This year 177 users responded to our survey, compared with 138 last year. In general user satisfaction with NERSC was rated higher than last year, by an average of 0.6 on a 7-point scale across 27 questions common to the two years. The biggest increases in satisfaction were with the allocations process, the HPSS system and the T3E. See FY 1998 to FY 1999 Changes.
On a scale from 7 (very satisfied) to 1 (very dissatisfied) the average scores ranged from a high of 6.6 for timely response to consulting questions to 4.0 for PVP batch wait time. The areas users are happiest with this year are consulting services, HPSS reliability and uptime, as well as PVP and T3E uptime. Areas of concern are batch wait times for both PVP and T3E systems, visualization services, the availability of training classes, and PVP resources in general. See the table that ranks all satisfaction questions.
The areas of most importance to users are the overall running of the center and its connectivity to the network, the available computing hardware and its management and configuration, consulting services, and the allocations process. Access to cycles is the common theme. See the Overall Satisfaction and Importance summary table.
In their verbal comments users focussed on NERSC's excellent support staff and its well run center with good access to cycles (although users wish we could provide even more), hardware and software support, and reliable service. When asked what NERSC should do differently the most common response was "provide even more cycles". Of the 52 users who compared NERSC to other centers, half said NERSC is the best or better than other centers, 23% simply gave NERSC a favorable evaluation or said they only used NERSC, 19% said NERSC is the same as other centers or provided a mixed evaluation, and only 4 said that NERSC is less good. Several sample responses below give the flavor of these comments; for more details see Comments about NERSC.
Below are the survey results. For the survey itself, click here.
For a single-file version of the complete document (all individual responses included) click here.