What's the server to admin ratio at your workplace? [closed]

Question

I'm wondering how many systems the average sysadmin is responsible for. Since there's a lot of extenuating circumstances, it'd be handy to also distinguish between desktops and servers, and target service levels.

Answer 1

At my branch office, about 125-ish Unix/Linux servers, 3 Windows servers, two VMware servers (semi-production), about 25 Linux workstations, and about 30 Windows workstations, plus a tape library, two internet connections, an MPLS circuit, edge routers, a core "layer 3" switch, firewall, WiFi, and a big UPS. One sysadmin.

Answer 2

1:85
This pattern changes over time as the infra gets improved(hopefully). From my experience up to 100 machines the number of sysadmins and servers are growing at a very steady pace. Around 1:20. From 100 to 300 the ratio can grow to 1:15 . After 600+ units , if you don't have some pretty solid automation in place things will stop working and nobody will have sufficient time to fix them. Firefighting mode. Obviously this depends on the diversity of the systems managed and is very contextual. 1000 identical servers are easier to manage then 10 different servers. So , the amazing thing right after getting infra operations automated, is that numbers of sysadmins drops and the number of machines grows :) I'm aiming at 1:800 .

Btw, one could say that a sysamin cfengine/chef/puppet savvy has kung-fu.

Answer 3

I work in a modestly-sized CS department at a medium-sized university (approx 24K students) in the midwest US. I'm the only full-time sysadmin. There is one other full-time tech, who handles equipment purchasing and installation and hardware and other desktop support. I have two part-time students who assist me as necessary. I try to hire students who will be around at lest one year (preferably two years), but have had some that have only been around for a single semester.

Here's my most recent server count:

Total Physical Servers: 19 Physical Linux Servers: 13 Physical Windows Servers: 3 VMWare ESXi Servers: 2 Physical Solaris Servers:1

Total Virtual Machines: 19 Virtual Linux Servers: 11 Virtual Windows Servers: 8

I'm moving away from consolidating services on physical servers to implementing a unique VM for each service.

As for desktops, I support four labs (18 Windows, 16 Linux, 24 thin clients which can connect to either Windows or Linux remote desktop), maybe 50-75 user machines (faculty, staff, graduate students). I'd say the number of users that I support on all of these systems is probably close to 200, but I've never taken an exact count. Approximately 20 faculty, three full-time office staff, two or three part-time office staff, 20-30 graduate students, and the rest are undergrads.

Answer 4

Depends on your OS. With Windows servers we generally have 1 admin for every 10-15 machines (assuming the machines are all actually DOING something). For Unix, we have about 1 for every 50 or 60 machines (again, assuming that we're not talking about machines that are nothing but mail proxies, etc).

Answer 5

Current job has somewhere around 40 servers per sysadmin; previous job had somewhere closer to 400 servers per sysadmin. Automation is wonderful.

Answer 6

We have around 120 servers and 3 sysadmins.

Answer 7

3 servers, 1 sysadmin. The other answers make me feel like a slacker!

I'm a jack of all trades here. My job includes servers, storage, networking, and helpdesk. I manage a fleet of 50 laptops and a half dozen "line of business" machines. When I do get caught up on my server and network maintenance, I get to play at being a software developer (Java and PHP).

Answer 8

50 servers, 1 admin

Answer 9

I'm the junior IT staffer at a small liberal arts college.

My boss is responsible for: - 8 Windows 2003 servers supporting Active Directory, Exchange 2003, fileserver duty, etc. - 1 AIX server supporting Banner 7. ( To be replaced in December by 3 Linux boxes for the upgrade to the current version of Banner. ) - Cisco backbone for the campus internet

I'm responsible for: - 2 windows 2003 servers supporting classroom applications - 3 Linux servers supporting various instrumentation/network monitoring applications ( Nagios, Cacti, MRTG, etc. ) - 6 open access computer labs with a total of approx. 200 workstations - Primary tech support for staff/faculty desktops (about 150)

Answer 10

Until very recently, I ran 70-80 servers, four physical locations, only 20 users, and between 5 and 8 WAN connections.

I recently hired a junior admin. He's helping with the day to day stuff, plus the physical stuff that's difficult to do by myself. He'll be growing into the role as time moves on.

Answer 11

1 admin, 40 windows boxes, 10 linux boxes, 35 workstations

Answer 12

about 1 admin per 60 systems if you are including virtualized servers (unix team). I think the windows guys are having a tough time of it because they are still working each machine instead of groups at a time. The unix team runs cfengine, so we can do things like enable snmp, or update ntp.conf for all (whatever group) with one action.

Answer 13

At a previous job it was around 150 servers and 1.5 admins (the other guy actually broke more than he helped). A big plus was that these systems were all CentOS5 and I was using custom packages to mange them so changes were fairly easy to do. If it had become more complicated I would probably have setup something like puppet.

Answer 14

We have 200 servers in the data center and about 300 at customer sites. There are 4 admins, 1 handles all the remotes and 2 admin/devs. The admin/dev's are the ones that research, problem solve, find fixes. Where the admin's put out fires and implement the fixes.

Answer 15

8 servers, 5 workstations, a switch and a firewall.

2 admins.

We're developers though - the admin work isn't our primary role.

Answer 16

We have around 150 servers (70% linux in all flavours, 30% windows), 150 clients (same percentages, plus around a dozen Macs), 5 offices around the world. 4 Sysadmins and the boss (me).

The reason for the relatively low ratio is that of the linux servers no two are the same.

Answer 17

We have about 900 servers and 20 admins, 5 engineers. This is extremely low compared to other places I have worked. We spend more money on personnel than automation tools.

Answer 18

100+ servers, Windows/Linux/VMware mix, 8 Global locations, LAN, WAN, general network management, security, AD management, Storage (iSCSI) management, plus good regular ol' end user OS firefighting. 2 1/2 Admins. (the 1/2 is for the few people who know how to reboot something)

Answer 19

In my current environment I am the only Sys Admin, I run a mix of windows 2003, 2008 servers 2 Solaris servers, and 3 VMWare servers hosting 4 Windows servers each, as well as 12 cisco switches, 3 cisco ASA's, 6 routers and a spam filter. the windows servers run 2 Exchange servers, Sharepoint, SQL, Blackberry Enterprise server, 3 Cisco CAll manager servers, and 2 SANs. on top of that I also manage about 100 Windows 7 laptops and about 60 MAC laptops. We also have various lab environments that I don't support officially, but actually do. I ws hired as a generalist, but was quickly expected to become an expert in all of it. I do have some support but not much.

Answer 20

We must average about four servers and 300 client computers per tech, almost all of which are Macs.