How many servers? How many staff?

Hmm I would guess for our 2 man team its

4 routers
6 switches
7 esxi hosts with around 150 VMs
4 SANs
2 physical servers and EMC DD's for backup
 
Directly responsible for around 100 or so servers, multiple different systems used by the public and internally.

Entire estate is huge, probably towards 10k servers out there. Part of a team of around 80 people dedicated to infrastructure (support/design/implementations). Tonnes of other teams to cover off other IT areas (networks/desktops/admin etc).
 
Some interesting posts, especially DRZ's!

Where I work we don't really have a server team as such as it's multi skilled. I am one four engineers who are tasked with the more senior requests/projects/incidents. Wish I was in a more specialised role!

Around 110 physical servers and 40-50 virtual servers. The whole company has 11 engineers supporting internal and external users.

Lincolnshire is still playing catch up when it comes to technology :D
 
Last edited:
8500 staff across 120 sites, approx 50 physical server, 200 VMs, several clusters, LAN + WAN. I have 2 guys in my team + me. Desktop team is 8 and the service desk have 6.
Struggling to manage BAU work as well as project work - defo no time for service improvements at the moment.
 
Curious, what uni do you work for?

For the people with larger teams, do you have many specialists (eg pure VMware or exchange admins), or are you all mostly generalists with multi-skills? (Vm, exchange, AD, unix etc?)

As I get older I want to specialise more in the things that interest me most rather than being a jack of all trades, but it seems that when new managers come in, they all want everyone to have all the skills. (I really don't want to go SQL training....yawn)

The University of Southampton.

We are pretty multi skilled although everyone has their pidgeon hole. Some are good at more things than others but generally all pretty solid.

Lots of job adversts I see for senior sys admins ask for the lot, VMWare, Windows/Linux/Unix server admin, Storage admin, Networking, Exchange, etc, etc, etc.

Jacks of many, masters of a few ;)
 
About 45 Virtual Servers and about 12 Physical servers as well as a VDI environment.

Team of 4 with two focusing mainly on the helpdesk and VDI.
 
Some interesting posts, especially DRZ's!

Where I work we don't really have a server team as such as it's multi skilled. I am one four engineers who are tasked with the more senior requests/projects/incidents. Wish I was in a more specialised role!

Around 110 physical servers and 40-50 virtual servers. The whole company has 11 engineers supporting internal and external users.

Lincolnshire is still playing catch up when it comes to technology :D

Why so many physical workloads? Just not good candidates?

I'm interested in why you thought my post was interesting... Do the numbers seem different to your expectations?

Someone asked about specialists. I'm in a team of generalists... In the US it's pretty much silos of responsibility. There's a Microsoft team, a Linux team, Storage, VMWare, Networks etc etc. There is at least one Subject Matter Expert for each technology, they are the backstop for that tech prior to escalation to vendor.

I'm talking just about Infrastructure of course. "IT" is actually closer to 250 people :)
 
Why so many physical workloads? Just not good candidates?

I'm interested in why you thought my post was interesting... Do the numbers seem different to your expectations?

Someone asked about specialists. I'm in a team of generalists... In the US it's pretty much silos of responsibility. There's a Microsoft team, a Linux team, Storage, VMWare, Networks etc etc. There is at least one Subject Matter Expert for each technology, they are the backstop for that tech prior to escalation to vendor.

I'm talking just about Infrastructure of course. "IT" is actually closer to 250 people :)

From previous posts you seem very knowledgeable it's mainly the global part which interests me and its something I would like to do in the future. I suppose different companies have different ways of operating and it's just very interesting to see how others operate.

For me having to do everything which includes help desk support all the way to third line benefits me in some way's but limits me in others.

So many physical because of small clients really with SBS setups although a lot of these do run virtual instances as well. Most of our internal servers are now virtual it's just converting external clients which isn't easy when Lincolnshire doesn't have much high speed broadband available.
 
In many ways I really miss the variety of working for an outsourced IT shop (I used to work for a Cisco partner). I used to enjoy the challenge of doing things properly for a low budget. Kinda adds an extra dimension to the work to actually have to think about it. On the other hand, where I'm at now I get to see the infrastructure I've helped build up go through a lifecycle but its a lot more exciting when you're not just keeping the lights on.

I think if you've got an aptitude to be a very very good generalist then you will be highly regarded wherever you go because you'll be useful in the future as things become more and more converged. If you're going to pick a specialism I'd personally suggest you do whatever you find you have a natural aptitude for. For me, that's networking (particularly routing) - for others it might be storage or whatever. Use your time where you are now to dip your toe into everything and find your area :)
 
Back
Top Bottom