How many AIX servers per AIX engineer?

[michael1212]

Hi,

What is an acceptable figure for the number of AIX servers per AIX support engineer (rule of thumb?)? I browsed the Gartner pages, without success. Any reference will be appreciated.

Kind regards.
Michael.

 

[Breslau]

you mean CE's (customer engineer, the guy who shows up to work on your hardware)?

around here they're set up to work regions. we rarely have trouble getting ahold of one, but then again we're not in a densely populated area.

 

[michael1212]

No, what I mean is AIX support engineer. The inhouse UNIX software support person, or AIX System Admin.

Thanks!

 

[brumme]

HI

We have approx 100 AIX servers, 20 Sun Servers and 10 Linux servers.

We are 1 - 1½ for basic software administration.

We are 3-4 for application management.

/HGA

 

[Breslau]

Ahh. ok well that is dependent on what you do with your servers. i take care of 25-30 boxes here with no problem, plus take care of our storage area network. but we do have backup admins for each flavour of OS, so none of the leads are totally alone. meaning they can take leave, etc... of course if you have stringent up time needs, then you might have to factor in extra personnel to cover the off hours.

in principle, if your configuration management is consistent, then there's no reason a single person could not take of dozens of boxes. it gets harder to do that the more diverse their function and configuration, or if you expect more out of your admins than just taking care of AIX. for instance, if they're also tasked with taking care of the LAN, and so forth.

 

[sbrews]

and on the flip side, where I am currently at, there are 30 systems with 2 admins. Too many admins is as bad as not enough.

 

[unixfreak]

Based on the places I've worked I'd say 25-50 for average skilled admins but a good admin can run 100! It also depends on what the servers do, if they perform identical tasks or are completely different etc...