Speaker
Describe the scientific/technical community and the scientific/technical activity using (planning to use) the EGEE infrastructure. A high-level description is needed (neither a detailed specialist report nor a list of references).
User support in a grid environment is a challenging task due to the distributed
nature of the grid. The variety of users and VOs adds further to the challenge. One
can find support requests by grid beginners, users with specific applications, site
administrators, or grid monitoring operators. With the GGUS infrastructure, EGEE
provides a portal where users can find support in their daily use of the grid. The
current use of the system has shown that the goal has been achieved with success.
Report on the experience (or the proposed activity). It would be very important to mention key services which are essential for the success of your activity on the EGEE infrastructure.
GGUS provides a single entry point for reporting problems. In collaboration with the
EGEE EIS team, the EGEE UIG, and NA3, GGUS offers a portal where users can find
documentation, and powerful search engines to find answers to resolved problems and
examples. Wiki pages are compiled for frequent or undocumented problems/features
arising from tickets. GGUS is interfaced with other grids’ support infrastructures
such as in the case of OSG. Also, GGUS is used for daily operations to monitor the
grid and keep it healthy. Finally, GGUS is used also to follow and track down
problems during stress testing activities such as the HEP experiments production data
challenges and the service challenges.
The daily operations are being dealt with in the framework of the Executive Support
Committee (ESC). The ESC is a body that has representatives from all of the ROCs of
EGEE. This organisation meets monthly to discuss the development of the support
system and to decide on actions and priorities.
Describe the added value of the Grid for the scientific/technical activity you (plan to) do on the Grid. This should include the scale of the activity and of the potential user community and the relevance for other scientific or business applications
The grid user support model in EGEE can be captioned "regional support with central
coordination". Users can submit a support request to the central GGUS service, or to
their Regional Operations' Centre (ROC) or to their Virtual Organisation helpdesks.
Within GGUS there are appropriate support groups for all support requests. The ROCs
and VOs and the other project wide groups such as middleware groups (JRA), network
groups (NA), service groups (SA) and other grid infrastructures (OSG, NorduGrid,
etc.) are connected via a central integration platform provided by GGUS.
GGUS central helpdesk also acts as a portal for all users who do not know where to
send their requests. They can enter them directly into the GGUS system via a web
form or e-mail.
This central helpdesk keeps track of all service requests and assigns them to the
appropriate support groups. In this way, formal communication between all support
groups is possible.
With a forward look to future evolution, discuss the issues you have encountered (or that you expect) in using the EGEE infrastructure. Wherever possible, point out the experience limitations (both in terms of existing services or missing functionality)
The current model foresees only basic interfaces to the existing VO user support
infrastructures. A move towards a further integration of the existing structures is
needed for a better overall user support. The plan is hence to understand in detail
how VOs provide support to their users so that GGUS can better suit their needs. The
scalability of GGUS is constrained by the availability of supporters. This will
rapidly become a constraint to growth unless more dedicated supporters are found.
