HPC Consulting, User Services Group

The User Services Group is the user community's primary point of contact with NERSC. This group is responsible for problem management and consulting; help with user code optimization and debugging; strategic project support; documentation; online, remote, and classroom training; and third-party applications and library support. User Services also supplies user account and allocations management support; and maintains and makes enhancements to the NERSC Information Management system, including database management, client server code, and PHP web front end.

• How to contact User Services
• Help desk
• Consulting services
• Documentation and Web
• Training
• Software installation and support
• ACTS Toolkit Support
• SciDAC & INCITE Support
• Allocations

How to Contact User Services

The group is available to assist users from 8 AM to 5 PM Pacific time, Monday through Friday (except Lab holidays,). User Services staff members can be reached at 1-800-66-NERSC (USA) or 510-486-8600 (local and international); or email consult@nersc.gov. Questions and problems submitted through the On-Line Help Desk are immediately sent to the consulting staff.

Help desk

NERSC's users can get immediate help during business hours over the phone, by email, and via the online help desk (see contact info above). The NERSC help desk is staffed by scientific computing experts who field users' questions on a rotating basis.

After contacting the NERSC help desk, users can expect an initial response within 4 business hours. The problem will not necessarily be solved, but receipt of the report will be acknowledged within that time period.

Reported problems can be expected to be resolved within two working days, unless the nature of the problem requires a long term consultation. Long term consultations include help to port, optimize or parallelize a code; problems involving software bugs; problems requiring system changes.

Users may attempt to contact specific User Services staff members directly by phone or email, but in that case there is no guarantee of a timely response. Staff members are often involved with other time-critical assignments and may not be available. If you have a question or problem that requires a quick response, please contact the Help desk.

Consulting services

User Services staff provides expert advice for code debugging and optimization. Collaborations with NERSC users typically last days or weeks, but there is no formal limit to the duration of consultations.

Typical issues that are handled by staff members are

• efficient use of math, graphics and message passing libraries
• algorithmic code restructuring to increase performance
• debugging code that causes error conditions
• I/O optimization
• effective use of compilers
• advising on best strategies for porting code

Two example cases of consultation with User Services staff members are:

• A user had a code that ran in 34 days on his workstation. After algorithmic changes and the use of MPI to parallelize, the code ran in 1.5 hours.
• After a change to a search routine, the CPU time for a critical neutron transport routine was reduced from 300 seconds to 7 seconds.

User Services staff members work closely with vendors to report and resolve problems with the vendors' products. For example, NERSC generates compiler bug reports received by IBM. Staff members collect these bug reports from users and coworkers, isolate and reproduce the problem before sending it directly to the vendor analysts.

Documentation and World Wide Web

User Services maintains the NERSC website. NERSC's goal is to provide timely and accurate information for its users. The NERSC Home Page is the primary source of information. However, NERSC also communicates with users via:

• Online man pages
• /etc/motd login messages
• Email contact
• Telephone contact
• Hardcopy annual reports

User Services authors and maintains documentation for all site-specific software implementations and configurations. Vendor-supplied manuals are often augmented and summarized at NERSC's web site. We welcome comments and suggestions pertaining to any documentation. Please communicate with us by sending email to consult@nersc.gov.

The web also provides an interface to the NERSC Information Management (NIM) system and the allocations application process ( ERCAP).

Training

User Services provides training to help users transition to new technologies and use resources effectively. The primary focus is on good web documentation and online tutorials.

NERSC conducts training classes at NERSC Users' Group (NUG) meetings and at Berkeley Lab. Training classes, both at LBNL and offsite, can be arranged upon request. See the NERSC Training Web Page for further details.

Software installation and support

User Services is responsible for installing, maintaining and supporting third-party and public domain software at NERSC. This includes applications, libraries, tools and utilities. Our goal is to keep software up-to-date, understand our users' needs and evaluate and acquire new software.

There are different defined levels of support for each software product or package. See NERSC Software.

ACTS DOE Collection Support

NERSC provides support and assistance for scientists working on and developing applications using high performance tools under the ACTS project (like ScaLAPACK, PETSc, Aztec, TAU, etc.). See the DOE ACTS Collection.

SciDAC and INCITE Support

User Services provides support and assistance for scientists working on SciDAC and INCITE projects. at NERSC. Each project's primary point of contact in User Services has knowledge and training in the given scientific field. The consultant assists the team with codes issues, using the batch systems, maximizing throughput and scaling, and serves as an advocate for the project.

Allocations

User Services gathers and maintains information that is used in the Allocations process. Applications for use of computer resources are submitted through a web interface.