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Conference turris::digital_unix

Title:DIGITAL UNIX(FORMERLY KNOWN AS DEC OSF/1)
Notice:Welcome to the Digital UNIX Conference
Moderator:SMURF::DENHAM
Created:Thu Mar 16 1995
Last Modified:Fri Jun 06 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:10068
Total number of notes:35879

8777.0. "Management overhead" by NQOS01::16.29.16.107::Pellerin () Mon Feb 10 1997 15:56

During a presentation on AlphaServers I was asked to provide information 
regarding Digital's suggested resources for system management and operations 
for a typical 4100 server.  Before you throw those darts you have just 
reached for, I agree that this is an open ended and need-to-qualify question.

However, do any of our competitors (or us, for that matter) put out any 
guidelines (rough though they may be) that estimate what it will take for a 
particular server to be managed based on the O/S?  In other words, how much % 
of a system manager will it take to manage a Digital UNIX 4.0b system?  For 
planning purposes, this could be important (e.g. "we will need 2.5 FTE for 
managing the AlphaSERVERS running Digital UNIX 4.0+).

This kind of makes sense because we should be able to quantify the 
ease-of-use we tout especially with the new system management tools in 
Digital UNIX.

While much of this is OS specific, some is not - an AlphaServer is an 
AlphaServer.

Any Comments?

Regards,

 -BAP
T.RTitleUserPersonal
Name
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8777.1KITCHE::schottEric R. Schott USG Product ManagementMon Feb 10 1997 20:2133
Hi

 It depends a lot on :

   - what application?

   - is the workload steady state or irregular?

   - Do the admin's configuring the machine understand how to automate
     their common tasks to avoid day-to-day playing?

   - How is the system configured...is all storage raid protected?
     do they use LSM to mirror the disks?

   - Are they running decevent regularly...

   - how much do they have to change on a day to day to meet operational
     needs (like add/remove users, or adjust storage usage).


In general, the base system once configured should run for quite
a while with little or no feeding assuming no hardware breaks...when
hardware breaks (like a disk), this can be a non issue (if using
LSM) or a major system mgmt headache (if you have to re-install).

My guess is it could be as little as .1 engineers (if they are
real good), to xxxx engineers
(how many xxxx does it take to change a light bulb...)

If they hire services to run the system, it would be their time to
manage services....

Eric