Re: [SAGE] Servers per SysAdmin

[Dark Tachyon <darktachyon@yahoo.com>]

About a year ago, my suits were quoting the same
article. In response, I did a some research and did
some of my own calculations. The most useful article I
could find on the Net was this:
http://www.verber.com/mark/sysadm/how-many-admins.html.
 
I used the formula in Mark Verber's article, noting
how I interpreted the variables in the context of the
environment in question. I also collected rough data
on how long it took to complete common tasks performed
each day, along with average estimations on how long
it took to perform "special requests" (such as
converting a departmental home directory server to
Veritas file system). I wrote all of this up in
managerese and sent it up to the suits. Within the
next 10 months, the staff went from 3 to 5 full time
members.

It was painful, but I think what made the difference
was writing it up in their language and providing
professional references. I had found another similar
article (to Verber's). 

I also proposed modifications to our ill-used task
tracking system that would help to gather info to
characterize how we actually spent our time. The task
tracking system was not actually used much more than
before I added the modifications, but I think the fact
that I detailed (through the use of historical and
estimated data) how it wasn't really providing the
info the suits thought they were getting made a
difference.

It was a pain to write such a review, but it really
paid off. Not only did approval finally come through
for more staff, they became much more supportive of
approving inital costs for time saving measures. For
example, the environment would not allow true clone
systems, but the purchase of removable harddrive racks
for workstations and small servers, and a harddrive
duplication unit now allow staff the flexibility to
more dynamically manage tasks and still provide rapid
turnaround to the users.

Ren

--- "Barnette, Steve L" <steve_b3@corp.earthlink.net>
wrote:
> I am in a staffing discussion on number of SysAdmins
> needed for our servers.
> The suits are quoting some Gardner Group article
> stating one SysAdmin per
> hundred servers.  That sounds high to me, I was
> wondering what all of you
> think?
> 
> 
> Steve Barnette
> Sr. Systems Engineer
>
-------------------------------------------------------
> # perl -e 'print
>
$i=pack(c5,(41*2),sqrt(7056),(unpack(c,H)-2),oct(115),10);
> 
> 
> 


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