How Many Admins Per User/Computer Have You Seen?

miffo.swe writes "I'm trying to find the normal ratio of technicians/support tech per user or computer in your average IT-shop. When searching around, I can't find that many examples or any statistics. We manage around 900 computers (mostly Windows XP) and 25+ servers (mostly Linux). There are around 2600 users of varying knowledge, mostly pretty low. I can't find any statistics on this, so real-world examples are very welcome since we do this with one sysadmin (me) and two sneaker techs. Are we seriously understaffed, or is this normal?"

Comments

Re:Depends

[mustafap]

>Or do you require things like justifications, business cases

This bit always makes me laugh. I work in a development department and see this far too often

IT Administrators are there to do what they are told. Admins who think they can 'demand justifications' are just jumped up losers who are envious of people doing real work that they are simply not smart enough to do.

Re:Depends on how many windows stations removed

[SgtChaireBourne]

On the teams I worked for or with, imaging worked, but Windows was still and unstable piece of shit. The worst of the driver problems occurred at sites I had contact with via project members that suffered there.

However, one where I was actually located at, had an XP machine that the manager had ordered set up (not by me, my Windows days were long over). Many hours were spent screwing around to get the Very Expensive digital camera working and allowing imports into Photoshop. He almost insisted that I use that machine, but since it was our coffee break and because I had my work Macbook with Photoshop within arms reach, I said "let's see what happens". Guess what? Plug a camera or a chip with pictures into the mac, and it works out of the box. Nowadays KDE-based linux distros are the same.

That's a valid point about getting the hardware that supports disk cloning. However, if a shop is so expertise-deficient that they have deployed Windows, then they almost as a rule lack expertise to get even remotely accessible hardware. They usually end up getting whatever the sales unit at the supplier has an overstock of, even if the specs are uniquely inappropriate for the task. Saw that in person this spring.