get points and answer one question (2)

[Reinhard Burger]

Hi Thomas
Reading about a 90 to 10 % relation of work makes me afraid. Reason :
Usually that does not really work.
Whats the definition of 100 %?
In such situations this definition is very flexible. Having 90 % workload on one job is a full time job because of 90 % workload does not leave any space for unforseen cases.
In addition you will run into problems with unsatisfied users. How to explain them that you have to work now on the 90 % part of your job and leave them alone with a problem until the next 10 % window is reached ?
What i mean is : There si no way to strictly divide the resource into such peaces. Most often that cause the 100 % mark to move to higher values having weekly hours of up to 20 -30 % more then normal working hours.
resulting in :
stuff overloaded with work
no time to maintain the system
most often "react" instead of "act" ( thats usually caused by the users not by the system itself)
That will probably very quickly cause your staff to be frustrated.
Unfortunally i was working in such an environment for some years and to be honest as i got an offer which was interesting i did not think a long time about staying or leaving.
Anyway you need at least two people. Be aware about such "unlikely" things like Holidays illness ...
Finally your decision on how many people to place is depending on a very important questions :
Whats the impact on the buisiness if the system or the application is not available for more then half a day ? Or in other words :
How much money is lost during unexpected downtimes of the system or application ?
Based on the answers to that question you may possibly get a hint to define how much staff are required to reach a usefull answer.
For somehow buissness critical systems i would say : 2 people is an absolutly minimum situation ( still leving lot of space for our well known "friend Murphy")

[Michael Tully]

Definitely two people. What happens if the first person get sick, has annual leave or gets run over by a bus..... after hours support. etc
These two people should be cross-trained, and know each others skills to a certain degree.

There should also be time to experiment, self-training, training courses and testing.....

I feel for the guys in the one-person shop....

Harry's shout for the beer!

Cheers
Michael

[Alexander M. Ermes]

Hi Thomas.
Go for two people. If the water starts boiling and you have only one, that might increase the error rate. I have done a job like this for approx. three years. If anything happens
( Unix, Application, Oracle ) this one person
has to work day and night.
We now have two individuals and we have split the job. If we have a disaster, one takes over the routine jobs, the other works on the hotspot and can even ask the other one to support him, so that work can be done in parallel.
If you need more details, contact alexander.ermes@europe.ups.com

Rgds
Alexander M. Ermes

[Sharvil Desai]

After looking at the job requirements, and the business criticality of the system I definitely think you need at least two people. Though, it is understandable that in this tough economic time you would like to save every cent you can, the requirements of this job is way too much to be handled efficiently by one person alone.
While some may argue that all this can be done by one person who is an expert, my answer to that would be while that person may get it done, he will definitely not be able to perform at his best since the workload will be exhausting, and he will have no life. Having an employee who is feeling that way and is in charge of your business' critical system, will cost your company more in the longer run.
So without any doubts I say, you have to hire at least two people. If you are still debating, then to that I say,
COMEON MAN! DO IT FOR YOU COUNTRY! :-)

[Wodisch_1]

Hi again,

as I wrote on your first posting, this is only more reason for two persons (at least).
But what IS the 10% job you mentioned?
Sounds like there is another skill-set needed, in addition!
Maybe help-desk, or something like that?
That would let the list of candidates shrink, really, as most help-deskers I know don't like to do that work forever...

Just some more $0.02,
Wodisch

[Terja]

The real answer is: How critical do you consider your server?
If it is mission critical, two is the ABSOLUTE minimum, as with one you end up with "a jack of all trades, masteer of none". You have to consider that no only do you have daily activites, night support
Disaster recovery planning, backups, and general monitoring, capacity planning, - and ofcourse, documentation (shutup all yousysadmins).
The oracle management requires an expert of its own to keep oracle running smoothly. if you have ever being part of an oracle upgrade, its can take weeks to months of planning and fail 3 times, even with top support from oracle.
Ideally you have a grad program that then shadows your two primary people (cheap labor) and can cover, when those people are ill or
away, or most often than not leave. If you want to discuss further, email me. I have been a sysprog/dba for 15 years, and have built support teams.

[Stefan Farrelly]

Yes - one person can do it. With only 2 K's and 3 workstations you dont really have enough for a 2nd person, in my opinion.

There are people out there now who are a cross between a DBA and HP-UX administrator. This is what you need. The question is do you need a DBA who can do good admin, or and admin who can do DBA work ? Depends on which skill you require either more of or more in-depth knowledge of.

[Frederic Zeller]

Hi

90% or 100% doesn't change the fact that for any "critical" task you need at least two persons, for redundancy.

But only you can answer that question :

what happend if the "single" specialist is away for a month ? ( And not reachable in any way )

if the answer is : no problem, so you could go with only one person

if the answer is : big problem , so you should onsider at least two persons

Fred

[Stefan Farrelly]

To comment on the previous reply;

If you employ 1 contractor then you dont need 2 people - contractors dont get holidays so no worries about them leaving for a month - or even a week! If you employ them through a large agency they can find a replacement should your valuable contractor be off work for any length of time.

[John Meissner]

I would hire 1 person full time and hire one contractor in addition. It's always better to have a human redundancy and I find that contractors will work longer hours and have a very large ammount of knowlege.