Our small group provides programming services to several observatory projects, as well as system administration services for a large number of hosts on our network. In addition, we provide limited support for some 400 other hosts, which are mostly PCs. Most of these 670 hosts are located in our main building on campus, which has over 200 offices, but others are located in a lab on the other side of campus, and at four different mountain-top observatory sites. This is all done with essentially one system manager. Despite such a thin staff for such a large responsibility, I am told that the quality of our system management is second to none, by those who have had the opportunity to compare with other places.
Reliability is one of the best indicators.
Our users enjoy 99.9 percent up time on our systems. Interdependence is minimized. Another good indicator is that the systems work as advertised. The mail always goes through. Users are provided with a default environment that hides gory computer system and network details, so that they can get right to their job or science application.