Network Administrator Ratio

[oz_surfer]

I am stuck between a rock and a hard place.

I am looking for some free advice regarding the workplace.

I work at a school that is divided into two domains

Domain 1 (Managed by call centre staff at a a central office)
1 Server (2003)
7 Clients (XP - SP3)
4 Network Printers
10 Users

Domain 2 (managed at school level by a teacher).
3 SERVERS (All 2003)
(1 ISA on 2003, 1 SERVER 2003 (BRAINS), 1 WEB 2003)
140 Client Machines (XP - SP3, RIS Cloning Software)
aged from 1 - 6 yrs old

30 Network Printers

650 Users (All Students 6 to 12 yrs old)

Is there a calculation to determine the ratio of users, machines, etc for managing this network as per time per week?

15 hrs, 30 hrs 40 hrs etc

Any help / direction would reaaaaaaaaaaaaally help me

[Bjs]

Not really, you'd be better off using ms excel spreadsheet to do all the calculations you need and on the same spread sheet, do two, one for each of the domains.

Calculations to include:

Users per domain
Accessible systems by users
Times for access as per schools class schedules

Without this schedule, id tell you to forget doing this now as accuracy goes out the window, and its hard as a systems administrator to organize maintenance according to workplace policies.

From here, you add anything else as required, it may take a bit of time to figure out all the components required but start with the basics you already have posted, add the schools class schedule into the mix, and work up for there ... You should be able to come up with a spreadsheet that will handle all you need in regards to time management for the domains.

For search > Network + Time management

[guns1inger]

Other factors include;

age of systems - older systems tend to require more time to manage

type of applications being managed

geographic spread

management of desktop environment - are they locked down ? virus protected ? can you re-image remotely if necessary etc.

I manage the servers and network at a local private school. We have two domains - one for administration, one for students and teaching staff. We have 10 servers, 30 admin desktops, 140 student desktops, 30 wireless network points, 10 switches, 60+ printers and 500+ laptops. We currently manage this entire environment with myself (up to 30 hours per week), 1 full time PC technician (40 hours per week), 1 part time technician (16 hours per week) and the computing teacher (approx 15 hours per week). This seems to be a comfortable amount most of the time. Of course, the load varies, and some weeks are quiet, and some are flat knacker and then some. Next year we will add a second campus (1 large physical server housing 5 virtual servers, 5 wireless access points, 10 printers, 10 desktops, 80 laptops and growing by 40 - 50 each year after that). We will combine the domains into a single domain, manage as much of the network as we can remotely, and change the part time technician to full time (40 hours per week) split 50/50 across the two locations. We will add extra technicians as the second campus grows.

We also only lease hardware, so nothing is over three years old. We keep and maintain base images of all platforms, and can re-image a laptop across the network and deploy it back to it's owner in under 30 minutes (depending on the amount of personal data to be recovered/restored). This keeps management costs down, as hours can be lost to troubleshooting problems that are more easily fixed by wiping the machine clean.

[stiltman]

So far no one has mention BACKUP Systems

You need to plan that out carefully too. What is mandatory, what is secondary, Hardware, Software...you get the idea.

It also looks like you don't have redundant domain controlers.