekin, Phil Kershaw, Aaron Turner, Neil Chue Hong (first half). Is this a continuation of an earlier breakout? If so, which one? No Do you think that the breakout be continued into another session? Yes but not here – need DCC and one or more Research Computing Dept involved.

web: Who should we support? Should we be supporting end user researchers or institutional support organisations. Should we be supporting institutions to support their own users or attempting to support popular applications ourselves. We think the first. Support novices, resolve incidents/defects, vs advanced usage tuition. Applications – at Oxford 98% of HPC packages are off the shelf commercial packages; 100% of HTC packages are FOSS/academic.

web: Specialist applications Specialist applications are often developed, maintained, and supported by a small group of specialists – the original authors (e.g. VASP, dmarel/dmacrys). Info Services will often install such software but will not / cannot support it – you are on your own. Shortage of funding and expertise. Can we propose a costing / funding model whereby institutions will be compensated for providing such support

web: Costing? There is an expectation that research software is free apart from things like Fluent or Matlab which cost money for licences and support. Supporting the use of FLOSS is still a real cost and we need to make the case for funding it. The recent growth in the number of Research Computing Support departments in Info Sys depts. Some of these RCS do fund experts in particular application codes where there is demonstrable local need. Easy to justify for HPC such computational chemistry or other heavy user. Not so for middlewares or data transfer and storage.

web: Data Services Currently NGS host a storage and database service but this has no guarantee of long term funding and in the event of closure, individual institutions would have to take over responsibility. NERC host a large set of data services. It is matched to their users and funding bodies. Harder to match service/users/funding in HEI’s DCC should be much more visible for long term storage and data access best practice during project setup. Could institutions be incentivised or required to provide storage (or computation) to a national federation.

web: Service Standards BADC have auditable standards for their services. Are there ISO service standards for support that can be adopted (ISO 9000 series?). If a researcher is using his own cluster and it breaks at 11:00pm he’ll go in and fix it. An HPC service will not do this (unless funded to do so). DW has costed 24/7 support for Oxford – would drastically increase the current costs. TSP has similar anecdotal evidence from UCL.

web: Mailing Lists How big a mailing list do you need for it to be a self-sustaining community support? o Some small applications are supported successfully by individuals. o Some large applications have many unanswered problems in a vast archive.

web: Conclusions Propose models of funding for institutional support. Funding a register of experts for specialised software (like Microsoft MVPs) and incentivise them. DCC to provide guidance during project setup on data access and organisation technologies. Investigate the applicability of international standards (ISO9xxx) for support services in institutions. 9

web: Future work List any further work that will result from the breakout (this may occur at the Collaborations Workshop, or afterwards)