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?"
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.
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.
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.
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.
Re:Proper Planning (Score:3, Interesting)
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-thanks-for-meddling, then your admin time will be on the servers, and on whatever IDS you are using to segregate those users who have a relaxed attitude toward antivirus technique.
If you fall somewhere in the middle, though, with lots of employees who are unprivileged peons working on institutional computers; but who (in order to do their jobs) frequently need user-specific software, customizations, and various access tweaks, you'll be doing a fair bit more client-side admin.
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.
Re:Proper Planning (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Proper Planning (Score:2, Interesting)
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: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.
Re:Support/user ratio (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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.
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.