RE: DBAs:Databases 1:10 (Oracle) 1:31 (SQL Server)

We here at GridApp recently did a survey of something like 8,000 "database professionals", which is to say people identifying themselves as DBAs or DBA Managers. We focused primarily on large companies with more than 2,500 employees. There's a whole report we published, which I'm not sure is on the web or not (though I'd be happy to send it to anyone who is interested, just ping me), but a couple of the interesting stats:

• The average shop is running three different database platforms - oracle was in 90% of shops, SQL Server 79%, and DB2 on the mainframe given the third-place finish with 30%
• Average shop had in the range of 100-500 relational databases in production (this is sidestepping the whole "what is a database in sql server parlance" question)
• Average shop also had a 3:1 ratio of non-production to production databases
• Biggest areas for improvement of database management was upgrades, performance optimization, and security and compliance

Like I said, I've got the report, if anyone's interested. Of course, lies, damn lies, and statistics, so don't rail against our only surveying large companies, etc. :)

Thanks,
Matt

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Matthew Zito
Chief Scientist
GridApp Systems
p: 646-452-4090
mzito_at_gridapp.com  

-----Original Message-----

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2006 8:01 AM
To: Laimutis.Nedzinskas_at_landsbanki.is; oracle-l_at_freelists.org Subject: RE: DBAs:Databases 1:10 (Oracle) 1:31 (SQL Server)

I also think that the sample is too small.

"The distributions were fairly similar for the two database systems, with one exception that slightly over half (53%) of the organizations had ten or less production Oracle Database servers".

This skews the results toward Sql Server. If they had sampled more Oracle shops, they would have found *a lot* more databases per shop.

I have over 60 Oracle databases here.

-----Original Message-----

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Laimutis Nedzinskas Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2006 7:49 AM
To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Subject: RE: DBAs:Databases 1:10 (Oracle) 1:31 (SQL Server)

well, it seems that the term "database" in this report is more or less adequate.

Calculating by user numbers is quite a new idea in measuring database load but let it be so.

There is another fact that can be drawn from the report:

Average number of users per company is:

35,096(MS) vs 62,292(Oracle)

Which probably means 2 times bigger company, more users, higher cost of failure.

In that light "Annual TCA per database user $13.09(MS) vs $18.15(Oracle)" does not seems so bad.

-----Original Message-----

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Tony Jambu Sent: 13. júní 2006 11:08
To: Oracle-L_at_freelists.org
Subject: DBAs:Databases 1:10 (Oracle) 1:31 (SQL Server)

Hi all

Recently, I came across an 'interesting' paper on the comparative difference of the total cost of database administration between Oracle and SQL Server. It was conducted by Alinean.

Some interesting findings:

Measure                                         Microsoft   Oracle


---------------------------------------         ---------  ------

Average number of databases per company         107         87
Average number of users per database            328         716
Mission critical databases                      66.1%       63.8%
Transaction-based databases                     55.7%       60.3%
Decision-support databases                      44.3%       39.7%
*** Databases supported per DBA                 31.2        9.9 
Users supported per DBA                         6,784       5,567
Annual TCA per database                         $2,847      $10,206
Annual TCA per database user                    $13.09      $18.15

If you cant read the above, make sure you have it as fixed font or goto http://www.alinean.com/PDFs/Alinean-MicrosoftAndOracleTCAStudy.pdf

I find it hard to believe that the average Oracle DBA can manage only 10 databases.  From memory, a past survey on best practices indicated that an Oracle DBA manages on average about 30 Oracle databases.

I guess for my own interest and possibly all those interested too, we could work out what our ratio of DBAs:Databases. If you are so kind as to reply to the following questions.

Q1. How many DBAs are in your company
Q2. How many Production Databases (Oracle + others) do they manage Q2. How many Test/Dev Databases (Oracle + others) do they manage

If you do not wish to publish the figures directly to this list, just send me an email and I will collate it after a week.

tony

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http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l Received on Tue Jun 13 2006 - 09:41:17 CDT