Thanks to everyone who responded to my posting about how many
sysadmins is enough.
The majority of responses dealt with the fact that it is
difficult to quantify this problem since the specifics of both
sysadmin duties and type of computer site vary so widely.
Some of these specifics are: number of users, number of
computers, variety (or similarity) in types of computers
(both unix and additional architectures), kind of user
community, and level of support desired. There are many other
factors, most involving the types of duties performed by the
sysadmin, e.g., at some sites sysadmins program, install
hardware, do backups, etc., while at other sites these duties
are performed by other personnel.
The most helpful response I received was one that pointed
me to a journal article specifically dealing with the topic of
sysadmin load. The article was:
"The System Administration Squeeze," UNIX WORLD, October 1992,
pp. 67-70.
This article gave percentages of time spent by the "average"
sysadmin doing various tasks. However, the study was done
using sysadmins from large sites, so the data may not represent
a true average. The average ratio of users per system
administrator was not conclusive since the responses varied
widely, probably due to the factors I have mentioned above.
The SysAdmin journal article I was looking for turned out
to be part of a question and answer section, the answer to
this particular question being about 4 paragraphs in length.
This particular author felt that a reasonable ratio in most
cases would be something like five sysadmins per one hundred
users. See SysAdmin, March/April 1993, p. 77.
I wish I had time to respond to everyone personally! (Sound
familiar?) Thanks again to all who responded.
-- Nancy D. Maddalena, Systems Administrator | nmaddale@sadira.gb.nrao.edu National Radio Astronomy Observatory | nmaddale@nrao.edu P.O. Box 2 | +1-304-456-2205 Green Bank, WV 24944-0002 USA | +1-304-456-2271 (Fax)
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