Re: Becoming an Oracle DBA (part 3)

In article <971722966.7178.0.pluto.d4ee154e_at_news.demon.nl>,   "Sybrand Bakker" <postbus_at_sybrandb.demon.nl> wrote:
> Just an attempt at an answer.
>
> Both 1 and 2 can be involved. However, they largely depend on
> - getting enough resources to build a well-organised environment
> - the capability, partly by means of scripts, to act proactive (ie
 predict
> future problems)
> - the capability of developing robust maintenance free procedures to
> maintain your databases.
> This will not say disaster will never strike, but at least you will be
> prepared for it.
> The biggest problem area usually is the first item in my list as
 management
> consistently tries to cut back on cost, and they see that extra disk,
 and
> they don't see your stress and/or your overtime, as you are getting
 paid
> anyway.
> If you have a well organised database (or a database where someone is
 saying
> 'you are not allowed to do this because it is not in the Service Level
> Agreement'), being a DBA can be a parttime job. If you are really
 tied to
> your screen for 40 hours trying to survive something is really wrong.

Aren't you Oracle DBA ? It all seems somehow familiar to me. :-) I think that time which DBA should spent with his database is determinated by two factors, his own abilities and complexity of database.
One of my job is to take care of one web system. I do this as parttime job and have no problems. I just routinely check Oracle logs (everything is correct), check disk space (oh shit, more and more disk space is full, if management will not decide on archive policies soon, we will be deep in trouble), check OS logs (everything OK, thanks God for Unix), check security logs on gate computer (oh new record, we have twenty competitors this week and the winner of hack-my-server online game for this week is .... and his price will be angry letter to his ISP), quick check of proxy logs, which erotic pages are most popular now (oh, this one is new even for me), read mail from users (where is delete all command ?) and that's all. Just few hours weekly.

My problem with management is that they are don't understand why is necessary to spent new money for two year old system which was bought for really big money. I'm usually just giving my advice and not take any more actions. And when system's response is really bad, because half of memory operations are in swap file and users are complaining to their bosses, I just say: "Are you remember that xxx thousand bucks which you decided to save on memory six months ago ?" I think that this is a better way than have wars about all the money you need for your systems. After while management will learn that money spend on IT are money spend on effectiveness of their bussiness.

--
--------------------------------------------------
Dusan Bolek

senior DBA, HP-UX root, Linux root, NT administrator, webmaster, web
designer, DW designer,
technician, SAP consultant, RTC designer, VB + VBA programmer, C and
C++ programmer,
shell programmer, Java programmer and everything else that they've told
me to do ...


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