4 ms·

Where can I find competent sysadmins capable of managing a system like that on their own for $40,000 a year?

by Klathmon 9y ago

baudehlo 9y ago
You can buy sysadmin services. This isn't a full time job at that level.
- Klathmon 9y ago
  Then you are just trading one fee for another, but the "sysadmin services" you are ordering most likely has slower response time, less resources, less knowledge, and worse uptime guarantees than someone like aws. Yeah, at the larger sizes it might make sense, but not for everyone.
  - dismantlethesun 9y ago
    At smaller sizes too. If you just have one server, it's unlikely that the slower response time will loose you 3000 dollars per month which is the savings of dedicated service versus aws. Many small businesses run on leased hardware with on site support. Rackspace for instance made their fortune in that sector.
  - baudehlo 9y ago
    Well you're not comparing to AWS without ops, you're comparing to hiring someone for non-AWS vs managing AWS on your own. Outsourced ops know your systems. They have contracted guarantees. They can manage your own systems, hosted systems or even AWS. Using not-AWS saves you enough to pay for that.
    - jason_pomerleau 9y ago
      > Outsourced ops know your systems. I worked for a MSP for many years, and was well acquainted with our regional competitors. Our uptime and theirs was nowhere near AWS-level. You're getting a different engineer every time you pick up the phone. They most certainly do not know your systems like an internal team would. I regularly saw cascading/circular issues caused by lack of familiarity and/or poor change management. Owning and administering your own iron makes sense at a certain scale, but it's a much bigger scale than most companies will reach.
  - qaq 9y ago
    Nope you have a number for the person that provides the service and you can call her/him. Unless you are at several million per month spend at AWS have fun getting a hold of someone when sh#t hits the fan.
    - late2part 9y ago
      Good luck hiring someone on a demand hourly basis that knows your stuff and won't break your stuff.
      - qaq 9y ago
        Hmm never had an issue, but to have people at AWS that know my stuff would start somewhere north of 100 million a year spend on AWS.
dfinninger 9y ago
Doesn't make much sense for one server... but if you have 5, then you are looking at $200k. Then as you go up the numbers start making more sense.
- hinkley 9y ago
  That might get you one admin (we office workers have a mistaken belief that our salary is most of our cost. It's somewhere just north of half.). What do you do when they're on vacation/sick/sleeping? Thing is, I really want us to host our own stuff. For one thing if you don't host anything you lose all competence and then you really are beholden to your cloud provider. But it seems to be that we are in this situation until someone figures out how to comodify servers - and server orchestration - to the point where this stuff gets cheaper to manage again. This pendulum always swings. No sooner will we control our own hardware again than someone will come up with a new way to centralize it.
- jfoutz 9y ago
  Totally, the thing that's super cool about the amazon instances you don't have to do anything with users, authentication, authorization, networking, dns, backups, monitoring, logging, firewall rules, security patches and upgrades. With a bare metal server you have to manage all of that.
  - late2part 9y ago
    Oh my goodness man, have you managed Amazon instances? Setting up VPCs, IGW, IAM, DNS, EBS Snapshots (and deletions until recent lifecycle), custom metric in coudwatch, and Security Groups is a seriously challenging task just to learn the basics, much less do it right, much less automate it. It's not a bed of roses in the physical world either, but you're simply wrong to say it's easy in the "Cloud" and hard in a DC/Bare Metal.
    - jfoutz 9y ago
      (it was a joke.) There are a zillion things to think about if you're going to have even one machine public on the internet, regardless of the hosting solution. At a small organization there's always that one programmer that's like half sysadmin. I find it amusing that people pretend without bare metal, you'll get all of that person's time back.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
greedo 9y ago
It's not as if using AWS etc eliminates the need for a good sysadmin...

Where can I find competent sysadmins capable of managing a system like that on their own for $40,000 a year?

baudehlo 9y ago

You can buy sysadmin services. This isn't a full time job at that level.

Klathmon 9y ago
Then you are just trading one fee for another, but the "sysadmin services" you are ordering most likely has slower response time, less resources, less knowledge, and worse uptime guarantees than someone like aws. Yeah, at the larger sizes it might make sense, but not for everyone.
- dismantlethesun 9y ago
  At smaller sizes too. If you just have one server, it's unlikely that the slower response time will loose you 3000 dollars per month which is the savings of dedicated service versus aws. Many small businesses run on leased hardware with on site support. Rackspace for instance made their fortune in that sector.
- baudehlo 9y ago
  Well you're not comparing to AWS without ops, you're comparing to hiring someone for non-AWS vs managing AWS on your own. Outsourced ops know your systems. They have contracted guarantees. They can manage your own systems, hosted systems or even AWS. Using not-AWS saves you enough to pay for that.
  - jason_pomerleau 9y ago
    > Outsourced ops know your systems. I worked for a MSP for many years, and was well acquainted with our regional competitors. Our uptime and theirs was nowhere near AWS-level. You're getting a different engineer every time you pick up the phone. They most certainly do not know your systems like an internal team would. I regularly saw cascading/circular issues caused by lack of familiarity and/or poor change management. Owning and administering your own iron makes sense at a certain scale, but it's a much bigger scale than most companies will reach.
- qaq 9y ago
  Nope you have a number for the person that provides the service and you can call her/him. Unless you are at several million per month spend at AWS have fun getting a hold of someone when sh#t hits the fan.
  - late2part 9y ago
    Good luck hiring someone on a demand hourly basis that knows your stuff and won't break your stuff.
    - qaq 9y ago
      Hmm never had an issue, but to have people at AWS that know my stuff would start somewhere north of 100 million a year spend on AWS.

dfinninger 9y ago

Doesn't make much sense for one server... but if you have 5, then you are looking at $200k. Then as you go up the numbers start making more sense.

hinkley 9y ago
That might get you one admin (we office workers have a mistaken belief that our salary is most of our cost. It's somewhere just north of half.). What do you do when they're on vacation/sick/sleeping? Thing is, I really want us to host our own stuff. For one thing if you don't host anything you lose all competence and then you really are beholden to your cloud provider. But it seems to be that we are in this situation until someone figures out how to comodify servers - and server orchestration - to the point where this stuff gets cheaper to manage again. This pendulum always swings. No sooner will we control our own hardware again than someone will come up with a new way to centralize it.
jfoutz 9y ago
Totally, the thing that's super cool about the amazon instances you don't have to do anything with users, authentication, authorization, networking, dns, backups, monitoring, logging, firewall rules, security patches and upgrades. With a bare metal server you have to manage all of that.
- late2part 9y ago
  Oh my goodness man, have you managed Amazon instances? Setting up VPCs, IGW, IAM, DNS, EBS Snapshots (and deletions until recent lifecycle), custom metric in coudwatch, and Security Groups is a seriously challenging task just to learn the basics, much less do it right, much less automate it. It's not a bed of roses in the physical world either, but you're simply wrong to say it's easy in the "Cloud" and hard in a DC/Bare Metal.
  - jfoutz 9y ago
    (it was a joke.) There are a zillion things to think about if you're going to have even one machine public on the internet, regardless of the hosting solution. At a small organization there's always that one programmer that's like half sysadmin. I find it amusing that people pretend without bare metal, you'll get all of that person's time back.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

greedo 9y ago

It's not as if using AWS etc eliminates the need for a good sysadmin...