OSG User Support Strategies March 24, 2015 OSG All Hands @ - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Rob Gardner University of Chicago Mats Rynge ISI, University of Southern California

OSG User Support Strategies

March 24, 2015 OSG All Hands @ Northwestern University

OSG User Support: in transition

• For the past three years User Support has

been led by Chander Sehgal

○ This has been the umbrella for OSG-XD, OSG-Direct as well as VO-level engagements

• User Support transitioned two weeks ago to:

○ Production analysis & VO support: (Bo Jayatilaka) ○ Campus researchers + User support: (Rob Gardner) ○ Just getting started...

• We thank Chander for his energy & vision!

Combined campus grids + user support

• Campus researchers, XSEDE users, campus

grids under one umbrella

• Led by Rob Gardner
• Team:

○ Bala Desinghu (1.0) - University of Chicago

○ Emelie Harstad (0.5) - University of Nebraska ○ Mats Rynge (0.5) - ISI/USC ○ Suchandra Thapa (0.5) - University of Chicago ○ David Champion (0.5) - University of Chicago

Components of user support

• Single point of contact for OSG “users” and

potential resource providers

○ e.g. “the front door to the OSG” ○ Assess fit of incoming customers ■ A new virtual organization → OSG Production & VO support ■ A new OSG site → OSG Operations ■ A new campus researcher → OSG User Support ■ A new campus resource provider or campus CI connection → OSG Campus Grids

Components of user support, cont.

• User support “on-ramps”

○ OSG Connect ○ OSG XD ○ OSG Direct (legacy → new users go to OSG Connect)

• Campus client

○ Lightweight connector to OSG Connect from campus ○ c.f. talk by D. Champion

• End user supported submit hosts (schedds)

■ Possibly outside the scope of user support?

Technical components

• Scientific software, libraries, and tools

○ We offer a service to install software into OASIS and provide validation on said software on the OSG using Distributed Environment Modules

• Transient storage service (Stash)
• Storage caching service (StashCache) - future

Scientific software support

• OASIS+Modules =

(CVMFS)

• Common tools & libs
• Curate apps on

demand

• DHTC-suited apps in

XSEDE campus yum repo

• Usage tracked by user,

project & site

$ switchmodules oasis $ module avail $ module load R $ module load namd $ module purge $ switchmodules local

https://confluence.grid.iu.edu/display/CON/Distributed+Environment+Modules

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s O S G & X S E D E c l u s t e r s Distributed Environment Modules

User Training and Support

• The biggest challenge is for users making the jump from

local to national which can involve ○ web → Unix ○ pbs/slurm → condor ○ local cluster → distributed cluster

• Training efforts to date

○ OSG ConnectBook ○ OSG XSEDE user guide ○ Software development training with Software Carpentry

SWC-OSG Workshops

• Combine core Unix, python, git lessons from

SWC with distributed high throughput computing from OSG

• Two workshops to date:

○ March 3-6, 2015 @ IUPUI: http://goo.gl/dveKYE ○ December 15-17, 2012 @ UC: http://goo.gl/acFXQX

• Let us know if you’d like one scheduled at your

university

Scientific Computing Consultation

A new user may not know how to apply DHTC to their research. We provide scientific consultation to users by

• Email queries (on-going effort)
• Phone conversations (on-going effort)
• Office hours via phone or IM (yet to be started)

XD / XSEDE

OSG is an XSEDE service provider Users have to write allocation proposals, which are then peer reviewed 2 million core hours quarterly

Allocated hours have higher priority Users can keep using the resource after allocated hours are used up, but at standard opportunistic priority Allocations are active for 1 year, then have to submit a new proposal

Benefits:

Visibility and Discovery Education and outreach Campus Champions Domain Champions

ACI-REF + OSG Partnership

• ACI-REF (Advanced Cyberinfrastructure

Research & Education Facilitators)

○ http://www.aciref.org/

• Providing training and support to ACI-REFs to

use OSG Connect

• Raise awareness of OSG as national resource

available to local researchers (like XSEDE, etc)

OSG on Campus: template campaign?

• Create presence on

campus websites

• “National resources”

○ typically see XSEDE, plus campus champions, DOE, etc. ○ Add a snippet for Open Science Grid with getting started link

OSG on Campus: template campaign?

• Create presence on

campus websites

• “National resources”

○ typically see XSEDE, plus campus champions, DOE, etc. ○ Add a snippet for Open Science Grid with getting started link

Open Science Grid

Cornell is partnering with the OSG to provide additional computational cycles for high throughput computing. To use OSG, start here.

Conclusions

• Just getting started with the new organization so will be

working out kinks in the coming months

• Important partnerships:

○ ACI-REF, XSEDE campus champions and domain champions, campus HPC centers & local support staff

• Two things coming soon

○ Making front door more inviting and clear (discussions this week) ○ Helpdesk service for knowledge base, campus and user issue “tracking”, community forums