Comet: Tales from the Long Tail: Two Years In and 10,000 Users Later

The Comet petascale supercomputer was put into production as an XSEDE resource in early 2015 with the goal of serving a much larger user community than HPC systems of similar size. The Comet project set an audacious goal of reaching over 10,000 users in its four years of planned operation. That goal was achieved in less than two years, due in large part to the adoption of policies that favor smaller allocations and science gateways. Here we describe our experiences in operating and supporting Comet, highlight some of the important science that it has enabled, and provide some practical lessons that we have learned by operating a system designed for the long tail of science.