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Half of All Data Centers Understaffed
alphadogg writes "Fifty percent of IT executives say their data centers are understaffed, and companies are still looking for more ways to cut costs, according to Symantec's latest 'State of the Data Center' report. Sixteen percent of survey respondents said their data centers are extremely understaffed, and another 34% called their data centers somewhat understaffed. At the same time, data centers are becoming more complex and harder to manage, with more applications, data and increasingly demanding service-level agreements. 'Data center complexity has led to a lot of staffing challenges,' says Sean Derrington, director of storage management and high availability at Symantec."
And the other half runs Linux!
Seems like only supervillians have fully-staffed datacenters these days...hopefully Dethklok can turn that trend around.
"When I am king, you will be first against the wall..."
are they half full or half empty?
I wish that this report would mean more data center jobs becoming available!
I can only wish... :(
50% of all datacenter operators lie about their staffing levels.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
12 hour shifts are not the answer as well makeing people work every weekend holiday night while the boss / PHB never does any of that.
> 50 % understaffed, 16 % seriously.
So how many of you have to answer your blackberries after work?
Is this not the kind of situation that a Union would prevent?
(just an honest question btw, I'm not trying to troll)
Does this really surprise anyone?
Many data centers these days are no longer run by engineers or technologists, who have at least some idea regarding the technical aspects of the operation. Rather, many of them are run by people who received their higher education in finance, commerce, accounting, "business" or (perhaps worst of all) even marketing.
Of course, such people have a very hard time seeing beyond the numbers, since they usually have absolutely no understanding of technology, nor what it takes to truly run an effective data center. They insist that the current number of staff are sufficient, even when they clearly aren't, and even when they could easily afford to hire more employees.
I think this just reflects a greater problem of the American corporate society as a whole. People with actual technical knowledge in a specific field get pushed out in favor of people with meaningless MBAs (but all of the right "connections"). So it's no wonder American productivity and competitiveness is grinding to a halt.
Other areas of the world, namely Asia, India and Eastern Europe, realize that it isn't the accountants and financiers who provide productivity, but rather the engineers, scientists and technologists. That's why they can build better cars at a far lower cost than their American competitors can, for example. That's why Korea and Japan have broadband networks that put to complete shame anything in America.
I believe understaffed means no one (in the US) is replying to the following ad:
Want to hire data center cat5 cable install tech, mandatory 60 hr week overtime, weekend 2nd 3rd shift and holidays required, require CCIE, MBA, at least masters level degree (prefer phd), minimum ten years experience with "windows server 2008R2" yearly salary $25K/yr no benefits.
Golly, we got us a shortage, best open the H1B floodgates!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
The original Symantec study listed seven bullet points and staffing was number four.
Staffing and budgets remain tight with half of all enterprises reporting they are somewhat/extremely understaffed. Finding budget and qualified applicants are the biggest recruiting issues. Seventy-six percent of enterprises have the same or more job requisitions open this year.
http://www.symantec.com/about/news/release/article.jsp?prid=20100111_01
More important and certainly more interesting was the finding:
... the study found that mid-sized enterprises (2,000 to 9,999 employees) are more likely to adopt cutting-edge technologies such as cloud computing, deduplication, replication, storage virtualization, and continuous data protection than small or large enterprises to reduce IT costs and manage increasing complexity.
Thankfully I work for a company, that while it wants to cut costs all the time, they aren't ignorant of what needs to happen to make things run. Both my immediate supervisor and the manager one level up feel that there might be some staffing issues, and are taking the time to get a full data center assessment to both identify areas we are lacking, help with a road map, and most importantly put it all in a language the higher ups can understand and appreciate.
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
1. Lay off staff 2. Hire Oompa-Loompas 3. Profit!
alias possession='chmod 666 satan && ls
The vast majority of companies said they are having trouble finding enough money and enough qualified applicants to keep their data center staff at healthy levels.
It's because they filter out qualified people who use an AOL email account!
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Shouldn't a good data centre be staffed by no one at all?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Banks are "guilty" of under staffing too. You call a bank for help or a query on something very dear to you and here's what you are likely to face:
1: A long wait for service after being informed that they've been "receiving higher than normal call volumes..."
2: You then face a menu system that tries to keep you away from speaking to any human being...
3: When you finally get to speak to a one, this human being knows nothing about what you need...or cannot help you!
4: Or if he/she can be of any help, their accent makes you take "too long" to actually get service...
5: When you decide to 'attack' your branch office to "actually get service", you realize that you are dealing with a fella who is paid small amount of cash...almost minimum wage...that they are actually inefficient...
These financial institutions are guilty guilty guilty too.
Is this why cloud computing is supposedly cheaper (right now)? Someone should look at this as a data point and consider what the remedy might do to that cheap cloud computing. Here's a dot - it should be connected.
... most of the data center staff we tried to poll were too busy to answer the poll.
[signature]
http://www.infrastructures.org/
There's more, but it's a good start.
Deleted
12 hour shifts are not the answer as well makeing people work every weekend holiday night while the boss / PHB never does any of that.
Don't like it, find another job.
Then, I'll jump in and take it. I would love to have that job.
Of course, one day, all of that will be automated and they're will be just one guy with a GED to make sure everything is plugged in but, before that it will be sent to cheap countries.
In the meantime, get on your knees every morning and thank your personal god that you have a job.
If you want to get a true picture of life in a data centre look at what the management actually do, what they spend money on and what they produce. If you rely on the answers they give you'll end up broke very quickly. The only way to tell if datacentres really are understaffed is if they start hiring more people: any other action just shows the lie in their responses.
When managers say they need more staff, they generally mean they need more cheap staff (often to replace the expensive staff they already have). They could always fill any critical needs very quickly by offering more financial incentives (the only ones that really mean anything), but this almost never happens. Somehow they manage to bumble on with their "staff shortages" and still meet their targets.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
16 petabytes storage in production, two dozen or so unix machines, two mainframes, a godzillion Windows servers of the real and virtual variety, and 12 sites to service, two of which have not been migrated to our mainframe system yet and are using old, out of service systems that are not being properly maintained. 12 hour 1-man shifts after the last lay-offs (firings).
All of that is shared between two sites and only two people per day. God yes, we are understaffed. Granted, we're in a transitory period, but still. It sucks. I used to love my job, but now I leave work praying that I managed to catch everything that might have gone haywire before I left out of fear that the two ass-hat tattle-tales who never lift a finger to help anyone but themselves will go straight up and tell the boss(es) that I'm not doing my job in an attempt to make themselves look better. Back when we had two men onboard each night, we had each others back. Now everyone's trying to stab each others back and we can't even cover our own backs enough because there's almost too much work for one person to do.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
I work for a Swedish company that understands the value of IT and invests resources in it accordingly. Based on my experiences with other Western European countries, this isn't abnormal.
The difference in work culture between here and the US is astounding. While it seems most American companies see IT as the place to save costs, the companies I've dealt with here recognize that our IT systems contribute directly to our competitiveness in the global market, and invest accordingly.
They are surveying enterprises of certain size, and asking someone (who? the manager?) if their perception is if they are understaffed or not. Similar sized networks could be seen as under or overstaffed depending of how much troubles they have, how much busy they feel, a quiet datacenter with half of the usual staff could be seen as overstaffed if no troubles or most of the common trobles are solved automatically, compared with a chaotic one with lots of troubles. Where i work in a year we passed from a perception of understaffed situation, where troubles jump at every moment, to an almost overstaffed one, same datacenter size, almost half of the people, but better architecture.
Startups outsource data center work to cloud providers. These big companies that are struggling to manage their data centers are really only battling their own inertia and internal vested interests while the world around them changes. There is no reason, from 2010 onwards, for 90% of current data center efforts to not be in one of the clouds. The growth in usage of Amazon's AWS cloud is amazing. Avoiding data center management is the reason nimble companies working to get there.
These statistics don't mean much.
The report says 50% of IT executives feel their company's IT is understaffed, 45% say it is appropriately staffed, and 5% say it is overstaffed. But how often do department managers of any type in any situation say they are overstaffed? 5% maybe? And how do these figures compare with the same question asked 5 years ago?
So what's the next enlightening question? How many IT professionals feel they are underpaid?
Server OS is not the only thing in the datacenter that needs staffing. Facilities work (cabling, power, cooling, etc), SAN, Network infrastructure, and that's without even getting into the middleware or applications themselves.
Even if your base servers administered themselves, it still takes quite a staff to actually do something with those servers.
Unions were invented to protect unsuspecting workers from manipulative business owners
No. It was really much simpler than that. People were tired of working for peanuts. Lots of people were tired of working for peanuts. Lots of those people were plenty smart. How else do you think they got organized?
Before unions, the institution of the 5-day work week was another long, hard-fought, pitched political battle that business was *sure* would absolutely end the U.S. economy. When Ford doubled pay and shrank working hours, the rest of American industry would not follow because from a capitalist's perspective, you are blowing your labor costs out of site! History suggests it seemed to have worked for Ford.
You don't get to blame organized labor for all of the auto industry's ills. Maybe you recall the Pontiac Aztek as possibly the apex of bad auto product? The labor that allocated resources for that project and a long history of uninspiring ones before that, weren't part of a Union. What's the managerial ratio at those companies 'burdened' by Union labor? What are the managerial labor costs at those firms 'burdened' by Union labor? I think you will find them both expensive and inefficient non-union workforces.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day
It's time to bury that notion that Unions cripple an economy. It's used primarily to reinforce the ridiculous American ideal of 'rugged individualism triumphs over all" and concentrates power and resources to the least efficient few.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Forgive the really really stupid question here, but what kind of staff do DCs really need? IO just opened a MASSIVE datacenter in Phoenix (where I live), and I've been trying to get an out-of-work friend of mine to apply there, but neither of us really know what you *do* in a datacenter.
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
Unplug all the users PCs...Given the way most companies calculate their IT cost/benefits it's almost impossible to get an IT budget down to the point that accounting says it's great without just removing IT entirely.
Most major companies only track ticket closure and uptime as a metric of IT, while other departments get the credit for "innovation". (Sales cut its overhead by 20% instituting a new electronic help desk for customers! In other news, IT is over budget again as trouble tickets have increased 40%)
Is it possible that Half of All Data Centers Are Overstaffed?
If the work continues to get done at these 'understaffed' data centers, maybe there's room for some housecleaning at the other data centers.
I know, I know. Unpopular idea. All kinds of people working in Data Centers who, uh, are hanging out on Slashdot will disagree with me.
I'm conflicted by this statistic. IT executives will tend to say that their data center is understaffed whether it is or not, (or more importantly whether they know it or not) because it serves to increase their empire.
That said, I've been in some frightfully understaffed datacenters. It doesn't appear to bear much relationship to the work that actually needs to be done, more so with how good a salesperson the data center manager is. We have two power companies in my area, both do about the same job with about the same amount of yearly sales. Yet one has four times the data center budget than the other. I believe it's more a mark of the drive and character of the IT executives than it is the actual workload.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Unionize or bust!!! Past twenty years corporate profits up 354%. Wages up 14%. Not even enough to match inflation (the poor tax). We no longer live in a world of nations, but rather in a world of corporations!!!
"get up a script that sends a copy of your Exchange logs to another box"
Woah! Are you saying you invented syslog for Windows.
I would patent it. Fast.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
No self respect, no self belief, no planning.
No sympathy from me frankly.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Like if producing gas guzzlers that are inefficient and brake easily is the fault of the unions.
I thought that the geniuses commanding those huge bonuses, golden hand shakes and parachutes were the ones dictating corporate policy.
But hey, whatever rocks your boat matey.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Some of the most productive car plants in the world are there, the Unions in Germany (who actually have input in how the companies are run) would be classed as nothing but communist by most Usians from their brainwashed point of view of world politics.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
"Fifty percent of IT executives say their data centers are understaffed, and companies are still looking for more ways to cut costs, according to Symantec's latest 'State of the Data Center' report.
Gee, you'd almost think Symantec sold software for data center management...oh wait, they do.
Advice: on VPS providers
One recent problem (at least in Europe, I suppose this may be more prevalent in the US) is the tendency of many companies to move, sensibly, datacentres out of town centres or business districts, but then forgetting that most administration can be done remotely (even Windows, ha, ha, ha) and trying to relocate their IT staff in the middle of nowhere as well.
Any IT person worth hiring would desperately try to find a new job in a civilized place, thus companies are left with people that are not necessarily the best.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I agree with the statement but not the reason.
Doctors, Nurses, Medical Staff, Police, Fire/rescue often work 12 hour shifts and holiday.
However those professions realize and have by experience been bitten by the consequences which aid them in helping the professional know their limits and the limits of their peers.
First these professionals make mistakes during the day. More so when overtired, Even more so when out of their normal sleep pattern. Technology professionals somehow ignore this and think they are superhuman and often promote this.
"Oh I stayed up all night to fix your server!" Pat me on the back! While probably true, I don't want to hear that sentimentality from my admin. It meant something went horribly wrong and I don't want it to ever happen again.
Doctors, etc as cited know that they would perform in a diminished capacity the next day and not schedule surgery and/or the hospital management would know to give them a resting day as the liability of mistake be too great. Safety services know that some other station has to possibly cover a crew that just came off a fire/rescue and be very wary to send the same crew back in. Technology companies ignore this to their own embarrassment which is justly earned.
Second doing business changes (minor or major) on weekends or holiday nights is _bad business_ in that it demonstrates the fragility and unreliability to which they do not admit to customers. Why not do the same operation during normal hours?
Would anyone take their business' truck to the car mechanic for an Oil change and accept, "well we have to do it between 3am and 4am so as not to impact your business."
But it's an OIL change, it happens frequently, everyone ought to expect it to happen! This is exactly the same to me as a minor patch, price lists, firewall rules, and application rules for business policy. Such ones are expected, frequent and shouldn't have to be done like as they are now at a forsaken hour in the morning.
The more complex example is "Oh the engine overhaul is going to be b/w 3 and 4am" - I would say give me another truck that does the same thing and I'll be back after you fix my truck during the day when your awake. The analog is the system upgrade. Providers go into fits -" but but your system was so tweaked, We can't simply move it to another CPU", etc... Blah. Its because most centers don't know how to offer a real solution.
IT Professionals ought to advance the profession and figure out why they are working 12 hour shifts and holidays and then systematically eliminate these events as much as possible till only having to do so when a human life or safety systems is jeopardized.
Why IT professionals are not publicly beating up IT vendors for poorly written OS, barely redundant equipment, poorly designed apps, etc, is beyond the scope here.
Who is going to be the next Ralpf Nader, who will write "Unsafe at Any Speed" for the IT industry/Computing Science.
and they are trying to sell you something.
I admin about a dozen machines. I have never actually been to the datacenter. I only impose on the datacenter people when a physical action needs done, like removing cables, powering it back on, and other things that the KVM or IPMI can't handle. This so far works until the machine requires hardware repair, which has happened once, in which a twin to the machine was scrapped for parts. That is when the data center had to charge us hundreds of dollars for service (I believe they had to call in a contractor for it.)
Everytime I've gone on vacation (without fail) one of the servers crash... which is why I take my laptop with me. It's like it throws a tempertantrum when I'm not logged in via ssh. D:
... 55% of all data center employees feel that they are overmananged.
Have gnu, will travel.
While this might just be the typical "we don't have enough qualified candidates" complaint to get around H1B requirements, I actually see the point here.
Some or all of these might be influencing this thinking: :-)
- Fewer people are taking IT jobs because of the employment prospects, meaning they actually do have an applicant shortage,
- Companies keep paying less for IT work due to the economic situation and a general erosion of perceived value. This would translate to fewer people wanting to work for that company unless they really needed a job.
- Especially in data center support, with the advent of PCI, ITIL, HIPAA, SOX, and other standards, IT has become a lot more regimented. Couple that with sometimes unattainable SLAs, and the job becomes more paperwork than process...there's just less to actually do.
- The study is sponsored by Symantec, who makes truckloads of money selling data center automation products.
- Companies now see that they don't need their data centers, or at least they don't need them to be right next to headquarters. So let's say the company is in New York or Boston or Seattle - they're going to jump at any chance they can to move their data center to Middle of Nowhere, US. Fewer people want to work in Middle of Nowhere, where the wages are half that of New York. They also don't want to live 100 miles from the nearest city.
I actually went through the last one...my last company relocated their IT department to the south and I chose not to go. If you've lived in the Northeast your whole life, you might not like living in a place where the weather never goes below 80 degrees and it's 90+ five months out of the year. On the flip side, real estate is half the price there. But in my mind, what good is a huge house if you hate where it's sitting??
Large corporates want to have IT service, dependability, SLA's on-time, etc etc etc, however, they don't want to pay for proper staffing, consistently hire inexperienced cheaper labour, and whinge about "not having an MCSE"! Right. YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR. If they don't want to pay for proper staffing, don't want to pay for proper training, don't want to pay for (insert whatever here), then they're not going to get what they want. Having worked in many HUGE corporate structures, I can very easily see that there are MANY employees that are employed that really don't need to be there - and have very little positive function - why not get rid of the chaff in the management structures and make room for those that you really need (IT administration and staff)? IF your data and applications are that important, PAY to protect that asset - instead of trying to always "go the cheap" on the IT.
YankDownUnder Veni, Vidi, volo in domum redire
That works well until it's time to roll out some new servers - or some new virus / worm raises hell in the server farm. Then there's not enough warm bodies to respond adequately and it's a mess. Of course, its those overworked IT drones that get the blame.
If management could see that IT people aren't "productive" as much as reactive - and that when you really need them they're worth their pay thousands of times over - then maybe they'd see that having "too many" people isn't such a bad idea.
I'm not expecting it to change any time soon - too many managers took the same stupid classes earning their MBA and they're not likely to be able to see that you prepare NOW for the disaster that's coming. It's not if, it's when..
I wont bitch about working on a 24hr schedule because thats what I agreed to. At our dc, the workflow is too inconsistent to say we are understaffed- rather, we are easily overwhelmed during off-hours if several customers have issues at once.
My main gripe is that our staff are stretched so thin that we can't use any of our vacation time without screwing over the rest of our coworkers, who have to work 14hr shifts to cover for us. Our biggest time sucks are:
1. Crappy tools mandated by corporate when we were required to standardize our toolset. When your new ticketing system has bugs in it like "can't send emails through ticket system, and ticket system scrambles the content of any emails sent via exchange", you know you picked a winner.
2. Managed services customers who are too cheap/lazy to fix chronic problems and would rather pay us to treat the symptoms all day. Windows admins are the worst about this- they would rather pay us $$$ to reboot a server twice a week so they can pretend a problem isn't there...
Then again, most datacenter techs i know dont stay in that occupation for log.