how many sys admins does it take .... ?

[Kent Ostby]

Well, its been touched, but it depends on what they are asking.

One thing you might do is write down for a week or month, what you spend your time on.

If you are going though an upgrade or they are asking that you do additional things to the system (i.e. apply a new patch bundle every 6 months) then you can use this data to demonstrate time spent.

It might also give you a feel for tasks that you can automate or come up with a sleeker process to accomplish.

Finally, keep an eye out for someone who wants to learn more about the types of systems you work on and see if you can get some free work out of them in exchange for them picking your brain about how the OS works, that might be a way to offload some of your work if management can't or won't staff you an extra person.

Best regards,

Kent M Ostby

PS As for assigning points, I've seen people use 3, 5, 7, or 10 on these types of threads.

I'm generally a "5" kind of person myself for something like this, but whatever will be find.

[John Kittel]

Wow! What a great bunch of responses! I've been somewhat out of touch with other professional system administrators for so long it's difficult to gauge what is reasonable, etc. Thanks for the reality check everyone, as well as the sage advice. The forums are wonderful.

I've decided all responses deserve 10 points! ( for multiple responses, maybe a few points for the 2nd, 3rd, etc.)

It sounds like I might be a little on the overworked side, though it seems several people have it worse. I don't really feel comfortable that all the bases are covered adequately to prevent a catastrophe someday, particularly with regard to staying current with patches, and monitoring current health. As a number of people suggested, I'm already working on automating and offloading as much as possible. I think the biggest reason for at least 2 sys admins is of course succession planning ( i.e. what if I leave?, or a truck runs over me? )

In the interest of brevity, in my original post I neglected to mention that we have a pile of Windows servers and numerous Windows desktop systems that I don't have much to do with managed by a team of 2 administrators plus 2 technicians ( their descriptions of themselves, not mine), and a pile of network equipment managed by one other person, and we have two DBAs for Oracle and Ingres. Of course they're all busy too, so there's not a lot of excess manpower to which I can offload my tasks. Our VMS servers are pretty stable, and management infrastructure was set up years ago by my former colleague who was not replaced when he left ( 4 years ago? hard to remember).

I'd like to blow off more steam, but in the interest of self preservation I'll leave it at that ( never know who might end up reading this...).

- John

[Pete Randall]

John,

1 Sysadmin/backup DBA
1 DBA/backup Sysadmin
for
6 HP-UX Servers/Workstations

3 Network/PC people
for
100 Wintel/Novell platforms
and the network itself

24x7x365


Pete

[John Kittel]

Tom Geudens, - ooops, somehow I clicked 9 instead of 10 points for your response. Very sorry. Just a mistake I made, not an intentional slight toward the quality of your response...

- John

[Steven E. Protter]

Someone asked how I checked oracle space utilization.

Here is the sql.

No points needed.




ttitle left ' Free Space By Tablespace' skip 1
prompt
set wrap off
column dummy noprint
column pct_used format 999.9 heading "%|Used"
column "Tablespace Name" format a16
column bytes format 9,999,999,999,999 heading "Bytes"
column used format 99,999,999,999 heading "Used"
column free format 999,999,999,999 heading "Free"
break on report
compute sum of bytes on report
compute sum of free on report
compute sum of used on report
select a.tablespace_name "Tablespace Name",
b.tablespace_name dummy,
sum(b.bytes)/count( distinct a.file_id||'.'||a.block_id ) bytes,
sum(b.bytes)/count( distinct a.file_id||'.'||a.block_id ) -
sum(a.bytes)/count( distinct b.file_id ) used,
sum(a.bytes)/count( distinct b.file_id ) free,
100 * ( (sum(b.bytes)/count( distinct a.file_id||'.'||a.block_id )) -
(sum(a.bytes)/count( distinct b.file_id ) )) /
(sum(b.bytes)/count( distinct a.file_id||'.'||a.block_id )) pct_used
from sys.dba_free_space a, sys.dba_data_files b
where a.tablespace_name = b.tablespace_name
group by a.tablespace_name, b.tablespace_name;
clear break
clear compute
clear column

[John Bolene]

we have 5 to handle around 110 HPUX, 10 AIX, and a handful of W2K servers

I would think that you need at least one more person to help.

[Paula J Frazer-Campbell]

John

I think your company has a problem - yes you have a high workload, but the problem is DR (The sysadmin/staff are a part of their DR solution), how do they manage for your holiday, sickness, courses and God forbid you having an accident?

Paula

[Radim Jarosek]

Hi,

we have :

4 HP-UX servers
16 HP-UX workstatations
4 Linux
3 Oracle databases

we are :

1 dba/sysadmin
1 sysadmin backup


As someone said, it depends on users ( how you train them ;) and how you automate daily tasks (watch scripts for system/db for space, performance ... )


HTH

Radim

[John Dvorchak]

We are a very large Telephone company and we try to keep the ratio of 10-15 UNIX boxes to each SA.

The last company I worked for had One UNIX admin for approximatley 35 Workstations and 2 Servers. Two NT admins for 25 Nt servers and 4 desktop people for 1500 desktop's running NT 4.0

Hope this helps, but at the very least you need another person in your shop. One person can not possibly be expected to be available 24x7 365 days/yr. That means no sick days, no vacation, no getting injured or killed. I know if you're dead you don't care but who ever is in charge should realize that.

If they don't get you some help, I'd update my resume if I were you.

[Martin Johnson]

12 HPUX
70 AIX
118 Solaris

9 Fulltime/ 2 part time SAs