staffing guidelines

Fri Oct 5 00:27:56 UTC 2001

How many more did you ned for config and support? Suppose too that your
network
was global, covering EMEA, APAC and North America.  

I am interested more in how many *engineers* are needed on 200, 500, 2000
device
networks, where "device" means routers, switches and any servers that
support
the routers/switches such as HP Openview, Sniffers or ACS servers,
...Firewalls, etc.  

Anybody dare to take the number of devices on their network and divide by
the number
of network support staff you have? 

Shouldnt there be a paper from Gartner or Giga on this topic?  Can anyone
reference
one?

-----Original Message-----
From: Dave O'Shea [mailto:doshea at telentente.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2001 4:24 PM
To: Irwin Lazar; nanog at merit.edu
Subject: RE: staffing guidelines

I'm sure it varies greatly based on the type of work that's being done, but
my experience with another company led me to think that one set of eyes
could handle up to about 200-300 devices, purely for monitoring and outage
management. Configuration and support was another matter. (When I say
devices I mean routers, servers, and manageable switches)

To get at a 24x7 figure, I generally multiplied by about 4 or 5 (taking into
account shifts, vacations, weekends, etc.) So, for about, say, 1,000
manageable devices, I would expect to need about 16-20 people. The curve
improves significantly as you grow and get to use more sophisticated problem
isolation methods and tools.

-----Original Message-----
From:	Irwin Lazar
Sent:	Thu 2001-10-04 14:26
To:	'nanog at merit.edu'
Cc:	
Subject:	staffing guidelines

Is anyone aware of guidelines for IT staffing that are freely available on
the web?  In particular, I'm looking for guidelines as to the number of
staff required to support "N" amount of routers, servers, users, etc.  Any
links are appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Irwin