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Small, Virtual Sysadmin Services? 63

Posted by Cliff from the half-of-a-sysadmin dept.
treesim asks: "I work for a tiny research company of five employees, with a growing need for a system administrator. However, our needs are unlikely to ever require a full time person, so I'm wondering if small, offsite sysadmin services exist (something like virtual assistants, since the larger corporate-sized outfits are just too much). On one hand, this seems an obvious niche to be filled by entrepreneurial moonlighters, but there are a ton of questions regarding trust. Nonetheless, we already have good relationships with offsite bookkeeping and payroll services. Am I just being naive, or does anyone have experience with outsourcing small-scale sysadmin tasks?"
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Small, Virtual Sysadmin Services? More

Small, Virtual Sysadmin Services?

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  • Have you considered... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Eightyford ( 893696 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @08:10PM (#14574441) Homepage
    Have you considered sending one of the five employees to a community college for some classes? Maybe a part time highschool or college student would fit the part too. You could hand him some mindless tasks when nothing else needs to be done.

    • This sounds like a good way to create employees who "know just enough to be dangerous"

    • Re:Have you considered... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MikeFM ( 12491 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @11:02PM (#14575511) Homepage Journal
      Or just someone to the college to hire a college kid to do the job. At that age I was already very experienced and would do part-time admin work for about $12/hr - probably a third of what I'd consider doing it for now. Shouldn't be hard to find someone. Ask on your local Linux users group mailing list.
      • When I was in college I was doing admin work for a few companies and organizations. There are typically a few good admin types in the CS programs from what I've seen, but realize there are a good number who aren't ready to go into a business environment yet as well. Also realize that you pay for experience. Experience means someone's already made the mistakes that someone new to the field might make on your network. If you can handle a bit of time while the admin learns the ropes, you can spend less. Keep y
        • True. A lot of college kids have already been an admin for a few years though and do have quite a bit of experience. Look for someone that's done it at home and maybe for a church group or community group or some such thing. It's really pretty common. A lot of young geeks donate their time to get extra experience so they are great finds if you can find them.
    • Yeah, because they need a sysadmin, and any boob can pick up the neccesary skills in a couple of community college courses. Sysadmins? They're a dime a dozen, and all the same. How hard is it to turn on a computer, anyway? Augh.

      If the tasks were simple enough that a high school kid who "likes computers" could do it just fine, they wouldn't need a real sysadmin. Probably no one would. Augh. It doesn't matter if you're dealing with five boxes or five hundred - if the job's worth doing, it's worth doing
      • Yeah, because they need a sysadmin, and any boob can pick up the neccesary skills in a couple of community college courses. Sysadmins? They're a dime a dozen, and all the same. How hard is it to turn on a computer, anyway? Augh.

        If the tasks were simple enough that a high school kid who "likes computers" could do it just fine, they wouldn't need a real sysadmin. Probably no one would. Augh. It doesn't matter if you're dealing with five boxes or five hundred - if the job's worth doing, it's worth doing *ri
        • There are some jobs that a high school kid could handle, but those jobs are "help out with the computer stuff" jobs - generally not considered systems administration. By the time a company realizes that their computer needs are beyond what they can do on their own, they're beyond the level that "the guy here who likes computers" can effectively handle. That's also beyond the High School kid's capability. Unless the kid's been running an enterprise-class network in his basement since gradeschool, but even

  • My experiences... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by truthsearch ( 249536 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @08:13PM (#14574464) Homepage Journal
    My experiences have only been with individual contractors. In this case it's just a roll of the dice if you can't get a specific recommendation from someone you trust. It's easy to post to craigslist and others. But I suggest asking around other small companies in your area you're familiar with. The only way to know what you'll get is to speak to another customer.

  • It can be done, but trust is key (Score:3, Insightful)

    by prescor ( 204357 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @08:14PM (#14574468) Homepage
    Speaking as someone who IS a some-time sysadmin for several clients, I can say that trust is paramount. The places of which I speak are generally self-sufficient on a day-to-day basis, but need advice or someone to "just do it" when a major upgrade needs to take place and no "regular" staff can be spared for the task (assuming their knowledgeable.) I do work for doctors, lawyers, and one print shop (to which I even have a key!). These are all people I have known for years, however, in a rural setting. I would think that references should be a MUST given what you are likely to need such a person to do.
    • I will second that. All small sysadmin type jobs have been through referal for small companies they are mostly looking for a single face they get to know and trust.

      • Third (Score:3, Interesting)

        by killmenow ( 184444 )
        I'll third this line of thinking. Trust is huge. I am self employed, run my own business doing this type of thing (and more), and have other people (sub-contractors, basically) I rely on to get specific work done that I know I can trust to do it well.

        ALL my work is with former employers, people who run their own businesses, are CIOs/IT Directores, etc., and people I've known for years. I do not advertise as a general rule because I don't need to, for one, and I find word of mouth much more meaningful a

    • trust is a two way street (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I'd like to add that as much as you need to trust, you also have to cultivate trust from you occasional sysadmin. Pay them promptly without having to be asked more than once please.

      I tried the solo-operator tech to small business and I absolutley hated hounding companies (referred from people I know and trust no less) so that I could pay my rent.

      Also, listen when your hired tech tells you that what you want can be done, but will take anywhere from x to y number of hours, they're not kidding!

      Oh and one last

  • Sure they do! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @08:15PM (#14574477)
    > However, our needs are unlikely to ever require a full time person, so I'm wondering if small, offsite sysadmin services exist

    Sure they do!

    Send an email to these guys [bofh.net], and tell them they're interested in outsourcing your system adminstration tasks. I did, and they got me set up in a jiffy.

    By the way, what was your username again? >clickity-click<

  • Yep, this is advertising (Score:5, Informative)

    by ThOr101 ( 515492 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @08:17PM (#14574497) Homepage
    So you asked for a company, here it is:

    HandyNerds.com http://www.handynerds.com/ [handynerds.com]

    That's the company I run, and that is the service I provide. Honestly it is hit or miss if you get someone worth their while. Unfortunatly you won't discover this until you are in the thick of it.

    If you want more information, let me know. Always happy to help.

    --Brett

  • It is possible... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Alpha27 ( 211269 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @08:18PM (#14574507)
    Now you do mention virtual sysadmin, but I will guess you don't mean someoone who is completely remote, they might be a need for them to come in and do some manual stuff like setting up the physical network, printer stuff, etc. I previously worked at a company of 20 employees where we do outsource our tech support. The person would come in 2 times a week for an hour or two, and we would schedule work for them. Fix a computer, install software drivers, update the OS, that kind of work mainly. The problem we faced was the quality of the workers, and the response times. We used one company who had a pool of tech support, and some of the guys they sent us were a hit or miss. Those who sucked we never saw again. As for timeframe, we had one incident where we had to wait a few weeks to get a laptop problem resolved. The good thing was we were provided with a temp laptop in the meantime. Some of delays are to be expected since it is a virtual staff. Arrival times, and scheduling them between work hours or at least when a company employee is present is difficult at times.

  • Sure! Just tell me your ip and root password!


    --
    Superb hosting [tinyurl.com] 20GB Storage, 1_TB_ bandwidth, ssh, $7.95

  • How about sharing? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by failedlogic ( 627314 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @08:26PM (#14574563)
    Here's a different idea:

    If you're in a small office tower, consider pooling the resources together of everyone in the building or street. Maybe you need someone 2 hours a week, the office down the hall (or street) needs someone one day of the week, etc. There might be a skilled self-employed computer tech in your area who doesn't want to travel much. Check around.

    You might find that in pooling all your resources together, you can find one or two techs you trust to do all the administrative tasks. You should get a better quality person in the end since they're virtually 'guaranteed' the hours to fullfill the tasks in the area. And it should eliminiate the chance you get a different person each time.
    • Funny you should mention this...I have two customers in the same building. I don't do enough work for either of them separately to want to commit to a contractual number of hours/week but I've just recently proposed to them a sharing plan where they "share me" for a certain number of hours / week.

      They are seriously considering this and there's a solid chance they'll go for it. I think it's a win-win-win, really. I get a set committed # of billable hours for each of them for a time and they get a set
    • Many office buildings pool a secretary/receptionist for this same reason.
  • Check out www.computerexpertsindy.com They are a VAR channelled towards SMB's. They are a great example of what you get without having to hire an IT department. Taking into consideration that having a full time IT department that is only used part of the time, why spend the money? It would essentially be more economically sound to outsource an IT department. With an in-house IT staff, you have to pay for the staff person(s), their equipment, their desk space, etc. On top of those expences, you have to then

  • ASP. (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Am I just being naive, or does anyone have experience with outsourcing small-scale sysadmin tasks?""

    That's what ASP [webopedia.com]'s are for.
  • It's what I do for a living, as a part of a larger nationwide company.
    I wont bother mentioning who because we're in Australia.

    But I find it hard to believe that _most_ IT companies in the US over 20 employee's wont do this.. you obviously didn't ask anyone from the real world.
    • I wont bother mentioning who because we're in Australia.

      Can you mention it anyway, please, because my current job only entails working 4 days a week and I wouldn't mind picking up some "moonlighting" work to fill the extra day - so I would be interested in joining your organisation for such jobs.

  • Everywhere I've lived has had little companies to handle just this sort of need. Usually a smallish company which either has a contract setup or agreed hourly billing to act as the IT for a bunch of little companies. One admin will usually share time between about a dozen offices [depending on size and need].

    They're really popular for accountants, lawyers, doctors... the sort of people who need computers, but only really ever have a few employees. Ask around.

  • Hoh boy... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by benjamindees ( 441808 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @09:08PM (#14574863) Homepage
    Here are some tips:

    1) Be prepared to sign an agreement for monthly support, and pay it regularly. Nothing makes contractors happier than knowing what to expect. And nothing makes them angrier than not getting paid.

    2) Be up-front about your needs. Don't try to hire someone for a few months and have them teach you everything they know. These people exist, but they bill at $150/hr and won't be worth your while. Micromanagement behaviour, especially from small businesses who claim they need outside services, sets off alarm bells for contractors. If they don't trust you, you won't trust them.

    3) Be extremely clear with each other about what type of support is expected. Full service, I-have-the-root-password-and-nobody-installs-anyth ing support is easier and cheaper for everyone. If you want to be able to fuck around on your systems, and expect hand-holding, be prepared to pay extra or find a third-rate service that will put up with that.

    4) Pooling resources is also extremely beneficial. If you can find a few other small businesses in need of support, the odds of finding and retaining high quality help will increase.

    5) And, most importantly, computer support is about more than just fixing mice and installing updates. Especially for small businesses, outsourcing IT means reaping the benefits of more efficient processes than you otherwise would be able to accomplish. Take advantage of those benefits.
    • parent post is indeed informative, it's spot-on good advice/comment - but I've gotta wonder where the origonal poster has been if he's not heard the word "consultant" or "outsourcing" [wikipedia.org]. Perhaps he should patent the business model [sheesh]
  • If you have a local university with a reputed CS department, thats the way to go. Post a message on the school linux mailing list or something, get a couple of good junior (or senior) students as interns for a year , ask for references from their profs and its a win win situation. If by next year you expand the company then get a full time person otherwise just get new students.
    That way you can get a well qualified and competant person who is ready to work part time and doesnt expect a hefty salary.
  • I believe DirectPointe [directpointe.com] does something like this by installing remote management utilities for windows.

  • I remotly admin servers every day. (Score:3, Informative)

    by dJCL ( 183345 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @10:25PM (#14575245) Homepage
    This is exactly what I get paid to do.
    We drop in a linux box for a router, and set you up with a vpn from that to out network. We SSH to linux systems, RDP to servers and VNC to desktops all from our office. If it breaks too badly, we head onsite.

    We run multiple companies, from 2 people to over 200 people with no problems and minimal cost - if you're in Ottawa, I can help. Otherwise, just look up the smaller IT outsourcing firms. They are always willing to let you keep some control of things. But we also will think your an idiot if you interfere with us keeping things running for you by breaking it.(have had one or two who do that constantly)

    The confidentiality is part of the contract, and is about as good as any other outsourced finance or the like.

    Just do the standard checking around before choosing someone, there are a lot of pathetic fakes out there too, and I hate cleaning up after one of them has messed up a network.

    Anyway...
    Enjoy!
  • It's difficult sometimes... getting a new client is always rough but I have enough now (been doing this for about 11 years) so I don't have to work as hard as I used since I've gotten my clients pretty well trained. I tell them they (and their employees) can install whatever the hell they want but they should be prepared for some pretty big bills while I spend many hours cleaning their messes up. I gennerally grin and rub my hands together when I'm saying this to drive the point home. I have about 20 netwo
    • I have to agree, that's exactly my situation. I have a group of clients that have been with me for years, and take on new clients via word-of-mouth only.

      The best bet is ask your friends, colleagues, etc., for a reference of someone that is in the business. You may find someone that can't take you on, but may have another contact for you. I have one or two friends/colleagues that I trust that I sometimes send business to when I can't take it on myself.
  • ... for a LINUX server.

    The WINDOWS server needs too much hands-on TLC to do remotely (yes, I now about VLC but it's too painfully slow and VNC does not support 120 reset), and the workstations^Wusers also need dace-to-face help. ANother guy is doing this.

    It might work if the users don't mind getting their hands dirty once in a while (tunnel ssh through PSTN).
  • "Am I just being naive, or does anyone have experience with outsourcing small-scale sysadmin tasks?"

    Of Course there are: http://www.epicalliance.com/ [epicalliance.com] is one.

  • I know my company provides services like that. We can do remote IT Administration for a nominal fee. The website is Axigent Technologies Group, Inc. [axigent.net] - Check us out or email if you have questions! It's what we set out to do as a company. We mostly do on-site admin, but doing it remotely is not a problem.
  • I run a company that does just this (BitPusher, LLC, http://www.bitpusher.com/ [bitpusher.com]). There are a number of different kinds of individuals and companies that do this, and there are challenges with all of them.

    Individuals who do this are generally cheapest, and sometimes you can get past the trust issue by using a friend or a friend of a friend. On the flip side, they have a tendency to leave for day jobs when times get tight (or be hard to reach when busy if they're moonlighting).

    Companies give you a few a

    • I completely disagree that a flat monthly rate model motivates a vendor to do more proactive work.

      Ultimately, any engineering services company's cost structure is directly dependent on payroll for engineers. Thus, when you say "you're finally profitable again", what you really are saying is that you're spending _fewer_ hours of work per customer than before. How this adds up to customer value is beyond me. Furthermore, by charging a flat rate, you are no longer aligning your interests (meet the SLA with the
  • Local is better, in my opinion. I think that you would do just as well with part time help from your local "tech guy". It all depends on your needs. Certainly it would help with the trust issue a bit more if you got to know your sysadmin personally. Also, systems work is very often hardware related, so that requires in office visits.

    You can search for local service providers in Page's Computer Services Directory at http://DIRECTORY.pagecomputers.com [pagecomputers.com]. Any service provider can add their own listing fo [pagecomputers.com]
  • Hi,

    My name is Paul Vallee and I am a co-founder here of Pythian [pythian.com].

    As part of our DBA services, we outsource systems administration support for a variety of platforms. Our services are definitely enterprise database-centric, but there's nothing preventing us from helping out even if there's no database at play.

    Cheers,
    Paul
  • This is very common with small consulting firms. We have one that helps with our Oracle on very advanced issues. (always much easier than ticketing Oracle) They also cover off-hour issues if I'm fly off to Chicago, San Fran, or "the wide open spaces of Antarctica" for a long weekend.

    The firm we deal with consists of five people each having their own specialty, (Oracle, programming, systems admin, etc) but each generally knowledgable in most aspects of operations of OS, programming, DBA, and other differen
  • I was going to recommend Taos Mountain [taos.com], because they did solid sysadm consultant work for me at a previous job. However, they appear to have reinvented themselves to the point that, after looking at their web site, I'm not sure what they do...

  • Interestingly I'm just about ready to start doing this kind of work.

    In the past I've had several clients who've heard of me and asked me to spec/setup a new server for them. Usually that is all it is, but sometimes I get asked to do security scans, or apply updates.

    Whilst I do work fulltime I'm beginning to think that I could do a good job if I were to allocate one day a week to dealing with clients (applying patches, general preventative work, etc) and looking for new clients.

    I don't expect to be able

  • ..in other words, you want to hire a consulant. Any
    sysadmin worth their beans can do what they do from offsite. But there will always be some tasks involved in sysadminning that they need to be physically present for (or at very least have to walk someone else through it over the phone).

    There may be some setup (upfront expense) involved in them setting themselves up for remote access.

    There are many sysadmins out there consulting, full or part-time as you need. As you point out, trust is an issue. I would ar
  • I am a sysadmin.. I can say beyond a doubt, you want to pay for a real admin. Most "consultants" will cost you more by cutting corners, charging you more hours, and costing your other staff hours of time from having to work around their inability to get it done right the first time. You know the phrase "you pay for what you get"

    Now if you need some one to do run updates and change the toner, goto a local college IT dept and ask for an intern that the prof can double check. That way you know you have a m
    • I used to be a consultant. I stoped after finding that my name was getting trashed from having too many cheap clients unwilling to spend what they needed to get it done right. Prime example was a CPA who didn't want a SBS box or un-auth 2k3/2k server. The print server that played nice with thier HP lasers required you to have a full server to run right. (power users group was apparently altered in there XP pro oem) last year in tax season they lost 3 days of printing, due to not wanting nut up. First

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