Realistic Sysadmin Workload for a Company of 30?

An anonymous reader asks: "My company was recently sold to a new owner. Currently I am working as a programmer using a number of languages (Java, C, C#, PHP). I am the only maintainer/developer on a number of important code bases. The new owner wants to add 'Network Administration' to my list of responsibilities. We are moving locations and our infrastructure needs to be rebuilt from scratch. He claims that after being set up (something I am also responsible for) our company IT needs can be met using only 1% of my work week. Our user base will be 30 people, mostly programmers, with a minimum of non-techie staff. I am a professional programmer, but have no real sysadmin/network admin experience. His solution is 'We'll get you a book'. Learning new things is great but, I just want to be a programmer. I'm worried that this network admin responsibility will become my new full time job. Does this 1% statistic hold water?"

short answer: no

[DJProtoss]

Whilst i'm not convinced about the 1% value, It is possible that that might work in a correctly, carefully set up network environment where each users accesses & rights is carefully set up, and you have a hardware support contract with someone, but I doubt it
However, irl this is *not* going to happen.
for a start, you are not going to be able to plan and set it up right first time (thats where the experience bit comes in ;) ), plus i'll wager that those 30 odd people will mostly be running windows, and will have local admin rights - that really increases the difficulting in managing them, especially if they are connected to the internet in some way.
Basically, your boss is being a cheapskate. You *need* a sysadmin, or at least someone whose job is officially part sysadmin and has experience - ask the boss whether he would want a sysadmin with little no programming experience and 'a book' to be writing the core code for your product? I suspect not. So why does he think the reverse is true?

Security is a process

[NoSuchGuy]

Talk to your boss about security and tell him that it's a process not an investment and need a steady (time) budget.

Would be interessting what your boss answers.

Make sure you have a good base to start from

[wimbor]

I am partly IT manager for my company, which means the IT part is only half of my job. And yes, I do more than half of my time on IT subjects, but NOT on pure network administration.

On a Windows network, with 5 servers (mail/domain, database, batch server, terminal server, test server), with Oracle databases and 30 clients, including VPN support for remote users, I spend between 1 and 10% of my time on pure network admin. Depending on if there are large updates needed (e.g. Exchange 2000 -> 2003, etc.) or not.

In a Windows environment: Make sure you set up user rights properly (block access to installing programs, etc.). Really lock it down very good for the beginner users, but trust power users if you can and give them more flexibility to manage their own system. Create a good security profile for your company, use group policy to lock computers down AND distribute software (!), use WSUS (www.microsoft.com/wsus) for windows patches, don't be cheap on antivirus programs, spyware scanners, your base network appliances and a decent firewall. Make sure you have decent warranty on your hardware, and if needed support contracts for servers. Outsource the firewall and router configs.

The pure Windows network administration is automated here (group policy, windows patches, software installs,...), and apart from creating a user now and then, and replacing a faulty drive or old hardware, I hardly put time in the network.

When a reinstall of Windows is needed (once in 4 years on desktops, really) the group policies make sure it gets installed with the basic software automatically. I only have to adjust some settings specific to a user. That's it. A new PC is ready on our network within 2 hours, from a clean and empty drive.

Most of my IT time goes to other software projects.

But, it does take some time to create this initial setup. After that, you are spending like 1 day per month (3%) on the network. If you have a disaster (crashed server), of course you need some more time, but apart from that... it's easy.

Just demand your management 1 full month to really concentrate on the admin tasks. In this time learn how to work with the domains, group policies and the lot. The more time you put into setting it up, the more time you will gain afterwards. Set up the network really good, then go back to programming.

If you want to spend even less time: buy Mac OS X Server and Apple hardware.

Good luck! If you are a Linux shop: somebody else on Slashdot might have an idea.

No, 1% is nowhere near close!

[RandomJoe]

I had a very similar experience, and I assure you 1% (1/2 hour per week?!?) is nowhere close. I work for a multinational that is too cheap to put admins in each office. Instead, they have a small crew of very sharp people at headquarters, and someone - in our case the Controller - also gets admin duties. Our Controller left, and everyone decided I would be a great fill-in until they got a new Controller (my boss doesn't actually want me doing it, so it isn't supposed to be permanent). Since I was already busy enough, everyone in the office (around 40 people) was told to call the corporate help desk first. In theory all the IT folks back at the main office would do the bulk of the work and I would just have to handle "real emergencies" or something like that.

Yeah, sure...

The first two weeks I spent half of my week or more on "IT duties". It has tapered off some, but even though they are calling the help desk, and I don't actually have to do a lot of the work myself, I still spend at least 5-6 hours per week. Mostly on the more irritating end user items - "my printer won't work". Plus things that evidently can't be done remotely anyway - "hey, we need you to go in and do this on your server for us".

Re:The 1% is crazy

[JimDabell]

If this is the case and you doing system adminstration for 30 people will only take 1% of your time, then the sysadmin work load / person is around 0.0003.

It also means that, assuming the Ask-Slashdotee works a typical 40-hour week, the boss thinks that each employee needs 48 seconds of support each week.

If the boss really won't take no for an answer, my suggestion would be to point out that the "1% of your time" will be taken up for the next few months by reading that sysadmin book, so it might be a good idea to hire a sysadmin in the meantime to set up the network.

Used to be a SysAdmin

[nighty5]

I looked after a network shared across 3 networks with around 30 staff.

Had a mix of Linux, Novell, NT 3.51, NT 4. MTAs included qmail, Exchange. Firewalls were routers, and ipfwadm...

So about 8 years ago.....

I also was an onsite engineer for charge out work...

To answer your question, it comes down to a few factors:

How old is the hardware? If its older hardware, then there will be more repairs.

Do your users have adequate training? If not, then you'll be doing lots of support.

Does your site consist of a lot of Internet connectivity, on-line shopping carts etc? If so, then add more hours to your maintainance.

Also don't forget stuff has to be backed up. That takes about 20-30 mintes a day to monitor backup logs, and managing tape routines.

What about application/security logs? You probably won't have time to even look at that stuff. Then stuff will probably break more often.

You see it comes down to how much time can be invested in the systems, the less management give you, the more time you'll spend on it.

I'd say you're average will be around 1 hour per day, every day - at a rough estimate.

Cheers.

Goodluck!

P.S - I got out of sys admin gig, now a full time security consultant the past 8 years and love it.

Re:Do not accept

[gl4ss]

well.

accept it - but make clear that you won't do unpaid overtime to meet requirements of both positions. the employer is likely paying you for 8 hours a day, so give him that.

1% is also a fantasy, but that shouldn't be your problem directly now should it?(unless you totally totally hate admin work).

I did exactly that - and it's not funny

[Welshalian]

I did exactly what you've been asked to do. I'm a programmer. When the company was small (4/5 people) I was the defacto sysadmin. As it grew to 30 people, we hired a sysadmin, and I gave him the occasional hand (holidays, sickness). Then he left and we were late hiring his replacement, so I said I'd keep the systems ticking in the meantime. I wish I hadn't. Trust me, I was good at it. But it cost me a lot of heartache, I had to fight quite a few people (including the CEO). IT-related workload was high (say 20% of my time), but the thing that did it for me was the fact that sysadmins are expected to take a lot of flak when things go bad, and keep their mouth shut. I found that really hard. I tried explaining that I was just volunteering and filling in - I just did not have the time to do all they wanted. Yet the day-by-day grumbling about problems (some real, some not-so-real) made me bitter and unsatisfied. One day, after the umpteenth stroppogram, I threw in the towel. I said I wouldn't do it anymore. Never regretted it. Now we have a proper sysadmin and I kiss the ground he walks on.

1%? Oh, boy.

[foxtrot]

I was in a similar situation a few years ago. 45ish people, we rolled our own network, mostly techie types...

We needed about 1.5 system administrators.

Fortunately, we had two. So about 1/4 of my average work week was spent as a testing droid for the developers and-- get this-- getting ahead of the game.

Whoever told you 1% of your work week is on crack. Stuff simply just doesn't work that well. :-/

-JDF

Re:Track your time (was Re:Ask Google Calculator..

[rfisher]

Yep. This is what I was going to say.

1% is completely bogus. It was more than that when I worked at a 5 person company. It was small enough to be workable, though.

Later I worked at a c. 30 person company & another programmer had this problem. It took way more than 1% of his time. It was a problem, & the boss recognized it & did something about it.

So, if you can't convince him up front, keep a good record of the time you spend doing non-programming tasks. Don't complain. Do make ultimatums or challenges. Just let him see the record of what is actually happening.

Personally, if the boss can't be convinced upfront, I'd rather take on the extra duties that refuse them. If the boss ends up being right, fine. If not, I demonstrate that to him. In any case, I want to do everything I can to be a positive force & make my company the biggest success it can be.

Re:BAD ADVICE

[chris_mahan]

Amen.

I was in the same situation.

Small company, 30 employees, systems grew to way too many servers
(exchange - fax - file - app (MSSQL) - websense - terminal service - mail-filtering (barracuda?) - webserver - nas - and now 2 RH+PHP+ora app server)

in addition to: firewall, vpn, voip (nortel).

All in all great systems, and employees are very productive, and company is very profitable.

Except the Director of IT wanted me to program (internal reports, website, scripting of backup jobs, config, etc) (which I like) and also do tech support for the users (install os, drivers, apps, setup users on AD, etc), as well as do server admin (patch, upgrades, hardware failure troubleshooting/fixing, backup tapes, etc).

So I got another job at another company and still do consulting for them, since, in the past 1 1/2 year since I'm not there full time, their backup strategy is exactly all the scripts I wrote and hoping the nas does not go down, and tech support was relegated to a slow-as-molasses $15/hr tech who barely can setup PCs.

Oh, the disaster in fall 2004 that took down the mailserver (2 out of 5 raid 5 drives went down together (the dell onsite support guy said it's rare, but does happen) and the backup was corrupt, but my scripted exmerge->pst->nas saved most emails, except those of the senior partner, along with all his contacts. He was very very pissed, but being the mellow guy, didn't have anybody's head on a platter. But I could tell.

Oh, on an aside, and from bitter personal experience: If you websense the hell out of internet access, people will send porn to each other on email systems and clog up your backups so fast you *might* lose data :) Word to the wise.

Well, you could "try" to catch them, but who's got the time to run scripts on the exchange store with exmerge?

The other moral to the story is that you might consider splitting your contacts storage from your email.

I know how to admin a network, I just don't want to. Programming is my passion, and while scripting admin functions might be fun, keeping the DAT4 tape log isn't.

Re:Do not accept

[turbidostato]

"Make a list of activities he wants done and activities that are done weekly in a normal sysadmin job"

If his boss is the kind of boss that says supporting 30 developer computers takes 24min a week, that strategy won't do the trick. I can see it:
-So, let's see what do you want the sysadmin to do
-Humm... a big bunch of nothing, things are well enough the way they are, so he won't have to touch anything. In fact, the less he touches, the less he can break apart.
-So nothing by zero sums up to... zero minutes/week
-See!!!??? And then I'm so generous to give to you 24min/week just in case!

"As someone else said, a sysadmin does not directly show up in a profit statement"

The problem is even worse: sysadmin job, specially if it is well done does not directly show up -full stop. It is akind to an iceberg; 90% is hidden for untrained eyes as are those both of the boss and our developer. And then, just by saying it will take no more than 24min/week that boss has already shown how irrespective he is about that kind of job, so you much better stay away from it: nothing good can come out for you!

"Also, once you get started on sysadmin work, start logging your time."

That's a terribly difficult task, probably impossible under current environment. For you to be able to properly defend your logged times (properly by that boss' opinion) you can only spend time suffocating fires (you won't be able to tell him "I was reading our router's admin manual just in case" since that boss will reply "is it broken? then you don't need to waste your time that way"), but as soon as you go that dynamics it is impossible you can do your work properly and both your boss and your mates will be really upset with you (since you will be a) the guy that allows for things to break; b) the guy that always comes late -of course, you are working on other fires; and c) the guy that takes an eternity to fix everything -how not! since you are unproperly trained, time perception from your "victims" is heavily accelerated since the work they can't do was to be finished yersterday, no time is alotted for you to train yourself and you are called when the thing is really messed up and everybody is shouting at you and looking over your shoulder).

There's a reason why sysadmin is a profession: it is both technically and psicologycally challenging, and it is a reason there are organizations like the SAGE: it is difficult for untrained people to see that sysadmins do really deserve their wages.