A networking group dedicated to improving infrastructure, workflows, and support across the Entertainment Industry.

Systems Administration Standards in Studios How many things do you look after?

You started with a building - with power, cooling, and space (don’t forget weight restrictions and power restrictions)

You need to understand power and cooling requirements. How much will you need now and to grow?

What are your bandwidth and storage requirements? Understanding network and storage bottlenecks

What about disaster recovery How long will it take for regular backups and restores?

You can’t do much without servers (and the services they provide) What will the load be on specific services? Virtualization?

Do you need a render farm? How big? How fast? Need to manage queues, installs, updates, monitoring, etc…

Now we are ready to bring in some artists! Properly size machines for different needs

More People = More Stuff Copiers, Printers, Projectors, and other Peripherals

Wireless for laptops, Internet Services, , Review Sessions, Calibrations, HR and Finance Systems… and Security The list goes on… and on…

And did you pick the correct Operating System? How many applications are you expected to support?

And the BIG question… How are you supposed to manage and monitor everything?

Can you really keep on top of all this with your current resources? Is your team big enough to be an expert on everything?

With everything constantly changing when do you find the time to research new products and find the best solutions?

Keeping your studio running is your number one priority How do you avoid fixing the same issues again and again?

Implementing standards to help reduce overhead and increase overall uptime for your studio

Avoid inconsistencies between installations and configurations to help reduce the number of different occurring issues

Creating a more stable environment for artists, reducing troubleshooting time and lowering your costs of support

Giving you more time to find new solutions and make your environment more efficient and even more stable.

If you had multiple offices would you set them up the same? How will another office connect to your current resources?

Why not work together on non-proprietary common services? Sharing the load of testing, configuration, monitoring and support

Essentially “expanding your support team” so you can direct your focus on your studios proprietary needs

What common elements are almost identically in other studios? OS, Authentication Services, Network Services, Monitoring Tools?

Reducing choices of operating systems to help vendors focus more on adding features and making their products better and also getting better support on more applications

We have already started helping each other by using the forums and mailing lists on StudioSysAdmins

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