Road Map for SNIC investments and Services
Forum Discussion II
SNIC User Forum, Dec. 16 2014
“I've told you once.
No you haven't!
Yes I have.
When?
Just now.
No you didn't!
Yes I did!
You didn't!
I did!
You didn't!
I'm telling you, I did!
You did not!
Oh I'm sorry, is this a five minute argument, or the full half hour?”
*From the Monty Python argument sketch
The task for SNIC
The responsibilities of SNIC should start somewhere and end somewhere, the question is where these start and endpoints lie.
SNIC should service and help all research that requires compute and/or storage resources
Or
SNIC should only focus on servicing research that requires large scale HPC and associated storage resources
Predominant user job sizes and the frequency with which they are run
Predominant user job sizes and their typical walltime
SNIC compute resources
SNIC should provide more compute capacity
Respondent preferred focus areas for SNIC in the coming years
SNIC compute resources
SNIC should have fewer and larger national resources
| Is geographical proximity important | Ratio |
|---|---|
| Yes | 14% |
| No | 86% |
The most beneficial future evolution of SNIC compute resources according to survey respondents
Respondent votes on which future evolution of SNIC computing resources would benefit them the most
SNIC compute resources
SNIC should not impose job size requirements on any compute resource
Predominant user job sizes and the frequency with which they are run
SNIC compute resources
All SNIC compute resources should accept jobs with a run time of 3 days
Predominant user job sizes and their typical walltime
SNIC compute resources
SNIC should harmonize login procedure, job submission procedure, job scheduling behaviour, and software availability
Respondent perceived benefit of increased commonalities between SNIC centres
SNIC storage resources
SNIC should provide services for long−term storage of research data
The data services respondents wanted SNIC to provide
SNIC storage resources
SNIC should invest in improving the interfaces to SweStore
Respondent rating of the different interfaces to SweStore. The percentage figures refer to the total number of respondents
SNIC support services
SNIC centres provide good support and documentation
How do you rate the e-mail based support that is provided by SNIC?
| Satisfaction level | Ratio |
|---|---|
| Poor | 0% |
| Less than satisfactory | 1% |
| Satisfactory | 30% |
| More than satisfactory | 30% |
| Excellent | 31% |
| No opinion | 9% |
SNIC support services
Support doesn't scale well. How should SNIC cope with getting more users?
SNIC support services
Other infrastructures that use SNIC resources must handle end-user support for their community
SNIC support services
More funding must be allocated for handling all kinds of support activities
SNIC support services
SNIC application experts should focus on operational services regarding development environments and associated training
Respondent preferred application expert focus areas
SNIC resource allocations
SNIC should provide resource allocations that run for longer than 12 months
Access for medium-size or large-size computing allocations is for 6 or 12 month periods. Does this match your research projects?
| Matches projects | Ratio |
|---|---|
| Yes | 40% |
| No, I would prefer to have allocations with longer duration | 41% |
| No answer/ Not applicable | 17% |
| Other | 2% |
SNIC resource allocations
Large SNAC allocations should be integrated with VR grants