Customer Support
Applications Support Team gets new employees, implements IE
By Steve Thompson, Customer Support Team Lead
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| From left to right: Steve Thompson, Mollick Arefin, Chris Bording, Marty Monaghan and George Petit. Not pictured: Joshua Devine. |
The Customer Support Team is excited about the addition of four new personnel to its team. Two of the new ARL MSRC members, Chris Bording and Mollick Arefin, became part of the Applications Support Team, while Marty Monaghan was added as a Software Installation Engineer, and Joshua Devine became part of the Helpdesk.
On a personal note, we were saddened last fall when Raytheon employee Jeff Robinson decided to leave the ARL MSRC. Jeff, who coded the Grid Engine Script Generator Tool (GEST) and software modules, did a great job on the Applications Support Team.
Customer Support will continue to provide quality customer support with these new team members:
• Bording was hired to be a member of the Applications Support Team and reported to the ARL MSRC in January. Bording received a master’s degree in Scientific Computing from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden last August.
• Arefin was hired to be a member of the Applications Support Team and reported to the ARL MSRC in March, joining George Petit and Bording. Arefin has a master’s degree in Computer Science from Rutgers and was valedictorian of his class when he earned his bachelor’s degree in Computer Science at City College of New York.
• Monaghan was hired to be the ARL MSRC’s first Software Installation Engineer and reported to the ARL MSRC in March. Monaghan earned a bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from Penn State and has previously worked for IBM. His responsibilities include installing COTS application software, performing some testing and benchmarking, writing software modules, maintaining COTS applications licenses, and updating our COTS applications software database. Monaghan will play a key role in making the ARL MSRC a world-class computing environment.
• Devine was hired to be part of the Helpdesk and reported to the ARL MSRC in March. Devine earned a bachelor’s degree from Grantham University in Slidell, La., and worked at the ARL MSRC as a computer operator while completing his degree.
Personnel additions are not the only Customer Support news to report. The ARL MSRC has implemented IE (Information Environment) for account maintenance. IE is a High Performance Computing Modernization Program Office (HPCMPO) program designed to consolidate and create a database of account information on all DoD high performance computing (HPC) users. Accounts on ARL MSRC HPC machines are now generated in an automated fashion based on daily downloads from the central database of DoD HPC users. Mike Knowles, Raytheon, developed a set of scripts to receive the HPCMPO download, make a database of it, and create the user portion of the /etc/passwd files. This prototype is now functioning.
The Customer Support Team also plans to add GUI interfaces into our local IE system and make a production version for use by our local Accounts and Helpdesk personnel. Kelly Ditmore and Randy Schauer, both of Raytheon, will be working on this effort this year.
In the coming months, the ARL MSRC will be imposing some uniform guidelines on how directories for COTS applications software in /usr/cta are structured. Making the directory structure more consistent across platforms will make finding executables and writing scripts easier for all users. Bording and Paresh Patel are working on this effort.