Veritas-bu

Re: [Veritas-bu] How Many Engineers Does It Take To Backup a Lightbulb

2008-01-04 10:01:03
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] How Many Engineers Does It Take To Backup a Lightbulb
From: "Ed Wilts" <ewilts AT ewilts DOT org>
To: "Randy Samora" <Randy.Samora AT stewart DOT com>
Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2008 08:45:29 -0600
On 1/4/08, Randy Samora <Randy.Samora AT stewart DOT com> wrote:

Does anyone know, or know where I can find out, the industry standards used to determine how many Engineers I should have on my Backup and Recovery team?  Is it determined by the number of clients?  Amount of data?  I'm trying to justify hiring new people and I need all the ammo I can get.


There probably isn't a good rule of thumb since it depends on a lot of factors beyond what you listed.  How many recoveries do you do and how long do they take?   Do you have some old crap in remote sites that cause recoveries to take forever?  Do you support multiple backup environments?  Do you push out the updates or do the admins?  Do you have a lot of problems that you actively work with vendors?  Do you also support extra reporting tools or write custom reports?   What's the turnaround time on restores?  Do the system and database admins do the restores or does your team do them?  How many operating systems do you support?  How homogeneous is your environment?  Do you manage the vendor relationships?  Do you work with the field service folks when they come in and replace tape drives, or do you have data center operations staff that does?  Are your people strictly operations people or do you get involved in things like disaster recovery planning, drills, etc.?  Do they also manage your storage?  Are your admins morons so that you have to babysit them just to do a custom Windows install without VSP?

The best approach we've been able to come up with is to start with an acceptable base - e.g how many staff did you have last year - and then determine what has changed.  Are recoveries taking longer than they used to?  Do you do more of them?  Do you now tell users that they have to wait a day before a recovery can start because all of your staff is tied up?  Are tape drives getting older and failing more often than they used to? 

I'd rather have 1 really good backup admin than 2 idiots.  It's quality, not quantity, that helps make your team great.

You obviously feel that you need more staff.  So why do you feel that way?  If you can put that into writing, then that's your justification.  Industry averages don't mean anything - what matters is how well your team is doing the job for your organization.

--
Ed Wilts, Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts AT ewilts DOT org
_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist  -  Veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu