CUG.Log

Computing Services SIG Report

This year's CUG conference was interesting and challenging in that this was the first to have two vendors, Cray Inc., and SGI, represented. Such changes are ever present in the Computing Services special interest group (CS SIG), where operations and user services staff are often called upon to support multiple platforms and multiple vendor environments.

This year many of the discussions were directed at what services would change as a result of the divestiture and how those changes would be implemented by each of the vendors. These conversations provide a forum for next year's program, when the tools and procedures should be well defined and possibly implemented.

The CS SIG open meeting usually provides an opportunity for attendees to gather information about tool development and implementation, determine pertinent issues that should be addressed at the vendor Q & A panel, and select technical papers that focus on relative areas of interest. We would prefer to have separate open meetings for each vendor and have the meeting some time before the vendor panel.

There were a number of related papers for the Operations and User Services focus areas that were well received. Each generated useful information exchanges between attendees. Next year, especially with two vendors, it would be useful for each presenter to include an overview of each site's systems. Another suggestion was to have a session with site talks that provided detailed information about systems and services. We thank both vendors for their participation and look forward to future CUG conferences.

Leslie Southern
Ohio Supercomputer Center
leslie@osc.edu