24x7 Support Strategies

Thu Jun 14 11:17:54 UTC 2007

This topic interests me very much, and I had a BOF about staff development
at the Montreal meeting in 1999.  I remember some of the details, and, while
I am no longer generally doing course development, I have some pretty strong
ideas of what reasonably constitutes a proper training sandbox for a major
ISP.

If anyone would like to discuss this, pleae feel free to contact me offline.
If there's a use for a separate mailing list or summaries to NANOG, I'd be
happy to try to organize it.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-nanog at merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog at merit.edu] On Behalf Of Sam
Stickland
Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2007 5:33 AM
Cc: NANOG list
Subject: Re: 24x7 Support Strategies

All,

Thanks for the replies that have started rolling in. They've made me 
realise I should have added an additional question for clarity.

Does anyone have any CCIE (or equivalent technical ability) staff on a 
24x7 shift? What about CCIE level staff on an on-call rota with a 
garanteed response time? How about CCNP?

If people could also give an identication of the size of their 
organisation/network it would be useful.

Sam

Sam Stickland wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm wondering how different organisations structure their 24x7 network 
> operations? We are undergoing some restructuring here and it would be 
> interesting for us to know how other large enterprises and service 
> providers arrange this. We are particulary interested in service 
> providers. (Currently we have an enterprise that is slowly morphing 
> into more of a service provider setup). I'll summarise back to the 
> list, after removing any identifying details.
>
> These questions specifically refer to network staff, as opposed to any 
> general Ops team.
>
> Do you have 24x7 staff on site?
> What level of technical ability do the on-site staff have?
> What shift patterns do the 24x7 staff use?
>
> Do you have a response time for on-call staff, by which time they must 
> be VPN'ed into the network?
> What level of techincal ability do the first line on-call staff have?
> Do you have an official escalation system if the first-line on-call 
> staff do not have the required techincal ability?
> Do the staff on on-call escalation have a required response time, by 
> which time they must be VPN'ed into the network?
> Do the staff on on-call escalation rota the on-call responsibilities?
> Do the on-call staff receive additional benefits or compensation for 
> being on-call?