There’s a discussion today at Slashdot about how many servers or users an
admin can manage [1]. The question seeks to establish whether a department in which sysadmins each manage 900 user machines is understaffed. As in any discussion of IT or data centers, practices vary widely. But here are a couple of relevant factoids from our travels tracking the data center industry.
Jeff Rothschild, the vice president of technology at Facebook, said in a
recent presentation [2] that Facebook has 230 engineers supporting data for more than
300 million users [3]. He says Facebook seeks to maintain a ratio of one engineer for 1 million or more users. Facebook is vague about exactly how many servers it has, saying it’s “more than 30,000.” But 30,000 servers and 230 engineers works out to a ratio of about 130 servers per admin.
Microsoft says it has automated its data center operations to the point where its admins can each manage between 1,000 and 2,000 servers. That matters, as the company may pack more than 300,000 servers into its new
container data center [4] in Chicago. It expects to support that facility with about 30 employees, including admins and facility maintenance staff.
Rich Miller is the founder and editor-in-chief of Data Center Knowledge, and has been reporting on the data center sector since 2000. He has tracked the growing impact of high-density computing on the power and cooling of data centers, and the resulting push for improved energy efficiency in these facilities.
Article printed from Data Center Knowledge: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com
URL to article: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/12/30/how-many-servers-can-one-admin-manage/
URLs in this post:
[1] admin can manage: http://ask.slashdot.org/story/09/12/30/148224/How-Many-Admins-Per-UserComputer-Have-You-Seen?art_pos=3
[2] recent presentation: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com../archives/2009/10/13/facebook-now-has-30000-servers/
[3] 300 million users: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/09/16/how-facebook-serves-up-300-million-users/
[4] container data center: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com../inside-microsofts-chicago-data-center/
[5] Rich Miller: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/author/richm/
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