General Description

Grid user support is a challenging task due to the distributed nature of the Grid. The variety of users and Virtual Organisations (VOs) adds further to the challenge. Support requests come from Grid beginners, from users with specific applications, from site administrators, or from grid monitoring operators. With the GGUS infrastructure, EGI provides a portal where users can find support in their daily use of the grid. The current use of the system shows that the goal has been achieved with success.
The Grid user support model can be captioned "regional support with central coordination". This model is realised through a support process which is clearly defined and involves all the parties that are needed to run a project-wide support service. This process is sustained by a help desk system which consists of a central platform integrated with several satellite systems belonging to the National Grid Initiatives (NGIs) and the Virtual Organisations (VOs). The central system (Global Grid User Support, GGUS) interconnects the NGIs and VOs and the other project wide groups like middleware, network, and service groups. Additionally the central system acts as a portal for users, offering the possibility to document problems and requests in the form of trouble tickets. Since all trouble tickets pass through the GGUS system it is the perfect place to store information on problems and of course also their solution in a knowledge base, available to users and support staff.
The Global Grid User Support can be accessed at http://www.ggus.org with a valid Grid certificate.