From: Chad Perrin <perrin@...>
Date: 2006-09-12T12:27:43+09:00
Subject: Re: The economics of a slow but productive Ruby

On Tue, Sep 12, 2006 at 09:56:58AM +0900, Jacob Fugal wrote:
> 
> [1] It's interesting to note however that 67% of that figure is still
> in paid salaries, rather than the cost of the hardware itself. If
> you've got a super sysadmin who can manage 100 boxes (and you better
> be paying them at least 80K if they are that super), the hardware
> budget will scale a lot better. There's a lot to be said for getting
> your hands on a good sysadmin...

It also helps if you're using a system that has a lower
admins-to-servers requirement ratio.  As indicated by recent studies,
Linux and Solaris both require far fewer admins for the number of boxen
than Windows:

  http://www.cioupdate.com/article.php/10493_1477911

From the article:

  Linux, along with Solaris, also came out ahead of Windows in terms of
  administration costs, despite the fact that it's less expensive to
  hire Windows system administrators. The average Windows administrator
  in the study earned $68,500 a year, while Linux sys admins took home
  $71,400, and those with Solaris skills were paid $85,844. The Windows
  technicians, however, only managed an average of 10 machines each,
  while Linux or Solaris admins can generally handle several times that.

This, like the number of servers required for a given software project,
does not scale linearly -- but the scalability of Windows systems in
terms of administrative requirements never overtakes that of Solaris and
Linux systems (except possibly in pathological edge-cases).

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
Ben Franklin: "As we enjoy great Advantages from the Inventions of
others we should be glad of an Opportunity to serve others by any
Invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously."