databases per dba

From: z b <zimsbait_at_gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2005 13:56:58 -0400
Message-ID: <5b1f2b70050609105658d05f2f@mail.gmail.com>

DISCLAIMER:=20
I would be willing to bet this type of question is poorly regarded in this group, so
I apologize in advance for any distress it brings. ;-)=20 Also, since this may be frowned upon, please respond directly to this email rather than the list to cut down list clutter.

Group,

Please read the disclaimer above before proceeding.

My team has been asked to gather averages of databases dba's manage. We have looked at Garter and the like, and have some reasonable numbers to present to the bean counters.

We have several hundred db's in house. Some are pre-packaged (People Soft, Ora Apps etc) and most are home grown apps and support db's. We support dev, qc (some systems have multiple qc systems), customer test db's and of course, production. Systems vary from small OLTP's to Enterprise level DSS's. A single application has typically 6 environments and instances.

We used the Gartner approach which has you weight db's on homegrown vs packaged and on the combination of complexity and volatility (this also includes dba skill levels, growth patterns, schema changes, tools available to exploit etc). I think there were some things were absent from the formula (and no formula will be perfect when looking at this) but it is a good "rough outline". Of course, to get true TCO, you need to balance this per market rates and take other external factors into consideration.

However, above and beyond this formula, we're also looking at real-world situations and shops. All the dba's on the team have related past job experiences (what we've seen in shops we've been at in past lives). If anyone is interested, what we've come up with so far is ~15 instances/dba as a typical threshold.

I wanted to just get some rough numbers on how many db's others support. I'd appreciate any feedback.
Thanks in advance.

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Received on Thu Jun 09 2005 - 14:02:18 CDT