Admin:VM ratio for vSphere & Cloud

[dosmhr]

Does anyone have a realistic figure to represent Admin to VM ratio within a vSphere / Cloud environment? I'm thinking a good figure is about 1:800!

I've seen a report from EMA dated back in 2009 to be approx 1:470, however I'm pretty sure this has changed a lot since then.

Of course lots depends on the local environment but I'm looking at averages (If they exist!)

[jddias]

I have seen 1:1200 or higher in some customer environments.

[RParker]

You are talking about Admins to manage VM's?  I personally did 1:1200... in a development environment, but 800 is rather high realistically. It's probably more like 1:600 which is reasonable...

[admin]

I think they mean...VM Administrators to VM's...

But yes...1:800+ is not uncommon. Also depends if they have to manage the OS/Applications and for the fun just add SRM(DRP) to it also.

[dosmhr]

Yes, how many admins it takes to support x no of VMs & NOT managing the Guest OS 🙂

[jddias]

Why is 1:800 rather high?  I think 1:600 is very low - particularly if you take advantage of automation capabilities through Orchestrator and PowerCLI, you could easily double that number.  And those are available at no cost.

I guess if the VM admin was also the Windows/Linux admin then you would have trouble - but from a pure VM admin standpoint this is not unreasonable.

[RParker]

jddias wrote:

Why is 1:800 rather high?  I think 1:600 is very low - particularly if you take advantage of automation capabilities through Orchestrator and PowerCLI, you could easily double that number.  And those are available at no cost.

I guess if the VM admin was also the Windows/Linux admin then you would have trouble - but from a pure VM admin standpoint this is not unreasonable.

800 is high in my experience.. I worked at a company that did software, we had many customers that had ESX / VMware. When I told them how many VM's I personally managed they nearly fainted... In most cases (these are fortune 500 companies) they had say 2000 - 3000 VM's enterprise wide.. but they had at least 5 or 6 Admins, all had subsets of VM's to manage.

I didn't see much higher than 600.  So 800 is high in comparison... they are NOT more than 500 per Admin on average... so that's why I say 600 is realistic.

Maybe smaller companies and maybe there are Admins and then there are people that ACTUALLY do REAL work (we all know how that goes), but the Admin group responsible for VM's isn't higher than 500 (from my observation) per Admin.

[jddias]

An observation that some customers manage at lower ratios is not evidence that higher ratios are unreasonable.

[dosmhr]

RParker - Are you taking into account that this is for VMware admins so excluding OS and App support in these figures?

Thanks to all for your replies so far!

[RParker]

jddias wrote:

An observation that some customers manage at lower ratios is not evidence that higher ratios are unreasonable.

I think you are missing the point.  You ASKED what is it high.. not whether or not it was unreasonable.  I speaking in terms how a company (a la, CIO) would view it.  It's more risk to have an Admin responsible for 600 VM's or more... 800 isn't high from technology perspective, and I never said it was "unreasonable". I said it was more realistic to support 600 VM's.

I know it can be done.. I did 1200 myself.  But when I went on Vacation and something happened, my backups were overwhelmed, because they didn't do it everyday... That's what I mean.  It's not high to do 800, but a company 10000' view will see it very differently... Not to mention when things happen like outages or major catastrophe hits.. like Sandy, 1 admin trying to fix or power on 1200 or 800 VM's is nuts.. thats a LOT to manage all at once when problems arise.

That's what I am talking about.  Realistically 600 is a good number, can you do 800 or 1200 yes maybe *YOU* can, but the Avg Admin that is casual or multi support (Linux, Windows, hardware, Network, etc..) probably not.

If you *ONLY* do ESX \ VM ware.. 600 is low.  If however your duties include OTHER servers as well 600 may be just enough.

[RParker]

dosmhr wrote:

RParker - Are you taking into account that this is for VMware admins so excluding OS and App support in these figures?

Thanks to all for your replies so far!

Yes but a label doesn't exclude other duties. This didn't specify solely responsible for ESX as VM Ware Admins.  A VM Ware Admin is an Admin regardless if they support ESX *AND* other OS or not. It's still PART of their job.

Even exclusive Admins do not simply do ONLY ESX suppor, there are always other duties (datastore, backups, etc) which are also part of the Admin responsibility role.

[dosmhr]

Ok, so let me re-word my Question:

What is a realistic average figure for admin:VM, considering this is purely VMware support, no access to the guest OS or App is allowed?

(OS, App, Storage and backups are the function of other dedicated teams!)

You mentioned 600 was low in this case?

[RParker]

Closer to 800, but still there is not hard and fast rule to this.  This is JUST perception, no real facts here.  Every company is different.  If you have an Enterprise that only requires you to setup and configure VM's and the hosts.. then maybe 800 VM's nothing.

However if your job ALSO requires you to manage the guest OS along WITH the VM's and managing the datastores, backups, updating tools and patching for the guest OS, 800 isn't very realisitic.. it's more like 600.

It depends on the Admin, the Enterprise and how much control that's involved.  Some companies require patching quarterly, some only patch as required.. some may require the hosts to be patched, maybe some don't have shared storage, shared storage makes life a LOT easier than stand alone servers, that's also a factor.

You cannot support 800 VM's all on islands.. that's just crazy.. if however ALL of your hosts see the same storage SAN, then maybe 800 VM's is manageable.  Also another thing to consider, is this production or development?  There are SLA's in production environments, performance considerations, some environments need constant rebuild of VM's (like daily clone's, etc..) as a part of the job.

This is ALL relative.

Strictly speaking VM only role, normal nothing fancy in a simple SAN environment 800 is a piece of cake.. that number will drop the more complexity you have...

[jddias]

No, I get what you are saying - and I agree, an admin that has multiple roles would have trouble supporting a larger number of VMs.  I ran such an environment at a large bank, and we also owned DC services, backup and storage (so replication, DR, etc where also my responsibility).  I had a team of 6 ultimately for 500 VMs at the time, but they spent very little time on the VM administration versus other duties.  Backup took up most of that time to be honest.

These days it is not uncommon to see dedicated VM admins, and that's what I think the original question is asking.  Certainly, I would never advocate a customer running an environment with only one admin - assumption is that you would have a primary and a secondary person at a minimum.  Many large organizations have regulatory requirements for seperation of duties and thus are likely to have staff dedicated to specific functions.

I still maintain, through experience and observation, that an FTE dedicated to VM administration (could be more than one person with multiple responsibilities) can easily support 1200 or more VMs.

[RParker]

jddias wrote:

These days it is not uncommon to see dedicated VM admins, and that's what I think the original question is asking.  Certainly, I would never advocate a customer running an environment with only one admin - assumption is that you would have a primary and a secondary person at a minimum.  Many large organizations have regulatory requirements for seperation of duties and thus are likely to have staff dedicated to specific functions.

I still maintain, through experience and observation, that an FTE dedicated to VM administration (could be more than one person with multiple responsibilities) can easily support 1200 or more VMs.

OK, valid point.  I understand from your perspective.. Separation of duties are a factor.  Maybe some Admins like to say they support 1200 VM's (as an example) when they are part of a TEAM that supports 1200 VM's.... It's not beyond techs (especially over achievers) to believe they do more than they REALLY do...

That's what I mean by "realistic".  I can definately see where more VM's are easily supported.. but when I go to VMUG and VMWorld.. you talk to the techs that do the job.. and they are not really doing THAT much work.. as you said, they have specific functions.

But you make a very valid observation and I do think your numbers make sense.