get points and answer one question (2)

[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.

[John Dvorchak]

I have been that ONE person. And that only lasted for a couple of months for obvious reasons. The one person concept looks good on paper but the reality is that most shops are 24x7 and people are not. If the business relies on that computer system for it's life then it is incumbant upon managment to see to it that it is running. The fact that you have system reduncancy, should make the question of one or two persons a no brainer. Of course you need two people just like you needed two computers. Look at the computer system as a group of objects performing a task, and part of that system is redundancy in Administrators as well as hardware.

[Vincente Fernandes]

I agree with other. 2 people are always better. Also hiring a contractor as mentioned by John, is okay provided you have to make sure that person have enough experience and knowledge on HP-UX and the specific requirements. Regarding a full time employee also make sure that his also on the same par with the contractor. Otherwise it would be like 1 person doing 2 persons job even though 2 person are employed.

[Vincente Fernandes]

I agree with other. 2 people are always better. Also hiring a contractor as mentioned by John, is okay provided you have to make sure that person have enough experience and knowledge on HP-UX and the specific requirements. Regarding a full time employee also make sure that his also on the same par with the contractor. Otherwise it would be like 1 person doing 2 persons even though 2 person are employed.

[Vincente Fernandes]

Please ignore my 1st response.