(Fwd) Re: Workstation / Administrator Ratio

["Elizabeth D. Zwicky" <pterodactyl.corp.sgi.com">zwicky]

The survey that Dan was thinking of is Rob Kolstad's
survey; I believe the most recent survey is covered in 
the most recent ;login:, and there should be numbers from
the previous one in ;login: a year or so ago.

Below is the mail I sent to sage-managers when this topic
came up recently. Someone should write up a FAQ about
this (in HTML, so we can put it in the SAGE web). 

--- Forwarded mail from <zwicky> ("Elizabeth D. Zwicky")

To: sage-managersusenix.org

There's an article which Mark Verber wrote which was published in UNIX Review
some years ago on this topic. Basically, the right answer is that there is no
one ideal ratio. For one thing, should it be a ratio between workstations and
administrators, or a ratio between users and workstations? (When I left Ohio
State for SRI, each site had roughly 200 workstations, but the user to
workstation ratios were 8:1 and 1:1.5 respectively, and yes, I do really mean
that SRI has more workstations than users.) Next, what counts as an admin?
(Counting admin to workstation ratios using full-time software staff only, OSU
was about 1:30 and SRI was about 1:40, for admin to user ratios of about 1:240
and about 1:27, except that if you count in student staff, in full time
equivalents, not bodies, OSU dropped to about 1:90.)

Even assuming that you want to count, say, full-time-equivalent admins of any
sort to full-time-equivalent users (and coming up with that last number should
be good for a few laughs, particularly in a university environment), you have
to worry about what level of support you want to provide, and how many hardware
types/operating systems/programs you are providing it for, and how demanding
the environment is (for instance, a site with no external connections doesn't
have the security concerns that an Internet-connected site does).

The real question is "Can the people you have provide the support you want and
need?" and there's no easy answer to it.

	Elizabeth




--- End of forwarded mail from <zwicky> ("Elizabeth D. Zwicky")