Re: Seeking Advice

Adrian Carlson-Hedges wrote:

> I have been a DBA for about 5 years. During that time I have gone from
> looking after 1 small Oracle database (~200Mb) on a reasonably powerful
> machine, to looking after 6 databases. (The largest being about 40Gb,
> and about 2-3 million new rows each day).
>
> When people talk about a 5 year DBA with 1 or 2 years experience, I look
> at myself, and can see more or less where they are coming from. I have
> never had to deal with a serious failure. (At the worst, I have had to
> replace broken disks, but they were part of a RAID (1 or 5) anyway). I
> have tested recovery by deliberately breaking test databases. However
> when you know exactly what's broken it's usually fairly easy to fix it
> as well.
>
> I have dabbled in replication using snapshots, snapshot logs, and
> refresh groups. I later decided that this wasn't appropriate for the
> task for which I was using it. I have implemented partitioning on my
> 40Gb database (It's actually a 28 day rolling window. The data is
> financial price ticks (shares, exchange rates etc), and is only really
> useful for a week or 3, so it's thrown away after that.) I have upgraded
> 7.3 to 8i. I have installed, and used WebDB, and to a much lesser extent
> portal. I have used import, export, sqlldr, and dabbled with an Oracle
> names server.
>
> I have taken 3 of the 5 8i DBA OCP exams. I picked the exams that I was
> confident of passing without having to spend more than a day studying.
> (The study was to check to see what was expected for each exam. Although
> I don't want to rekindle the argument over what the OCP is worth)
>
> I would say that I have a reasonably broad, but not necessarily deep
> knowledge of IT. I started out originally on a helpdesk doing support, I
> have done some development in VB, and Java, and even briefly dabbled in
> forms. I have a reasonable understanding of TCP/IP, and networks in
> general. Before moving into IT, I was a data analyst, looking at
> financial data. (I wrote a lot of queries against sybase databases)
>
> My role is not as a pure DBA, I am often involved in various
> development, and support tasks varying from creating a VB macro in excel
> to speed up a task for a data analyst, through to planning, writing, and
> implementing the migration of legacy data from 3 data sources into a new
> data model on a single database. (About 4Gb of data)
>
> I would like to pursue a career that is more geared towards a DBA role.
> All of my current databases run on Windows NT/2K. With my history in
> support, I am more than happy with my understanding of NT/2K
> architecture. For my next move however It is likely that I will need to
> support Oracle on platforms other than windows. What advice would you
> give me regards my future career progression? I am looking to get hold
> of a copy of Red Hat 8 professional, and I will be installing Oracle on
> this to play, and learn. (Yes, before anyone points it out, I know that
> only Red Hat advanced server is supported, and not professional.) :-)
>
> Will learning redhat linux give me a good enough understanding to be
> able to apply that knowledge to other flavours of linux, or even unix?
> What other areas do you think I should be looking into?
>
> If you were an employer looking for a DBA, what sort of level job do you
> think I would be suitable for?
>
> Thanks for getting this far, and I look forward to any/all responses.
>
> Adrian
>
> --
> Adrian Carlson-Hedges

I think you are moving in the right direction. Personally I'd go to eBay and get a Sparc 5 with Solaris 2.8 (around $500 last time I got one) but Linux will get you there as well. My preference for Solaris or HP/UX is just that they are more marketable.

Daniel Morgan Received on Mon Nov 18 2002 - 10:24:25 CST