RI User Support in DEISA/PRACE EEF meeting 2 November 2010, Geneva Jules Wolfrat/Axel Berg SARA

RI Outline User communities Application enabling User services User support 2 November 2010user support 2

RI November 2010user support3 DEISA Extreme Computing Initiative (DECI) DECI launched in early 2005 for complex, demanding, innovative simulations requiring the exceptional capabilities of DEISA Multi-national proposals especially encouraged Proposals reviewed by national evaluation committees Most appropriate supercomputer architecture selected for each project (IBM BlueGene, IBM Power6, CRAY XT, Intel based (Nehalem), NEC SX) Computing time granted in combination with enabling support (3-9 PM’s per project)

RI November DECI call proposals, 12 European countries involved, co-investigator from US) 30 mio cpu-h requested 29 proposals accepted, 12 mio cpu-h awarded (normalized to IBM P4+) DECI call proposals, 12 European countries involved co-investigators from N + S America, Asia (US, CA, AR, ISRAEL) 28 mio cpu-h requested 23 proposals accepted, 12 mio cpu-h awarded (normalized to IBM P4+) DECI call proposals, 14 European countries involved, co-investigators from N + S America, Asia, Australia (US, CA, BR, AR, ISRAEL, AUS) 70 mio cpu-h requested 45 proposals accepted, ~30 mio cpu-h awarded (normalized to IBM P4+) DECI call proposals, 15 European countries involved, co-investigators from N + S America, Asia, Australia 134 mio cpu-h requested ( 42 proposals accepted, 48 mio cpu-h awarded (normalized to IBM P4+) DECI call proposals, 19 European countries involved, co-investigators from US, China, Japan, Israel 220 mio cpu-h requested (normalized to IBM P4+) 50 proposals accepted, 60 mio cpu-h awarded (normalized to IBM P4+) DECI call proposals, 24 European countries involved, co-investigators from N-America, Asia 540 mio cpu-h requested (normalized to IBM P4+) DEISA Extreme Computing Initiative user support

RI November 2010user support 5 Virtual communities “ A virtual scientific community is a group of people, often researchers and students, who share multiple resources related to the scientific field and whose main medium of communication is the internet” – Wikipedia DEISA has no definition of a virtual community but seeks to offer an alternative access mechanism for larger, loosely or closely coupled European research consortia to access DEISA facilities for a longer period of time than a DECI project can guarantee The Virtual Community is given an allocation of DEISA resources Responsibility for the allocation of resources amongst the members of the community is delegated to the community

RI November Virtual Communities EFDA EUFORIA ( Fusion Research) ENES(Climate Research) LFI-PLANCK VIRGO(Astrophysics) VPH VIROLAB (Life Sciences) user support

RI PRACE PRACE services started by July 1st 2010 Calls for project proposals with a centrally managed European peer review procedure Virtual Community support also planned Model for user support is currently being setup, following DEISA experiences 2 November 2010user support 7

RI user support8 “Applications Enabling” Objectives “... enhance the scientific applications to adequately cope with a production infrastructure characterized by an aggressive parallelism on heterogeneous architectures at European scale. Applications come from the DECI, Virtual Communities and EU projects.” “Enhancing Scalability” Objectives “... to support enabling effort by enhancing the scalability of the scientific applications” Work is done as a joint research with PI and partners Application support 2 November 2010

RI user support9 Target applications are mainly selected from DECI: WP7 connection Virtual Communities: strong European communities of researchers Others: European Projects Applications are categorized by the kind of enabling effort required and the target architectures Once Home and Exec sites are assigned, enabling effort is assessed with the PI’s Workpackage resources are allocated and enabling is carried on in continuous contact with the PI A reduced number of success cases are selected to pass to enhancement activity Application support Workflow 2 November 2010

RI November 2010user support10 DEISA/PRACE User services Common production environment Application/services monitoring Help desk and trouble ticket system User documentation Advanced application support

RI November 2010user support11 DEISA/PRACE Common Production Environment Defines Common Software Stack for all platforms –As homogeneous as possible within architecture clusters (IBM Power, CRAY XT, IBM BlueGene) Supported with modules tool –“Module load DEISA/PRACE” sets common environment Status is monitored with Inca tool –Information available to users

RI Monitoring of the applications availability 2 November 2010 user support 12

RI Inca 2 November 2010user support 13

RI Central Trouble Ticket System Based on Resource Tracker (RT) Internally used and for user support (helpdesk) as the central tool for reporting problems or requests General ticket queue and a queue for each partner site Access is through a web interface or by (a user must be a registered user of the infrastructure) User tickets end up in the general queue –The DEISA helpdesk (a task scheduled to sites on a weekly basis) assigns a ticket to the appropriate site queue (tickets can be cloned too) User interface different from staff interface Users are asked to use the DEISA TTS, not the local support facilities – information available to all staff 2 November 2010user support 14

RI November 2010user support15 User Documentation

RI November 2010user support16 User Documentation Generation of PDF versions formatted for convenient printing DEISA FAQ maintained

RI November 2010user support17 Actions toward both DECI projects and Virtual Communities to enhance the usage of the user oriented DEISA services, middleware and tools Presentation on DEISA Services given to DECI users –Covers basic facts on certificates, access mechanisms, job management, accounting information, global file system, data transfer, DCPE, Modules, monitoring and user documentation Meetings with the members of DECI projects are organized, to establish a work plan for the project, to present the DEISA Services available and to describe the User Support organisation –Fast feedback from the users –Gives a possibility to enhance the use of various DEISA services Advanced Application Production Assistance

RI Interoperability Application enabling – share expertise like is done within DEISA/PRACE? Link Trouble Ticket systems ? – much effort needed with little output Sharing user documentation – e.g. about the use of X.509 certificates 2 November 2010user support 18