Re: [SAGE] determining quantity of support personnel

[Chuck Yerkes <chuck+sage@snew.com>]

Quoting Eric Mercer (emercer@rad.upenn.edu):
> Does anyone have any pointers to information about how to determine how 
> many personnel are required to support a given number of machines.  As 
> crazy as it may sound, I'm looking for a number like: 1 person can 
> support 100 PCs.
> 
> Administration here wants such a number so that they can justify 
> increased costs of computer support in the department.  We currently 
> have two desktop support people & one unix/network admin (me).  We are 
> supporting about 10 unix servers, 3 NT servers, and approximately 
> 200-300 PCs (win98 - winNT).


14?

It depends on what you are doing and running.


Okay, experience:
-- 1 --------------------------------------
2 people providing 12hr coverage to run a development floor
of 200 machines (really 200 instances of 1 machine), a compute
server and a file server.

The compute server was kept absolutely up to date with the
right environment for building binaries.  Developers developed
(most time in editor-of-choice) on desktops, did compiles and
what not, but the final compiles were on the compute server.


-- 2 --------------------------------------
Back to production trading floors (downtime in $$$$$/minute):
  2 main admins running 80 Unix boxes.
Change to windows, provide same amount of support:
  1 admin (80% cheaper) per 15 machines.

Each are backed by other tier two people if needed, but
usually not needed.

Folks think they have more responsiveness cause Admins
are ALWAYS on the floor.  Record shows far more downtime.
(Makes a point that supporting Unix from 30 yards away
should also be accompanied by some face time).

-- 3 --------------------------------------
5-6 admins running 30 servers, each on different as it came
from the Linux vendors.  Different hardware, disk layouts,
revs of software.  Running ragged, pagers going off ALL THE
TIME until 2 quit with "I'd rather try to find a job in the
current economy than keep working here"

-------------------------------------------

Windows requires MUCH more touching. Updates require touching.

With the first two examples, if a machine died (rare), we
lifted the monitor and swapped it.  Dealt with the problem
away from the user.  ALL data lived on a server.  User
could go from machine to machine and see same thing.
Put a blank HD in, type "boot net" and in 5 minutes the
machine is built and ready to go back out.  (predates Sun's
invention of jumpstart by about 5 years).


Windows puts things in the Register.

[Whatever happened to the Zero Admin PC that killed the NetPC?]


A LOT of it depends on how you setup the machines, what people do
to them, etc.  Laptops suck because they become individual machines.
Windows sucks because it's just SO unreliable and a Windows box
that's 9 months old is slower than a fresh install.

With Unix, at least I can lock down (and check later) binaries,
config files, etc.  I force the user to keep her stuff in her
directory only.