On Thu 06/26/14 10:43AM -0400, Prentice Bisbal wrote: > I think you're missing Ellis' point about serving the needs of the users, > but you do make a valid point, that is a constant source of pain for system > admins in general, not just HPC - we often can't justify hours (more like > days or weeks) of work to support a feature that benefit one user for a > short period of time, especially if that work takes us away from working on > things that will benefit many other users in the long run. > > Yes, this is a very simplified argument, and there's a lot of factors that > go into proper cost-benefit analysis, but it's common for a researcher to > ask us admins to devote an inordinate amount of time for a request that will > benefit some pet issue of theirs, but not provide ANY value to any other > user or the organization. Again - this is a simplified argument and > statement - don't flame me. I don't want to go too far off-topic on this > thread.
Agreed, Prentice. This is a line we all walk. If I can do something in 15 minutes, I'll just do it. If it is going to require a significant amount of staff time, we have to have a sit-down meeting to discuss a formal project, including budget. This typically weeds out the pet issues or wishlist items, and let's the important things get done. Cheers, -- Gavin W. Burris Senior Project Leader for Research Computing The Wharton School University of Pennsylvania _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
