From: lishka@dxcern.cern.ch (Christopher Lishka)
Subject: Re: Admin/User Ratio
Organization: CERN European Lab for Particle Physics
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 12:17:25 GMT

In <1992Oct15.160619.11636@menudo.uh.edu> sears@tree.egr.uh.edu (Paul S. Sears) writes:

>In article <1992Oct14.211908.17756@srg.srg.af.mil> mjarriel@atria.srg (Michael  
Note that the number of sysadmins is highly dependent on:

	(a) Number of users

	(b) Amount of equipment (workstations, disks, etc.)

	(c) Type of programs run

	(d) Type of environment

There is no good "formula" that I know of for calculating how many
sysadmins to have.  If you want your company to hire another sysadmin,
you had best look at how much work the current sysadmins are doing,
how much better the situation would be (in terms of productivity and
extra services that could be offered) if another sysadmin would be
hired, and then present this to the powers-that-be in a logical and
convincing fashion.  Just giving them a formula that categorically
states that another sysadmin is needed likely will not be sufficient
or realistic.  (You never know, though: some personnel managers
*might* hire based on a formula....)


	>Jarriel x4751) writes:
	>=>I am looking for statistics or ratios that correlate
	>=>users to system administrators in a Unix based network.

	>10:1???  A realistic impossiblity..

Not necessarily.  Consider my situation:

Our group has 25 people (mostly physicists).  Our hardware includes
one VMS mainframe (VAX 9000), one VMS mini (VAX 8800), 32 VAXstations
running VMS, 7 DECstations running Ultrix, 4 Macintoshes, FDDI,
ethernet, 15 modems, and 120 *gigabytes* in disk space (40 central
disks, 90 SCSI disks).

One sysadmin does much of the low-level day-to-day handling of the
equipment: maintenance, periodic problems, etc.  The other sysadmin
focuses more on planning for upgrades, new hardware purchases, etc.
They coordinate on system and software upgrades, maintenance calls,
and other things.  The split between duties is not definite: they will
take on each other's duties as is necessary.

Our group also has users who know the system/root password and are
able to perform some of the low-level sysadmin duties as well (about
25% of the group).  Since our group is tight-knit, this is all done in
a fairly coordinated fashion.

With the high sysadmin-to-user ratio, you would think we would be
sitting back and relaxing most of the time.  Most certainly not.  I am
always busy and there are always important things to do.  Our system
mutates significantly each year as we add equipment to keep up with
the fast-moving technology.  We have thought about adding another
sysadmin; it would certainly help us get more done.

My point: in our group the sysadmin-to-user ratio is actually less
important than the ***sysadmin-to-equipment*** ratio.  Keeping up
three different types of systems and all of the different hardware is
a lot of work.  Some of this is made simpler because we run primarily
DEC equipment (due to discounts offered to our University).

Our environment (cutting-edge high-energy-physics research) demands
fast performance, gobs of disk space, and constant upgrading of our
systems to increase our performance level to current technology.
Furthermore, we have to closely coordinate this with the physicists so
that their work (which is most important) gets done.  This means a lot
of work for the sysadmins.


	>=>How many would be sufficient to survive?

	>Users or admins???  I think that 2 admins for a cluster of
	>50-75 workstations and 200-400 users is a pretty reasonable
	>ratio.  Note that I said reasonable...

Again, it depends heavily on the environment.  Contrast: (a) a single
mainframe with 300 users and one operating system; (b) a student
environment with 25 workstations and 300 users; (c) a cutting-edge
research environment with 40 workstations and 25 users.  Each one has
different needs.


	>=>
	>=>How many would be sufficient to be comfortable?
	>=>

	>I am very comfortable working solo.

I am comfortable working solo as well, but I recognize that I cannot
do it all alone anymore.  There is too much work to be done for one
person.  And I already regularily work a six-day week.

Besides, I have found for critical operations (such as upgrading VMS,
which affects the mainframe, the mini, and the 32 VAXstations) it is
always preferable to work with another person.  Two people doing the
same thing allows them to catch each others mistakes.  And judging by
the "sysadmin horror stories" thread in this group, we system managers
make a lot of interesting mistakes!


	>=>
	>=>I am doing another nasty justification to management
	>=>to justify resources and could use help.
	>=>
	>=>Currently we have about a 50:1 ratio and are
	>=>surviving.  I would like to get to a 25:1 position. 
	>=>

Then I recommend setting up a side-project: figure out what you are
able to do now with the current staff, what could be done with more
staff, and how much more efficiently it could be done.  Are there
things that take too long to do right now, and is the organization
suffering because of this?  Would another sysadmin make the
organization more competitive?  Would another sysadmin *really* help
get more work done, or would the overall work end up being the same
and you would have less of a load?  These questions need to be
answered rather than trying to meet a "magic" syadmin-to-user ratio.

Look at this as a classic optimization problem.  First you must find
out what needs to be optimized.  Then you must figure out how to best
optimize it.

	>He, he... 50:1 is a dream.... In my cluster we have 262:1
	>(users:admin) and 56 workstations....  Oh joy, oh bliss...

Different environments have different needs.  Having 300 "simple"
users on one mainframe may well be an easier administration task than
having 20 "knowledgable" users using 2 mainframes and 40 workstations.

Likewise, the need for applications programmers and user support staff
is different for different types of settings.  500 students using 50
workstations may need less sysadmins but much more user support staff.
25 physicists using 40 workstations seems to need 2 sysadmins and 0
user support staff (the sysadmins are the user support people).

Apples and oranges, man.

						.oO Chris Oo.

-- 
                                                           Christopher Lishka
 Never drive a car when you're dead...			   PPE Division, CERN
				-- Tom Waits		  lishka@dxcern.cern.ch
							     vxaluw::lishka
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin,alt.folklore.computers