How Many Admins Per User/Computer Have You Seen? 414
miffo.swe writes "I'm trying to find the normal ratio of technicians/support tech per user or computer in your average IT-shop. When searching around, I can't find that many examples or any statistics. We manage around 900 computers (mostly Windows XP) and 25+ servers (mostly Linux). There are around 2600 users of varying knowledge, mostly pretty low. I can't find any statistics on this, so real-world examples are very welcome since we do this with one sysadmin (me) and two sneaker techs. Are we seriously understaffed, or is this normal?"
Over 9000 (Score:5, Funny)
Over 9000
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I'm 12 and what is this?
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How old your mom is.
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I worked for an HMO doing IT support, and for 500 people we had 6 IT workers. The HMO generated a terrifying amount of paperwork, and one person would be on printer/fax duty every day. This doesn't sound hard, but we had 3 buildings spread out over 4 city blocks, each building with 4 floors, and each floor with a dozen printers (I'm counting fax machines in this number). This wasn't really by design, the company grew organically and this is the end result.
Re:Over 9000 (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it comes down to "what do you mean by admins"?
The more you restrict what admins have to support, the more homogenous the environment, the better the ratio. The more you expect from them, the more complex the environment, the more you need.
Another factor to add in is tools. Does every machine have actual remote console? (and I mean console as in, I can sit there and watch the POST console). Do you have build servers and good backups, and tested procedures to do restores if a system needs a total rebuild on the spot?
My group is constantly compared in terms of group size to number of machines. Its maddening since we support 5 different flavors of unix (and VMS), some with ok tools configured and ready, some nearly "hand crafted". Then at least 3 different versions of each of those flavors. We can't seem to get projects approved to fix any of this (and god forbid we did it without a project!)
We are compared against a Windows group, that supports a couple of flavors of Windows, and has had automation tools to schedule and do work remotely setup for years. Of course they can admin more systems with less headcount... they have the tools and environment setup to do it!
Hell it took us almost 2 years to get project approval to set the machines for centralized auth through LDAP... and they wonder why we seem to need so many people for so few machines.
So frankly, I don't think the question has enough information to be answered usefully. There are just too many variables to be able to put up a good estimation of appropriate head count per machine. I can tell you though that standardization, automation, and redundant designs will decrease that head count.
As will properly trained/experienced admins (if we could only get them to send a couple of people to basic sun training we would be way better off... but we can't even get that. We have guys that have been effectively working on the level of entry level admins for years, who have never been able to get management to send them to a class).
-Steve
(who should post anonymously but, on some level hopes they will read this...)
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I suspect his statement is true in most large real-world environments: a proliferation of Unix server flavors, a rigidly standardized Windows desktop, and an SLA that only promises what the capabilities of the group policy system, and the Windows package management system, can deliver (there is no "Windows installer system": the Microsoft-official thing is the open-source WiX toolkit).
Re:Over 9000 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Over 9000 (Score:5, Funny)
Your users can deceive you. Don't trust them.
Let go your professional self and act on instinct.
Re:Over 9000 (Score:4, Funny)
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The odds of having an IT guy to fix your problems is approximately over 9000 to 1.
Depends (Score:5, Insightful)
The real question is are you always constantly working your ass off, fixing stupid problems - and therefore unable to do anything more productive? If so, then it seems you don't have enough people.
If you have a fully managed office, and you can remote in to all these desktops and fix everything really quickly - then you're probably OK.
Like most of IT, whatever works.
Re:Depends (Score:4, Interesting)
The real question is are you always constantly working your ass off, fixing stupid problems - and therefore unable to do anything more productive? If so, then it seems you don't have enough people.
If you have a fully managed office, and you can remote in to all these desktops and fix everything really quickly - then you're probably OK.
Like most of IT, whatever works.
That last sentence hits the head right on the nail...
The numbers really are determined by a lot of factors... if your business revolves around programming and engineering, and thus your workers are from those fields (as opposed to tons of avg computer users in a non computer/technical field), you are less likely to have serious issues that IT needs to address, thus requiring a smaller IT staff. And of course, what money IT is allowed to spend on initial setup and/or maintenance also determines the staffing size for IT. One can design a system that remote boots from the NIC and reinstalls everything to a machine specific image - or kicks the boot to the HDD if there are no problems making serious non-hardware issues trivial - if the money was there during the initial setup or a big upgrade phase... or one can fix the stuff the old fashioned way and go hands on (which requires more of an IT staff). Hardware differences also can determine staffing size. One of our customers had a problem with certain AMD XP machines when SP3 came out - required lotsa "hands on" fixing... other of our clients did not have those machines and needed no one and no help. Also, are the machines needed 24/7? Is there mission critical data on them (or no mission critical data anywhere - or mission critical data is on the server)?
And so on... inotherwords, there are a ton of factors that determine staffing needs for IT. It could be one person per 10 or one person per 100, etc.
Thus, slimjim8094's statement really does sum it up nicely...
Like most of IT, whatever works.
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I've worked as the "IT-guy" a couple of times where I was doing various support, from showing how to open a word document to installing machines to lightweight management of servers, usually around 100-200 users would take 2 people to handle, but this has been "low priority users" (school and government) where waiting a couple of hours for someone to come by to fix your issues isn't a problem.
As you pointed out, whatever works.
Re:Depends (Score:5, Interesting)
A good SA can come in and make a lot of these stupid little problems go away, never to return.
These sorts of problems can also be caused by bad management exerting too much control over the admins, or admins with weak people skills trying to please everyone rather than prioritize and do the right thing.
When asked to do something, to you just go ahead and do it? Or do you require things like justifications, business cases, funding, staff, etc? If management can just ask anything of the IT staff, they will do so, and it will feel like you're being walked all over, and that you're overworked. If you have some basic sanity checks and make those requirements before a project can be greenlighted, you'll find that your job can be a lot easier. Doing this also makes planning happen before you get midway through a project and find that different stakeholders have different opinions on what should be done next.
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Admins do not get to require justification or business cases to do their jobs. That is management's job.
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On the other hand, if that's the level of service the business is willing to pay for, that's what they should get. IT doesn't run the world, they make it easier for others to run the world. If management wants an efficient IT department (and they probably should) then they will do what you suggest. If they want tech guys at their beck and call to just fix things whenever they screw up, or get them whatever newfangled toy they might like, then they won't. Smart management will want an IT that gives them
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Sorry, but this is utter bullshit. I speak as an engineer in a development department who frequently needs to work with IT administration.
Keeping the shop running is a cost of doing business. But that doesn't mean it isn't appropriate to try to do some kind of cost containment or planning on it.
Depends on how many windows stations removed (Score:3, Informative)
It depends on how many Windows desktops you are able to replace with Macintosh OS X, Solaris or Linux. Seriously. Windows isn't around because of it's technical merits [groklaw.net].
I have worked in help desk environments in the past for a Windows / Macintosh / Solaris computing environment. The Solaris users largely took care of themselves, but contacted us for some settings information, like establishing the right settings for Kerberos, LDAP, AFS, or SMTP. The Mac users outnumbered everyone else by at least 4 to 1.
100 to 1 is about right (Score:4, Informative)
we're at around 1200 users and around 8 help desk people to support them all. 2 DBA's for 30 some MS SQL servers and 3-5 admins for 200 some windows/^nix servers. some people double by helping users in their office
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Mine's good for a laugh in some ways: 1200 users at our main site, 200 at our sales office. Manufacturing/sales environment, just barely out of start-up mode, with a ton of legacy crap laying around from an acquisition. Mostly Windows environment (boss drank the koolaid and asked for seconds), though Oracle and most of the critical infrastructure bits (esp. the Internet-facing ones) now run on RHEL, Fedora, or FreeBSD (courtesy of the DBA and myself). About 80% virtualized on the back-end.
We have: 3 Admins
Support/user ratio (Score:4, Informative)
Internal Corporate Helpdesk - 6800 users, supporting every application on desktops, 10 support techs during the day, 1 on nights and weekends.
Website support: 10,000 users, supporting general usage of just 1 website. 4 techs, regular business hours only.
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> Website support: 10,000 users, supporting general usage of just 1 website. 4 techs, regular business hours only.
Envious. 7,000 users; 1 full time person and 2 half-time. Oh, and we're also expected to the develop the underlying application, not just make keep it up and running... ...actually, we're primarily meant to be developing it, and support isn't expected to be a major part of our job...
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Sounds about on par with my group. If you have the right infrastructure, like a centralized software location for installs, you can quite easilly manage hundreds of applications without requiring aditional overhead. Generally when a windows app breaks you can fix it with a re-install, and if that takes 30 seconds then it's no big deal.
We have an outside help desk that only seems to be able to handle the most trival of problems, for everything halfway serious we do it. We have several hundred applications
Re:Support/user ratio (Score:4, Informative)
I've run about 700:1 ratio before. Of course, we were 2400 staff and 4 techs. It wasn't too bad because first thing in the morning, one of the techs would make sure we always had 3-5 good running PCs in spare for each type of image in the building and we solved a lot of problems with "swap the machine". A tech could create 5 images in less than 20 minutes of real "desk time" using my network deployment setup.
When an organization staffs that way, nobody gets to bitch when the answer to most problems is "re-image" because we found out that doing more detailed troubleshooting for anyone under Director level, or one of the few critical technology people simply put us too far in the hole time-wise to get anything else done. It's faster to tell them to copy their data to the network, then go down and make sure they did it right and swap the machine. They can copy the data back after we set up their email. Max time on a support call that way was ~15 minutes and solved ANY problem.
We actually managed to move an entire building of people from one place to the other in our spare time at that position as well as deploying wireless and doing about a dozen other things. It wasn't a sweatshop - it was actually one of the nicer places to work I've been to.
We were running a wide variety of apps, which we solved by having 3 standard images that provided a substantial coverage of everything. Once the image was built, there was never any reason to install "apps" because they were on the image. There were two or three that weren't included that had strict controls on who could use them, but they were 1-2 minutes to install.
if you can standardize the hardware and application images, this 680:1 isn't insane at all.
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Oh yeah,
People who were "trouble" users learned really quick that jacking with their system caused them to get a fresh image and removed all their fiddling.
They often quit messing things up after the second or third swap. Total time lost.. about an hour, total.
Too many chiefs and no indians (Score:4, Informative)
Right now its 4 offices around 120 employees and just me...oh and I forgot (or selectively blocked) a former client who keeps calling me to pick up after their new "IT guy" who is supposed to save them money. If they were all in one location I could probably juggle it better but as it is I'm starting to burn out.
Re:Too many chiefs and no indians (Score:4, Interesting)
* Remote desktop and VPN are your best friends. Learn them, live them, love them.
* No need to forget the former client. Instead, tell them that your consulting rates are $150/hr at a 10 hour minimum fee per incident, with a 150% premium on weekends and holidays. That usually shuts them up in very short order. If you actually prefer to get some scratch/business off of them, drop the 10-hour minimum to 2 or 3, and only budge on the rates if you know that the going rates locally are lower.
* Your employer had better be paying for gas and travel time, plus wear+tear on your vehicle (if they haven't already supplied you with one of their own), and don't forget the tax write-off on the car if you're using yours.
My dept is 'prox 600 computers/3 techs (Score:3, Informative)
This is party due to our lack of automation - Active Directory's not got much penetration outside our area, we haven't got automatic package rollouts/updates, no out-of-band management, and there's no planning WRT buying computers; each dept will buy a machine as funds & needs dictate, with input from us.
The three of us are desktop support. That doesn't count the sysadmins & netadmins.
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Lack of AD doesn't prevent automated OS updates. You can implement WSUS without AD, which will take care of many critical OS updates, it just requires that you alter some registry settings and ensure the users have the latest Windows Update client.
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OS and Microsoft Office updates are handled by WSUS, and antivirus by the AV server, but we don't update anything else automatically.
The result is that some users have rather old copies of Flash Player, Java, Adobe Reader, Firefox, etc.
What are you really asking? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've seen one sysadmin per 70 Unix servers and one sysadmin per 30 Windows servers. That's a general guideline for SERVER systems. Desktops are another matter. I've yet to see a serious roll out of Unix desktops, so I'm going by Windows systems, but one help desk tech per 50 systems is what I've personally seen as optimal. More Windows PCs per tech and the help desk gets overwhelmed. Less than that and they sit around and play games most of the day. This is assuming that you push updates over the network, not go around and manually update each PC.
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Mac systems are most like Unix systems. With a good set of restrictions (no local admins) you can manage about 100-300 Mac systems with a single admin. Above 100 users you might want to invest in a redundant admin just in case one gets sick.
I manage about 250 users with 100 computers and 5 servers including mail, web, dns, network home and a few TB of imaging data + backup by myself and I am not really all that busy. I just make sure I have either a network or site license for most software and deploy it to
Unix desktops. Oh, the happy memories.... (Score:4, Interesting)
I have. We had two SAs who handled everything on that rollout. I was one of the two. We installed and maintained all software (that was written and pushed to a central server by a different staff). We installed and maintained all equipment, both field and server room. The standard setup was each group was 10 to 15 people. One secretary used a desktop and everybody else had a laptop. All laptop users got an individual laser printer for home use. Each group had two impact printers for forms and one networked laser. Each group connected to their own database server. There were three additional servers that controlled other functions. Every single machine ran SCO OSR 3-point-something. Hardware was IBM for everything.
Us 2 SAs did everything. It didn't matter how small or large the problem, from replacing a USB-to-ethernet dongle to rebuidling a server (I could fully build a server, pulling spare hardware, imaging from tape, and restoring all databases from online backup in under two hours. We had that shit wired, I tell ya!) to taking calls from people who didn't know how to turn off the reveal codes in WordPerfect, we did it all.
Everything that could be scripted was. Our morning checklists and reports took a half hour, tops. On a good day, that was all we had to do all day. On the worst of days, we might work hard. But bad days were rare. We could take our vacations and know that no matter what shit hit the fan, the one of us who was on-site could handle it. We had the wonderful luxury of being able to walk around the user groups and ask people if they needed anything. They almost never did.
Our total user base was about 300 people. So I'd say if things are designed right, 2 people can handle 300 easily.
Of course, there were 25 or so admins and desktop people on the Windows side of the house, taking care of about 1200 users. They ran around looking like they were doing important stuff all the time. And I guess they were. Their stuff broke so much, they were constantly being rewarded for rescuing some project from the jaws of disaster or fixing some irritating problem that had plagued their users for years. Those poor sods hid in their cubicles most of the time; they didn't dare walk among the user population for fear of someone throwing something at them or, at minimum, being constantly harrassed by users pleading "Could you take a quick look at this?"
Our users just did their jobs, working on hardware and software that just worked, reliable as gravity (well, nearly) with no drama at all.
You can see what's coming, can't you?
The higher-ups started wondering aloud why those two SAs over in the corner never seemed to be running around in a panic fixing things. "Don't they have any work to do?" The higher-up attitude toward the Windows guys was completely different. Hell, I remember one of them getting an award for recovering data from a crashed server. They actually rewarded the guy with a certificate and a little ceremony because he had backups, something we took for granted in our little world.
Obviously, it couldn't last. All our apps got re-written to Windows. All the Unix stuff got ashcanned. Our user population got folded in with everyone else and forced to use the standard Windows-image machines.
And we now run around putting out fires with no time to catch our breath.
Man, those were the days. 1 to 150 was a breeze. Nowadays, deskside support is at about the same ratio and we're always on the verge of burnout, always working harder, always falling a little further behind. As much as I love my work (and I do, dearly, love helping alleviate the pain of a user who can't get their work done until I fix something), I'm *seriously* looking forward to retirement.
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1 tech to 100 users seems extraordinarily high, I've never worked in an environment with that many support techs. I've worked in a locked-down environment with about 3,000 users and 5 help desk personel as the sole non-server support, and I've worked in an environment with 5 desktop techs for about 4,000 users (not very restricted) with a remote help desk for trivial matters (anything that takes less than 5 minutes to fix, basically). I currently work on a separated network for the second company, I'm the
Lockdown (Score:2)
In my experience, it's a function of how well you're doing your job and how locked down you can make the users' systems. If you do your job well and can effectively totally lock down the system (users install nothing, use Citrix, etc, and are only allowed to use a limited number of apps), that can be perfectly reasonable.
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Agreed. This is ideal. Unfortunately, where I work, locked down doesn't mean what it should. The only thing it does is give users a community desktop (desktop redirection) based on department and limit some of their local access. They can still install crap -- and the proxy doesn't block as well as I would like (but I'm no longer management -- we were bought out and I was taken on to manage a small server farm and sql dbs).
Our answer is to have a handy-dandy ghost image to push to the workstation if the
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Sounds like you're using wrong, then.
We use Citrix as a barrier between sensitive networks. We have a corporate network, a buffer network, and a sensitive network. Citrix servers sit in the buffer network allowing users on the corporate network to access the sensitive network without having any direct link between the two. It works pretty well, since we can lock down the buffer network to only allow the citrix connections and a few outside connections for things like AV and MS updates.
As far as using Cit
I think you're understaffed. (Score:4, Informative)
Government facility:
3000+ PCs
2600+ users(yeah I know we have more PCs than users)
200+ servers
6 Server Admins (understaffed)
2 Network Admins
2 Telecom Admins
3 Infrastructure techs
15 Helpdesk Technicians (overstaffed by about 5)
47 other IT employees for software support/dev staff and management staff
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Government facility:
I'm surprised. Any decent government run operation would need far more than 47 managers just to oversee the management processes.
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Small Shop (Score:3, Informative)
It Varies (Score:3, Informative)
It usually varies every place I've been between the quality/age of the hardware and the competency of the users. Additionally it depends on how automated the system is, and whether there's a dedicated support staff. Small places I've been I've find you can do about 45-75 comfortably... It was a bit stretched when it reached 100:1
Just my $0.02
150: 1 is Decent.. (Score:5, Interesting)
You have more than double that so i'd say you are pretty understaffed. I saw a video once that was actually pretty intelligent in talking about standard support ratios. Basically, there isn't a "standard" the answer is almost always "it depends". You start with your userbase - how tech savvy are they? How many applications are you supporting? What kind of hardware do you have? How many remote supporting tools do you have to use? Each of these answers adjusts the support ratio up and down and sometimes something as low as 75:1 is needed and other times 300:1 is just fine.
Still, in the place I work now we have 600 machines and 40 servers or so (most virtualized) and we have 13 IT people (with 1 open position right now). This includes 1 helpdesk person, 2 programmers, 2 systems support personnel (they support specific software we use), 2 hardware techs, 2 network analysts, 3 systems engineers, a secretary, and the boss.
What's a "Sneaker Tech"? (Score:2, Funny)
Google doesn't have any relevant hits for this phrase (except this article).
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Google doesn't have any relevant hits for this phrase (except this article).
Obviously you don't know how to search. I found a job posting for a sneaker tech [jobisjob.com] right away.
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Google doesn't have any relevant hits for this phrase (except this article).
Someone who uses the sneakernet to work on a box instead of better tools like SSH/pstools/RDP/ARD/GPO
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standard is supposed to be 185 to warrant on-site (Score:2)
tech. i have 300. when i need help we establish a project and bring in contractors
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what usecase? (Score:2)
If you're running a distributed system where each node is exactly the same and you just push out a standard image then you could have a 1:1000 ratio.
But if you have a a bunch of computers doing very specific things each one being different the ratio has to be less.
An average doesn't really make sense unless you can specify the usecase for these systems.
You're posting on Slashdot (Score:2)
1:5000 (Score:3, Interesting)
Was the ratio i had when i was managing an entire assembly plant's IT operations. Yes i was working my ass off.. 24/7 operation as well.
Where i am now, its more like 500:30000 ( ok, not a true ratio, but i wanted to include the total number too, since its pretty high. )
A lot depends on what industry you are supporting, your user base, and your budget.
How tight or loose are group policies? (Score:2)
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Make user an admin on their own machine if you want to increase the IT staff. Lock down group policies if you are overworked.
I think you meant:
Make a stupid user an admin on their own machine if you want to increase the IT staff. Make a smart user an admin on their own machine if you are overworked. Make everyone an admin on their own machine if you're a contractor, for obvious self-enrichment reasons.
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Make user an admin on their own machine if you want to increase the IT staff. Lock down group policies if you are overworked.
I think you meant:
Make a stupid user an admin on their own machine if you want to increase the IT staff. Make a smart user an admin on their own machine if you are overworked. Make everyone an admin on their own machine if you're a contractor, for obvious self-enrichment reasons.
Smart user? Might as well add in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy.
Understaffed (Score:2)
3 admins (1 network 2 systems) and 2 helpdesk technicians
Power of Scale (Score:3, Informative)
The larger the corporation the more per\user per\server to admin. Theseare my observation sover the last 12 years in my career:
For small corporations (less then 1 million) I usually see about 1/800 ratio for support\end user and 1/50 for servers.
For medium corporations (greater then 1 million but less then 80 million in revenue) I usually seea bour 1/2000 ratio and 1/150 for servers.
For large corporations (greater then 80 million) I see about 1/3800 and 1/250.
Support metrics are usually driven by "Call Times" including resolve times and hold times so depending on the scale of the businesses and nature it isn't so much support/staff ratio but rather hold time\support ratio. ITIL was crafted specifically to facilitate outsourcing Incident Management (password resets and all that less then 15 minutes crap) to lower cost, drill down labor and maintaining low hold times versus Problem Management which is the higher skill set.
Server ratio is largely due to "bucketing" of servers\apps to an admin resource (Think along the lines of an Account Rep). A.k.a Bob handles Apps A,B, and C along with Servers X, Y, and Z. So depending on the corporation you can have anywhere from 2-8 apps assigned to a single admin. Each application may maintain upwards of 5-12 servers depending on the size of the application. Smaller enterprises tend to have smaller "buckets". A typical LAMP stack may have 1-4 app servers, 1 NAS, 1 batch server, and possibly it's own database server. As you get larger those buckets share other buckets so you may have a team that handles just apache and another that handles just MYSQL\POSTGRES\etc. Those buckets can be huge. I have a team of 8 DBAs managing right now 2307 database instances. That is roughly 289 server instances per DBA. A simple table update may take 12 minutes for a structure update to process so median process time may factor into staffing requirements when concurrency isn't an option based on outage windows. Databases are virtual servers usually with a SAN hosted on hardware that is managed by another team but you can get the picture. By specializing administrative roles you can increase the nubmer of server or services supported by a person (power of scale) so the ratio of servers per tech tends to rise the bigger the corporation. In addition more expensive, comprehensive tools, become accessable to larger corporations (TIVOLI framework for instance.)
Based on your description you should need:
2 Call Center Incident Management crew
2 Problem Management crew
1 Senior Network Adminsitrator\Network Architect
3 Junior Network Administrators
1 of which is responsible for security\auditing
1 of which is responsible for maintenance
1 of which is special projects
All three should rotate these roles quarterly or annually as well as rotate 1 as a Problem Management staffer (the non-special project members)
So your total support crew should be about 8 people. You may also for off hours support want to outsource to a location 12 or 6 hours offset based on your location. (6 hours makes meetings more practical as you can usually get a meeting when one group is just getting in and the other is just getting ready to leave.)
Approximately 8000/1 for Sun's old desktop (Score:2)
Too much variation (Score:2)
It really depends on who your users are, what your servers are doing, and what level of support is desired/needed by the organization.
If you have 1000 users who use one app that they are all familiar with, user calls are going to be lower than an org with 20 different apps and a wide range of skills. In a large organization, you may be supporting everyone one from accountants who know Excel inside and an out to janitorial staff who are still using dial-up at home(seriously, they still are because they can'
Track busy time, adjust accordingly (Score:2)
While I was the sys admin for a small ad agency of 50 to 75 users (fluctuated monthly) my boss claimed that he read or spoke with other companies who were operating with a 50:1 ratio. Granted, ad agencies can be a bit unique with a very mixed technology environment and REALLY difficult users, but it worked for me. Most of the time I was fixing failed systems but I still had time to implement newer / better technology to resolve reoccurring issues.
I think what a larger company needs is a support staff that i
Re: (Score:2)
Repost! (sorta) (Score:2)
OK, not exactly, but the same topic was recently discussed in the Uniforms post [slashdot.org].
100-150:1 was a good ratio (Score:2)
When I did desktop support we had 100-150 users per admin.
The load depended on the department.. The guy supporting the executive offices was at 50:1 and hammered most of the time.
You can push those numbers higher but then all you do is fight fires, projects don't get done and vacation coverage is a nightmare.
We came up with a chart at one point classifying each department as low medium, high and VIP(CIO,CEO,CTO, VP and so on).. Low was counted as 0.5 users
medium 1 , high 2, VIP level counts for 3. The admin
Funny you ask... (Score:2)
This was actually a recent topic over where I'm working at and we were trying to figure out a way to explain that we needed another person. We went the route of trying to find this magical industry average and like everyone else is saying "it depends". For our level of support and configuration here - 1 admin per 75 windows workstations seems to be the magic number. Right now we're at about 1 per 150.
However, "industry average" doesn't mean jack to the client. It's kind of like saying to them "well Joe has
about one per 2500 seats (Score:2)
One place I worked in the 90s, about 100K seats, about 10 HD on the phones, about 15 field techs, about 5 WAN guys (myself and 4 others), about about 10 operators / system programmers / unix guys, works out to about 1:2500.
This was an IBM mainframe shop handling about 5% of all retail stock transactions worldwide on "dumb" terminals. If they didn't demand 24x7 coverage to handle worldwide markets, it would have been somewhat cheaper as we often staffed for "just in case". Having someone on pager was unacc
Depends on how you count it. (Score:2)
When I was there, RUCS (Rutgers University Computing Services) ran a campus of around 18k people from four active student admins and eleven never-seen never-active bureacratic staff. So that gives a ratio of about 4500:1. It's worse if you consider time of day, though: that was three during the day (6000:1) and one at night (18000:1).
Disclaimer: it's been almost 15 years, the school's size may have changed, and there's an outside chance that RUCS might have gotten rid of their dead weight and gotten their
1 IT staff per... (Score:3, Informative)
You need 1 IT staff (helpdesk, sysadmin, etc.) per:
20 Windows servers
50 Linux servers
100 full time computer users
1000 part time computer users
Really depends on where you are (Score:2)
At one Fortune 500 company... (Score:2)
At a Fortune 500 company where I worked a few years back, the user-to-IT ratio for Windows users was about 4 to 1. On the Macintosh side it was about 100 to 1 although a 50 to 1 ratio is probably better.
Numbers... (Score:2)
Well, the number I usually hear in the industry is 1 SysAdmin per:
10 Windows Servers
100 Unix/Linux servers
I think that the numbers are little low, and maybe too idealistic...Depending on the application, I could *easily* see one competent SysAdmin managing at least three times those numbers. Of Course, that is the rub, a competent SysAdmin. A *good* SysAdmin could probably increase the original numbers by a factor of ten. But then you start running into the "run over by a bus" syndrome...if a *good* SysAdmi
It's not that simple (Score:2, Informative)
On the UNIX(tm) side of things... (Score:2)
at least 1000 servers per admin.
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The next kernel update will make it 4096 servers per admin. But still no full screen Flash support, though.
Deployable Enterprise... (Score:2)
I run two isolated networks for roughly 300 users (about 600 accounts between the networks) over multiple isolated geographical locations (you have to convoy between them) with 2 admins and 5 sneaker techs. We run about 200 computers, 4-6 servers, and multiple wireless interconnects with associated equipment. Of course being military makes for special requirements.
We run 800/admin (Score:2)
We've got ~2800 RHEL4 and 5 servers and ~400 VMware ESX servers and 4 admins. The key is homogenity.
Facebook: 1 engineer per million users (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft says it has automated its data center operations to the point where its admins can each manage between 1,000 and 2,000 servers. That matters, as the company may pack more than 300,000 servers into its new container data center [datacenterknowledge.com] in Chicago. It expects to support that facility with about 30 employees, including admins and facility maintenance staff.
Re:Facebook: 1 engineer per million users (Score:4, Insightful)
Jeff Rothschild, the vice president of technology at Facebook, said in a recent presentation [datacenterknowledge.com] that Facebook has 230 engineers supporting data for more than 300 million users. He says Facebook seeks to maintain a ratio of one engineer for 1 million or more users. Facebook is vague about exactly how many servers it has, saying it's "more than 30,000." But at 30,000 servers and 230 engineers, that's a ratio of about 130 servers per admin.
Microsoft says it has automated its data center operations to the point where its admins can each manage between 1,000 and 2,000 servers. That matters, as the company may pack more than 300,000 servers into its new container data center [datacenterknowledge.com] in Chicago. It expects to support that facility with about 30 employees, including admins and facility maintenance staff.
"Number of servers per admin" is to limited to be properly measured, even in your examples. Can one admin manage 5000 *nix boxes that are all identical, running a clustered web server? Sure. Given the proper engineering and tools, it's very possible. Now throw in a bunch of other applications that users request or a business requires and now you will need more staff. Also, supporting a bunch of pizza boxes or supporting one piece of heavy iron can make a difference is trying to measure this number. I know of a couple of folks who admin one box. Granted, they are either a large SUN and IBM hardware, running databases, web servers, and numerous applications, but look at their job requirement in a slanted way and it would look as though they are responsible for only one system. While another admin can have a couple of thousand desktops all identical and simple. And their value would still be relative to whomever the users are.
I've grappled with this very question for decades (Score:3, Interesting)
The statistics are poor. We're in a mixed-use environment with mostly Windows for users and mostly Unix variants for servers, including HP-UX, BSD, Solaris, and Linux. The best data I have ever been able to come up with is one tech per 100 units. I've never counted routers, switches, hubs, and wiring in this, though I think you could make a good case to add them in. Some of those are a lot more onerous to configure than a garden variety PC. One thing that helped us was a standard-build PC. Store all data on backed up dual servers so if a PC breaks, you can replace it with an 'identical' PC easily and quickly. We kinda screwed up originally because we were IP rich with eleven Class C networks, so we used IPs to identify PCs and hard coded them, and also used one Class C per building, which was a big waste. It was a bit of a challenge to move to DHCP allocation when our Class Cs began to fill up, but we managed to avoid a lot of subnetting for a couple of decades. You probably couldn't get away with that these days.
Re:Proper Planning (Score:5, Funny)
Why, in my day we didn't have Admins.
We had to unbox the machines ourselves, plug EVERYTHING in. We even had to figure out interrupts by ourselves. And don't get me started about trying to snake the coax around the building.
Kids these days. Spoiled rotten. Don't even have to get up to turn the record over.
Grump.
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Administrators! Administrators! Administrators!
And a technician, since a chair just obliterated one of our motherboards.
Re:Proper Planning (Score:4, Funny)
Sheesh, I remember token ring. Slickest thing since sliced bread.
Till the token fell out anyway. Then you had to send some noob PFY out to search for it under the desks. Hours of entertainment with that one.
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Of course, reducing the number of support calls is not necessarily in the interests of the IT support people, who will therefore get cut. Even if it does improve overall quality.
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If a dept feels they're understaffed, they must first evaluate the workload and determine if the implementation is unnecessarily causing extra work . Then correct the root issues (possibly hiring contractors for the interim) and reevaluate.
unfortunately the core problem is the fucking stupid users, no way to smat them up, nor to sack them...
the second problem is the presence of more than 100 different programs, about 2 to 15 are to install in every single station in seemly random assortment that vary wildly depending on the single user...
no way to solve that either.
the third is a continuous spawning of new programs or functionality to implement the week before, so that you hastily put something up, than have to spend 5 time that time to corre
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I think the issue is the measure of what you're doing for the company to make them money with IT projects.
Many, many small companies see IT as "janitors" for the computers, and don't really expect much other than keeping the "tubes" flowing. If the article poster is working for one of those companies then they're probably about staffed OK. The job being to make your own work more efficient so you can go home on time! The biggest problem with working for those companies is skill-lag, you're doing all your sk
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Smart companies see IT as adding value
Except most companies see IT as a cost center and the way to cut costs is to cut staff then tell the users they have to take more responsibility for their environment.
Re:Proper Planning (Score:5, Funny)
This is exactly the way to think about IT. End-users are not your "customers" or "clients", and your role is not to serve them. They are your competitors. Your job is to eliminate them, and to replace them with whirring, glowing rooms filled with triple-redundant servers flawlessly executing fully-normalized databases and millions of tiny shell scripts.
Middle managers are your natural enemies. Their interests are to increase warm bodies and to monitor butt-in-seat time. Treat them with cautious scorn.
Your major challenge is to quantify your work as it relates to deferred costs and increased productivity, and to demonstrate this benefit to executive management. This will require a quick typing finger, elite charting skills, and a deft touch on the laser pointer.
By the way, how many middle managers did you have to kidnap and drug before you were recognized by executive management?
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If you have a bunch of call-center drones, with rigidly standardized desktops, pretty much the only admin time should be on the servers, the occasional hardware failure, and pressing "reimage" if something goes hairy on the client end. If you are logging a lot of client-side admin time, you have a problem.
On the other side, if you have a load of free-spirited and independent academics, who have-their-own-computers-thank-you-very-much-and-no-thank
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Indeed, but don't forget the geographic structure of your organization and contractual limitations placed on IT either. For example, an organization housed in a single building, and an IT group that has little useless oversight (things like complicated ticketing systems, quotas, etc), one support tech could easily care for upwards of 2-3,000 customers, depending on the scenarios described above.
On the other hand, if your organization is spread across 20 small locations many miles apart and are forced to us
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If all your wiring is professionally installed and maintained by people who don't show up on your IT payroll, and every computer in the place is less than 3 years old and has an active service contract, your support techs are going to spend a lot less time testing network drops and diagnosing funny hardware than if you have shoddy wiring and a mess of 5/6 year old ha
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You are insane. Business needs change frequently and dynamically. How can ANY implementation be properly planned and executed without any further need for maintenance? I suppose the NASA computer systems back in the 60's were properly planned and should continue to serve today as well?
Everything changes from the start to the finish. There is no "proper implementation" and if there were, it wouldn't be proper for long. The IBM PC was designed to be expandable and adaptable and we can see how long the PC
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It sounds like you are on top of things, but I'd say you are understaffed. We have 10-15 Windows servers, and a few hundred XP/Vista machines, and one admin-type, plus two full-time equivalent techs, and are looking for at least one more.
Where do I send my resume?
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You, good sir, live in the land of plenty. Can I come?
I think my corp is at about 1 syadmin per 800 people, one netadmin per 1500 people, and about 1 tech support per 700 people. I think the users would be happier with 1 tech support per 250-300users.
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I wish I knew... I've been asking for a few years now. generally it's not a big deal but a Exchange/PDC upgrade earlier this year frazzled my nerves with having to touch ever machine individually to update shares/printers.
Search microsoft's site for sysinternals and/or pstools. Use psexec.exe to run batch files running reg.exe on all of the machines. It will save you a lot of time, especially if you do it like: /f %X in ( ' type computerlist.txt ' ) do cmd /c start cmd /k psexec.exe \\%X -c ThingToRunOnRemoteMachines.bat
for
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You can create OUs of users in your location, and only apply GPOs to those users.
You don't have to Bork all the field offices with a GPO. Now domain security policies I'd watch out for.
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I do the non-physical work on about 500 users and computers, and 15 or so servers not quite by myself (a couple union guys do any physical work). I spend most of my day browsing slashdot with little to do, other than maintaining those servers, or when something goes seriously wrong on a machine. That's because the vast majority of the user's machines are locked down pretty hard (many don't even get icons on their desktop), and they only run a couple programs, which means there is almost nothing for them t