In the two most recent shops I've worked in (prior to my current gig), the
Windows and Unix support staff was two times more than the mainframe staff.
Operations, help desk, security worked with all groups combined. We had 7
sysprogs, 16 Windows admins, and 14 Unix admins (sysprog staff maintained
Linux Redhat as part of the zLinux support, and we were quite good at Linux
admin). In addition, we had 8 network engineers working on nothing but
network servers. I am talking about support staff. Each area had their own
development staff. The mainframe development staff was probably larger than
the Windows and Unix development staffs, but probably no more than 20%. And
this was a LARGE shop I'm describing. 23 million CICS transactions a day
(in sub-second internal response times) against a mountain of Db2 data. The
physical data center issues were no longer where were we going to put a
mainframe but rather where are we going to put the next DASD array.

Ramsey

On Mon, Jul 24, 2023 at 1:27 PM Bob Bridges <[email protected]> wrote:

> To be fair, he said it ~could~ require that many.  It might have been more
> helpful to say that it requires a few sysprogs, a few operators for each
> shift, a few security admins (up to a dozen in a big shop), at least one
> security analyst, as many developers as you need (which could indeed be
> hundreds)...sure, it can add up.  But really a small working shop
> ~requires~ only a dozen.  Maybe that's pushing it.
>
> ---
> Bob Bridges, [email protected], cell 336 382-7313
>
> /* When you internalize an author whose vision or philosophy is both rich
> and out of fashion, you gain a certain immunity from the pressures of the
> contemporary....Great literature can help us remain fad-proof.  -from
> "Reading Old Books" by Joseph Sobran, 1999 */
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf
> Of Lionel B. Dyck
> Sent: Monday, July 24, 2023 13:51
>
> Wow - talk about scary - requires hundreds to thousands of support staff -
> something the author harps on several times.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf
> Of Schmitt, Michael
> Sent: Monday, July 24, 2023 11:43 AM
>
> Ars Technica published a deep-dive explainer of modern IBM mainframes:
>
>
> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/07/the-ibm-mainframe-how-it-runs-and-why-it-survives/
>
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