NERSC FY 1998 User Survey Results

NERSC has completed its first user survey since its move to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The survey is intended to provide user feedback about every aspect of NERSC's operation, help us judge the quality of our services, give DOE information on how NERSC is doing, point us to areas we can improve, and show how we compare to similar facilities. We intend to repeat the survey yearly to monitor our progress.

Users rated NERSC in the areas of computational and file storage resources, account and allocations support, consulting services, documentation, and training. An area that wasn't included explicitly in the survey, but that users commented on, was software support.

There were 138 respondents. About 56 percent said they use the C90; another 54 percent use the T3E and 46 percent the J90s. There was less representation for the archival systems: 32 percent said they use CFS and 26 percent HPSS.

The three areas rated most important are network access, the center overall, and consulting services. The three areas that received the highest ratings are consulting services, network access, and account support services.

Overall our users say we provide a high level of service. On a scale of 1 (very unsatisfied) to 7 (very satisfied) our scores ranged from 5.8 for consulting services, C90 uptime, and CFS reliability to 4.4 for C90 and T3E turnaround time. Many users pointed out that NERSC is a good high-end production center, with a good user focus. Below are a sample of the comments that reflect this:

• "Gives us access to high-end, high-capacity and capability machines without too many limitations on the way codes can be run. There is a good mix of machines, serial and parallel, and a good mix of running modes, interactive and batch."

• "Supplies reliable cycles to a broad user base. Excellent user support, probably the best in the world for high-end computing."

• "As a service center NERSC does a great job keeping the T3E's up and providing easily accessible information relating to hardware and software. Moreover, the intellectual quality of NERSC support and research staff is excellent and they are easy to communicate with."

• "Over the years NERSC has been the most reliable source of production computing for scientific research and development, by concentrating on scientific computing ahead of computer science."

• turnaround time: we are addressing the need for more cycles with the NERSC-3 procurement process underway.

• queue structures: a new T3E queue structure with more 4-hour queues and a new 12-hour queue will be implemented in December. The J90s were unified under NQE this October; further enhancements will be considered in early 1999.

• software, visualization, and What's New web pages: these are being worked on and a new organization of NERSC information will be ready in December.

• more direct communications with users: as a result of this survey we have been using email more often to communicate system changes to users.

• the training process: we are now conducting teleconference classes in order to reach all users more effectively.

We would like to thank all the users who participated. If you wish to make any comments on these survey results, please send them to webmaster@nersc.gov.

Q3. What NERSC resources do you use?

Q4. Your satisfaction with NERSC?

Q5. Comments on the ratings in Q3 and Q4?

Q6. What does NERSC do well?

Q7. In what areas should NERSC improve?

Q8. What additional resources would you like NERSC to provide?

Q9. How does NERSC compare to other centers you have used?

Q10. If you were in charge of NERSC what changes would you implement?

Q11. How long have you used NERSC?

Q12. What desktop systems do you use to access NERSC?

Q13. How do you access NERSC machines?

Q14. What access methods would you like to use in the future?

Q15. How satisfied are you with the NERSC website?

Q16. Comments about our web pages

Q17. How do you find out about changes at NERSC?

Q18. Do you feel you are adequately informed about NERSC changes? If not, why not?

Q19. How would you like to be kept informed?

Q20. How satisfied are you with NERSC's consulting services?

Q21. Comments about consulting support

Q22. What is needed to adequately cover your training needs?

Q23. Have you taken any of our training classes?

Q24. Comments about our online tutorials, suggested improvements and other ideas for training

Q25-27. How satisfied are you with NERSC's large-scale computers?

Q28. Comments about NERSC's large scale computers suggested improvements, future needs (including comments on CPU, memory, I/O, disk space and software provided)

Q29-32. How satisfied are you with NERSC's file storage systems?

Q33. AFS

Q34. Comments about file systems, suggested improvements, future needs

Q35. How satisfied are you with NERSC's visualization services?

Q36. Comments about visualization services, suggested improvements, future needs

Q37. Anything else you want to say?

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Q3.   What NERSC resources do you use?

Resource	N
NERSC consulting services	86
NERSC website	86
C90	77
T3E	75
J90	64
NERSC account support services	49
CFS	44
HPSS	36
NERSC Computer Operations and Network Support	10
Visualization server	5
Math server	4

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Q4.   Your satisfaction with NERSC: ( Scale: 1 (low) to 7 (high) )

Topic	N	Avg.
Consulting services	126	5.87
Network access to NERSC	118	5.70
Account support services	124	5.67
Overall satisfaction with NERSC	135	5.43
C90 Overall	82	5.29
Technical information on website	128	5.27
T3E Overall	91	5.20
CFS Overall	61	5.18
HPSS Overall	64	5.09
J90s Overall	79	4.92
Training	103	4.91
Allocations process	112	4.60

How important is this to you? ( Scale: 1 (low) to 3 (high) )

Topic	N	Avg.
Network access to NERSC	116	2.84
Overall satisfaction with NERSC	129	2.77
Consulting services	128	2.70
Technical information on website	127	2.51
T3E Overall	99	2.45
Account support services	123	2.31
Allocations process	118	2.31
C90 Overall	101	2.27
J90s Overall	94	2.19
CFS Overall	80	2.09
HPSS Overall	82	2.04
Training	117	1.99

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Q5.   Comments on the ratings in Q3 and Q4?

Q6.   What does NERSC do well?

Q7.   In what areas should NERSC improve?

Q8.   What additional resources would you like NERSC to provide?

Q9.   How does NERSC compare to other centers you have used?

Q10.   If you were in charge of NERSC what changes would you implement?

Q11.   How long have you used NERSC?

More than 3 years:	60
6 months - 3 years:	55
6 months or less:	18

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Q12.  What desktop systems do you use to access NERSC?

System	N
Unix	107
Mac	34
PC-Windows	25
PC-NT	20
PC-linux	20
other	8
PC-DOS	2

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Q13.   How do you access NERSC machines?

System	N
telnet	127
ftp	93
ssh	16
other	2

Q14.   What access methods would you like to use in the future?

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Q15.   How satisfied are you with the NERSC website?

Topic	N	Avg.
Getting Started web pages	76	5.54
NERSC website in general	106	5.54
T3E web info	75	5.48
Accounts management web pages	71	5.38
J90 web info	64	5.34
Online tutorials	78	5.17
HPSS web info	52	5.10
What's New web page	58	4.95
NERSC News (online magazine)	61	4.92
Research web pages	54	4.91
Software documentation on web	72	4.85
Online Cray manuals	71	4.85
Visualization web pages	42	4.76

Q16.   Comments about our web pages

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Q17.   How do you find out about changes at NERSC?

Method	N
email from NERSC	84
motd (message of the day)	67
What's New area of the web	36
from colleagues	36
NERSC News	18
Change pages on the web	10
phone calls from NERSC	7
other	4

Q18.   Do you feel you are adequately informed about NERSC changes? If not, why not?

Q19.   How would you like to be kept informed?

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Q20.   How satisfied are you with NERSC's consulting services?

Topic	N	Avg.
Overall quality of consulting responses	113	5.88
Problem resolution by consultants	109	5.73
Software bug resolution	84	5.61
Consultants follow-up to questions	99	5.57

Q21.   Comments about consulting support

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Q22.   What is needed to adequately cover your training needs?

Method	N
Online tutorials	85
Web-broadcasted training	28
Classes given in Berkeley	15
Classes given at remote sites	12

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Q23.   Have you taken any of our training classes?

Yes 19,   No 102

Q24.   Comments about our online tutorials, suggested improvements and other ideas for training

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Q25-27.   How satisfied are you with NERSC's large scale computers?

Topic	N	Avg.
C90 availability (uptime)	62	5.87
T3E interactive response time	66	5.74
J90 availability (uptime)	61	5.69
T3E uptime	72	5.58
C90 programming environment	59	5.58
T3E programming environment	69	5.51
J90 programming environment	55	5.40
J90 interactive response time	59	5.24
C90 interactive response time	61	5.21
J90 queue structure	55	4.85
C90 queue structure	52	4.85
J90 batch job turnaround time	57	4.79
T3E queue structure	67	4.51
T3E batch turnaround time	67	4.43
C90 batch job turnaround time	53	4.42

Q28.   Comments about NERSC's large scale computers suggested improvements, future needs

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Q29-32.   How satisfied are you with NERSC's file storage systems?

Topic	N	Avg.
CFS reliability	52	5.87
CFS availability (uptime)	52	5.73
HPSS reliability	49	5.51
HPSS performance (bandwidth)	48	5.46
HPSS availability (uptime)	49	5.39
CFS performance (bandwidth)	51	5.37
HPSS response time	49	5.29
CFS response time	52	5.02
HPSS user interface	48	4.88
File restores from backup	46	4.83
CFS user interface	51	4.82
Data migration	56	4.80

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Q33.   AFS

Do you use AFS on your desktop	Yes	11	No	77
Is the AFS gateway dano.nersc.gov, as implemented on the J90 cluster and T3E, satisfactory?	Yes	9	No	1
If NERSC migrates from AFS to DFS, would you use DFS at your site?	Yes	4	No	2	Don't Know	37

Q34.   Comments about file systems, suggested improvements, future needs

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Q35.   How satisfied are you with NERSC's visualization services?

Topic	N	Avg.
Escher availability (uptime)	14	5.07
Escher interactive response time	15	4.87
Escher software provided	16	4.81

Q36.   Comments about visualization services, suggested improvements, future needs

Q37.   Anything else you want to say?