Staffing Requirements

In the world of enterprise storage technology management, the "just how many people do I need anyway" question is always at the top of the list for managers and storage administrators alike.

Although there are several formulas to use, a popular ratio is the Full Time Equivalent to Raw Disk Storage size (FTE:TB). This ratio is based on the idea that a single storage admin can effectively manage x amount of storage. The numbers we have reviewed varied based on the overall size of the environment and on whether the backup and recovery environment is included.

All things considered, we find that a general thumbnail for estimating is 1FTE:200TB. This is an average ratio based on a mix of backup and recovery environments with standard storage operations.