Just wondering at what point it was worth hiring a system administrator when you're selling hosted software.
Most of the IT companies I can think of start with programmers polyvalent enough to handle the basic setup (install a few servers in redundant data-centers, administrate a database server, etc), and obviously, at some point, you want to have a "real" sysadmin work on this.
Now that our basic set up is there, our sysadmin work is mostly setting up new VPN connections with third-parties companies from time to time, keeping our servers updated, making sure they're not low on disk space, reinstall a workstation from time to time, creating AD accounts for our new hires, etc. Hardly a full time job.
Obviously, a sysadmin would be able to do a few things that we just didn't do so far such as :
- further increase the resilience of our production infrastructure (I think it's pretty good already, but this is clearly neither my main domain of expertise nor my primary job)
- increase the resilience of our office infrastructure (which we just didn't look into at all)
- automate some manual maintenance tasks (such as reinstalling a workstation from scratch)
- monitor everything on a more proactive basis than what we currently do
The thing is that I'm wondering if we're big enough for this. We've got two datacenters, 6 production servers, a mirrored sql database, a handful of office servers (AD, exchange, tfs...), a dozen of workstations and laptops, and ... that's it.
- Is it worth hiring someone yet?
- Will we have enough to keep him busy full-time? (this is a different question).
- Will a system administrator make our lives better besides what I already mentioned, and how?