Quick Question - Apple Team Workload

[PickleRick]

Hello,

I'm looking at a job with an organization that uses Jamf to manage almost 30,000 Apple devices (computers, iPads, Apple TVs) across more than 100 sites. They had just one trained Jamf admin doing all the work including setting up and maintaining the backend servers, VPP & assigning managed apps (shared devices in an education setting), reimaging devices, troubleshooting network issues, Apple School Manager, etc., etc. Essentially owning and managing all aspects of any Apple.

This seems like a lot of work for one person.

My question: if you could build a team to handle this workload, what would it look like?

Thanks,

PickleRick

[Look]

I would say a single admin for 30,000 devices is a MASSIVE single point of failure! You would want two or three people involved for the sake of business continuity regardless if you actualy needed the man hours involved. If the guy goes down sick or quits and the JSS falls over the next day, depending on what your delivering with it you really could be deep in the proverbial.
From a workload perspective the number of devices is not actualy that relevant the system seems to scale pretty well, what is far more important from a workload perspective seems to be the number and complexity of the different configurations you have to support throughout the organisation. 10,000 devices all provisioned identically is probably not that bigger a deal, 10 different setups of 100 devices each would almost certainly be more work to deal with.

[blackholemac]

One admin is a massive single point of failure... we have 5000 devices and 500 Macs and even we get stretched thin at times.

I would make sure to consider the big picture ...having competently trained help desk personnel goes a long way. With a strong help desk, your need for a lot of engineers gets reduced. You likely already knew that though.

In terms of building a true admin team for such a large installation, consider role based job descriptions for each team member.

Maybe you have one guy dedicated to hosting and back ups and server hosting/upgrade /backup issues. Maybe another person creates client workflows/images. Maybe another person is in charge of managing self-service and automation policies. May be have one admin dedicated to user facing tasks such as app packaging/VPP/DEP procurement and QA. Finally you should always have one of them fronted to take "tier 3" calls and rotate who is on that duty so everyone has to know the system well enough to answer questions about it.

Ideally those three or four folks should know how to do everyone else's job on the admin team but "specialize" in their assigned task.

The key is to assemble a highly collaborative group to work together in a standard manner. If They can work together to build it from the ground up, that's a bonus because that kind of camaraderie will reduce turnover.

Finally consider having a program where a helpdesk person who wants to move up can learn from your master team in case someone does move on.