Over the years, Athena has established high expectations in the user community regarding support. In the Layered Athena world, it becomes difficult to meet these expectations, especially when the platform is not found in Athena clusters or in offices of user support groups. Setting realistic expectations is of major importance whenever Layered Athena is deployed.
Support groups need to be made aware of any deployment of Layered Athena, and will need a plan to properly handle the inevitable questions.
Some headline issues the Layered Athena team encountered are:
It should be noted that the beta testers of Layered Athena did not demand much support, but they are probably not a sufficiently random sample of the MIT community for us to conclude that others will be like them. People who agree to a beta test tend to have lower expectations, and to be more knowledgeable. The six principal non-I/S beta testers were all graduate students or staff.