Re: How many DBA's?

In a stable production environment one good production DBA can easily monitor 10-20 instances. That person must have one or two backups so that they can go on vacation and/or not blackmail the company.

But you will note I used two key words "good" and "stable". Production DBAs often (actually usually) make lousy development DBAs. The required skill sets and mind sets are different. The development DBA must understand the production environment (stability, security, tuning) but must also have good skills as an architect and should be able to read and write code as a first language.

In addition you will need one bouncer. Because if you do what you are proposing you will likely create two separate and distinct teams that hate each other and resent the fact that members of the other are allowed to breathe the same air. What you are proposing can be made to work but usually the implementation is a stake in the heart of IT productivity and a real productivity tool for HR. Production DBAs generally try to apply production rules to development databases. And developers expect full access (because they used to have it) to testing and production databases. You need to think through the politics and the management very very carefully.

Daniel Morgan

Jane wrote:

> I am in the process of trying to identify the resources requried for a
> Data Group within our organization. Currently, every group does its
> own database administration. This new data group would be responsible
> for maintaining all databases and they would also be there as a
> resource for developers and business users. Basically the group would
> be responsible for doing all aspects of a DBA.
> The basic environment is:
> 1 Mid-size Production OLTP
> 1 Mid-size Production Warehouse
> 4 smaller warehouse/reporting databases
> Designer
> OEM
> IAS
> I need to identify the number and level of DBA's that I require and of
> course justify the my recommendations. If anyone has any suggestions
> or knows of any research/information available I would greatly
> appreciate it.
> Thanks
> Jane
Received on Thu Feb 21 2002 - 12:28:24 CST