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Re: command line vs grid control

From: Noons <wizofoz2k_at_yahoo.com.au>
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 08:57:28 -0700
Message-ID: <1184083048.585238.276620@e16g2000pri.googlegroups.com>


On Jul 11, 12:50 am, DA Morgan <damor..._at_psoug.org> wrote:
>
> Most of the large firms here are using the Grid and are happy.
> Among them I might mention a very large aerospace firm.

I don't have a doubt large firms are using it. Unfortunately, large firms are NOT the majority of db users out there. To claim that "most" are using it because "most large firms" are, is a leap of faith I'm not prepared to take.

> > You know, that old story about the "expensive dba
> > writing scripts" is such old hat... Whoever invented that one
> > in Oracle marketing hasn't got a CLUE what the real work
> > of a dba is!
>
> If you believe that is wholly myth I have some wonderful beachfront
> property I want to sell you. It may be a myth where you are ... but
> it isn't here.

Daniel, modern dbas spend the vast majority of their time working around problems caused by appaling application code, unstable hardware/software combos, configuring new or replacement servers, running backups, refreshing development and test databases, resolving interface problems between varous server architectures and data workflow requirements and resolving the odd performance problem here and there. And with various databases, not just Oracle. They also spend a LOT of time trying to work around glaring bugs, Oracle's included.

The last thing a dba wants to do is write scripts for Oracle: they got enough in their hands already!

Grid helps them in one of those bits above. One only.

> Depends on what you expect it to do. If the point is to determine
> which resources are up/down then the hours is roughly 0.5 per server.
> If you are talking about writing your own plugin, of course, that is
> quite another matter.

Precisely.

> But "undivided attention?" You must be doing something with the Grid
> I'm not familiar with. Out here we have it contact us ... we don't
> sit at the monitor eyes glued to the screen.

Well, for that they don't need to cough up the moolah for grid. What it does in that chapter they already do very simply and cheaply and so does any dba that has been on the job for a while. Where grid can help with new stuff requires the dba to sit around and capture and examine patterns, a process that will always consume time no matter how much automation you throw at it.

> Turn the question around. Assuming the life of the product is 5 years
> how much grid control can you purchase for $1,000,000? And it doesn't
> take a vacation or leave for dinner with the family or catch an attitude
> in the middle of a meeting?

Of course not, but can it tango?
Sorry, couldn't resist. :-)

> Enough budget is irrelevant. For-profit business exist to make a profit.
> And upper management, unless you've somehow missed the offshoring trend
> issue budget-irrelevant mandates with respect to FTEs.

Dan, IT budget is nowadays a minimal fraction of the worries of upper management of large companies. The one I work for has an IT budget that can only be described as small change compared to what they make elsewhere. And don't think by this I mean we spend peanuts in IT: nothing could be less true. The post-2k era of reducing costs is long gone, IT is not a big ticket anymore. To try and beat that horse to death will only ensure no one is listening...

> But anytime you think an Oracle salesperson capable of bullying the
> likes of AT&T, Boeing, Amazon.com, etc. I'd like to meet that
> salesperson. There are a couple of guys that owe me money. <g>

Yeah, but how many more of that size can you pull in? I can pull in hundreds, thousands of companies of the size I'm talking about.

>
> Lighten up noon ... OEM grid has its place. Perhaps not in every firm.
> But in enough that it makes a big difference.

Sure, Daniel. I know what you mean. But let me just propose this:

Oracle is going to have to do a bit more than just whoo-in the big brass while beating up on the dba as the "evil of IT".

They are up against tremendous competition in the small to medium size shop and are losing at the rate of knots. Meanwhile, companies like Microslop with their much more friendly products and pricing structures are winning big time there.

You don't hear Microslop blaming dbas: they blame products that do *not* help the dba. There is a world of difference right there. They never tried to eliminate the dba: they simply say the dba has life made easy with their products.

If you refer back to my list of what a dba does nowadays, you see a list of things that grid and such has no hope in heck of addressing anytime soon. But you also see a large number of things that are incomparably easier to achieve with the Microslop toolset. And cheaper too.

Any wonder Microslop's db market share has sustained higher growth than db2 and oracle combined, for 6 years now? And let me also state this: Oracle isn't making any friends with their constant "the dba is evil" nonsense...

Chief, go outside the States and it's a Microslop world. Oracle folks better wake up... Received on Tue Jul 10 2007 - 10:57:28 CDT

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