get points and answer one question

[Thomas Schler_1]

Hi,

you will earn points on this topic, please, give me your answers.

We are investigating how many people we should hire for some specific tasks on HP-UX/Oracle. We are not sure if one person (100%) is enough or if we need two or more. So, I think in this forum, there are many experienced specialists, that can give their valuable thoughts to this problem.

The environment is:
Two K460 servers: 4 CPUs each, 2 Gb memory each, 16 Gb and 25 Gb internal disks, respectively, 120 Gb disk capacity shared between both
servers, 280 Gb external disks attached on one server, 660 Gb MOD jukebox attached on one server.

The running software are:
HP-UX 10.20, MC/ServiceGuard with three packages configured, HP MirrorDisk UX, sendmail, Oracle 8.0.5.0.0, AMASS (Archival Management
and Storage System) used along with the 660 Gb MOD jukebox, and some other software.

130 users are listed in /etc/passwd.

The tasks are:
- complete administration of both servers (backups, recovery scenarios, security, keeping the OS up to date, OS upgrades, problem and system
analysis)
- complete administration of AMASS, that is used to have normal access on a 660 Gb filesystem that is built by 128 MODs (backups, recovery
scenarios, SW upgrades if necessary, problem and system analysis, media rotations: i.e. archive and delete old files to get free space for new data -- 1.5 Gb new data are received every day)
- administration and configuration of MC/ServiceGuard (three packages are configured, problem analysis)
- performing hardware upgrades and replacements, when necessary
- administration of up to three HP-UX workstations
- administration of an HP-UX SW depot for three different OS releases for the whole company

In addition, due to Oracle, the tasks are:
- designing a database for a complex database structure (it is expected to have more than 70 tables), both, logical and physical design
- deploying and building the database including deployment/testing of
software for data exchange and web interfaces for users
- complete administration of the Oracle system (backups, recovery scenarios, upgrades, security, problem and system analysis)

Do you expect, that these tasks can be handled by one person?

[Christopher McCray_1 · Accepted solution]

Hello,

This is just my opinion; yes it can be done by only one person, but you may want to consider another person who is a DBA, both whose experience overlap the two, so they can back each other up.

Again, just my 2 cents

Chris

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

Best option IMHO is two persons with different capabilities in part-time (overlapping) work times.

You need the following skills

- analysis
- documentation
- scripting
- communication
- DBA
- SA

[Patrick Wallek]

My opinion: If you can find someone that knows HPUX, AMASS and Oracle, then they should be able to handle it.

I would be prepared to offer said person training in either AMASS or Oracle and MC/SG if they don't already know it.

With 2 systems, there should not be a whole lot of HP-UX stuff to do other than your typical monitoring to make sure that everything is behaving.

If the single person gets over run by Oracle work, you may then think of segregating the Oracle duties from the Sys Admin duties.

[Patrick Wallek]

Chris brings up a good point. With 2 people, if their knowledge overlaps, you can have each back the other up.

That is a good thing. If you have just one person and that person gets hit by a bus then you are in trouble.

[steven Burgess_2]

Hi

I think you require the services of a dba and an experienced sys admin.

Hopefully both having enough knowledge to compliment each other and at times help each other out.

I don't know many people who have enough experience in both areas that could fulfill your needs. I would think you would like each person to concentrate on both areas seperately as opposed to having to juggle 2 roles, thus being able to give 100% to each discipline

My input

Steve

[Sajid_1]

Hi,

I would say two persons - HP-UX administrator and DBA. This combination will work nicely. You can consider choosing only one person, but that will be a mixing and will be hard to find somebody who *actually* have these skills.

HTH

[Tom Maloy]

One person can do this, given the full skill set.

From an enterprise point of view, it would be much better to use two people who are both competent in all areas. In addition to the "hit by a bus" scenario, one person might have trouble scheduling a personal life, and might be subject to premature burnout.

Just my $0.02...

Tom

[Dietmar Konermann]

Hi, Ralph!

This depends definitely on the skill set of that persons. I thnik it could be done by a single person, but you think also about holidays, illness and other resons why there should be a substitute.

Having 2 persons is more expensive, of course. But the tasks look important (and businees critical) enough for me to justify 2 people.

Regards...
Dietmar.

[Shannon Petry]

One person may say that they can do this, but I dont think they can be good at all of these tasks. This means you will have either the OS or Oracle running at 50% or less than it could/should.
WHY?:
Sysadmin skillset: Manage the OS, Servers, Hardware, backups(not including oracle), users. The sysadmin can also performance tune the servers, helping the DB developers know where performance bottlenecks are, etc... Depending on your users and what they are doing on the machine the 130 users could be overwhelming on a single sysadmin.
DBA or DB Developer can handle all of your oracle. Do hot and cold oracle backups, maintain the database, security, performance tune oracle, etc...

Now this being said, you could hire a company to come in and do the oracle work, so that it is developed, deployed, debugged and done. Then maintain it with a sysadmin who can check output from scripts for hot/cold backups.

Now back to my original comment:
I have also seen many Oracle DBA's that think they can manage the OS, but if a problem occurs that SAM wont fix, then they are lost.
I have also seen many sys-admins that think they can develop oracle. Maybe they can fake it a bit, but development time will be slow at best, longer debug times, under-performance, etc...

Just my two cents worth, but hope it helps in your descision.

Regards,
Shannon

[Sajid_1]

I would also agree with what Chris said about the backup plan. Both of them can be in sync on the project status and can easily backup one by other. But you should also consider calculating the budget :))

gl,

[Pete Randall]

Remarkably similar to our situation. We have two people, one is primarily the DBA and the other is primarily the SysAdmin. Both are cross-trained to cover for the other in at least a minimal capacity during vacation and other out-of-office time.
The jobs could *probably* be handled by just one but you'd have no backup and would probably end up driving the poor person crazy.

Pete

[S.K. Chan]

It seems like (in my opinion) these tasks syadmin and Oracle combined are quite overwhelming from your description. I feel you need 2 individuals to run this efficiently. One as sysadmin role and the other Oracle DBA role. Both can backup each other to a certain extent and it takes time and training to be able to backup each other at 100% capabilities. Having focus (ie separate pimary role) on sysadmin duties and DBA duties by different person will produce a better quality work vs one-person-do-all scenario.

[Helen French]

Hi Thomas:

If I get a good person with all these skills, I will defenitely go for a single position. But experiences proves that it's so hard to find a person with all these skills, eventhough their resumes shows it. You can conduct an interview and compare the skills in resume with the one they actually have. If you are not lucky, then the best solution is having 2 positions. One with unix-admin skills and the other with DB admin, provided they both have basic knowledge of all your applications, setup, OS and network.

Good luck and may your mail-box be filled with all execellent resumes!

Shiju

[John Bolene]

Could be handled by one, but at least 2 would be better. One for sysadmin, one for DBA.

You also did not specify if this was a 40 hour week or if these folks would be on-call all the time also. If this is a yes, then 3 or 4 people would be a better number to handle the other shifts.

[Deshpande Prashant]

Hi
I would prefer for 2 people. One with HP-UX knowledge other with Oracle knowledge. They can cross-train (if already not known) their area and serve as backup to each others. With 2 people you will be able to get more support hours coverage and flexibality.

Thanks.
Prashant.

[harry d brown jr]

Thomas,

IMO, I think you should farm this out, unless you want to hire 3 people. You should ALWAY's have a backup (not relying on one person), and to do the job correctly, You'll have two backups.

If you farm it out to a professional consultanting company you should get what you need.

live free or die
harry

[Sean OB_1]

The sys admin roles can easily be handled by one person.

However since this is a service guard environment that denotes that it is a critical system.

Do you want your critical system only known by one person? What happens when said person is on vacation, or gets hit by a bus?

Additionally you'll find it hard to find someone both well skilled in DBA and sys admin roles. One or the other will likely be secondary.

So I'd recommend finding someone who's primary task is sys admin, but also knows some DBA, and also find a DBA who knows a bit about HP/UX.


Then have them knowledge share and back each other up in the roles.

[Tracey]

2 people
-------------
1 Primary job is HP/UX but can help out in Oracle
1 Primary job is Oracle but can help out in HP/UX

[Wodisch_1]

Hi Thomas,

this looks pretty much "mission critical" for your company, hence you will be in need of two persons, who both are trained
- HP-UX 10.20 sys admins (should know 11.x, too)
- Oracle 8.0 DBAs (should know 8i, too)
- in MC/SG (maybe you will go for OPS?)
- in AMASS (what about the next release? running on HP-UX11?)
- in sendmail and complementary tools

Both must be able to replace each other - without warning or time to prepare, since holidays, illnesses, and busses happen!
And then there is no time/no documentation/no chance to learn the missing parts for the *other* of the two :-(

The *amount* of knowledge and experience to match that job description is not that uncommon (expect for AMASS, of course), and quite some of us here at the forums seem to have that expertise (well, I do not know AMASS myself, but the rest looks like a less-than-40hour-week :-)

For what my opinion is worth,
Wodisch

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

I too sing the same song.

1. A specialist DBA
2. A specialist Sysadmin

They can train each other. You may find overwhelmingly many people in both areas that are interested to learn the other area.

-Sri

[Sachin Patel]

Hi Thomas,
As everyone says enough about it let me tell you about my company.
We have 11 N-class, 10-Vclass and 5 K-class and number of c-class system we used have 6 system admin and two oracle. Now we have 3 system admin and 2 oracle admin. we have both admin departments are different but small shop like you must cross train.

Sachin

[AUJ]

Hi!

My opinion find someone who's primary task is sys ad, but also knows some DBA, and also find a DBA who also knows about HP/UX.

Then let them share their knowledge and backup each other.

AUJ

[Chris Wilshaw]

As most others have said, I'd agree that ideally you should have 2 people.

An extra factor to consider is out of hours support. If this is required, it's certainly too much to expect that one person can cope with a normal working day, and potentially being called out every night. I know from experience that in these circumstances, you get very annoyed, very quickly.

[Jean-Luc Oudart]

I think the answer has been given in this thread.
Yes, a person with all the skills can do it.
This may be a be difficult to find such a person, otherwise a proper training program would do it.

But you should think that resilience is not only for hardware / OS. this must be built for the whole service, human factor included.

my 2 cents.

Jean-Luc