How many people would you employ for sysadmin / dba ?

[Tom Geudens]

Hi Alexander,
I'm missing something in your list ... the number of people these sysadmin's / dba's have to give support too !

How many developers depend on the DBA to "help" them with procedural SQL ? Do these guys/gals cover the security for developers/endusers as well ?

In an environment where covering these servers is everything they have to do, 1 sysadmin and 1 DBA (both having the knowledge to be each others backup) will do. However, if 200 developers work on these systems I'd bump up the DBA's to 5 (1 for 40 developers) and the sysadmins to 2 (1 for 100 developers).

Regards,
Tom Geudens

[Mark Greene_1]

As has been stated, if you are a 24x7 shop, you need 2 SAs and 2 DBAs.

We have 14, and soon to be 16 servers (7 HP, 6 IBM, 2 RedHat, 1 Data General still hanging in there), plus an EMC Clariion SAN. We are a 24x7 shop, and at least 8 of those systems plus the SAN are running what management considers vital applications for the business that have to be up and running 99%+ of the time, and another 4 of those just under that in importance. We may be (finally) going to an enterprise backup solution.

We are adding a 3rd SA this month, in part to deal with the system load and so I can personally concentrate more on the SAN, and to extend our on-call rotation by one more week so we don't get burned-out.

We have 2 DBAs, but they are only getting into doing Oracle support recently. We used to contract with the software vendors for that, and still do for some applications. Our DBAs mostly support MS SQL databases. I don't know how many we have, but it's not really equivalent to your situation.

mark

[Geoff Wild]

With it being 24 x 7, I would agree with most of the others here.

2 SA's (1 senior, 1 junior) and 2 DBA's (1 senior, 1 junior).

Rgds...Geoff

BTW - at my site, we have 57 databases - 28 are 24 x7, and 28 HP-UX, 10 AIX, 6 Solaris servers. We have 5 DBA's and 8 SA's.

[Rainer von Bongartz]

Alexander,

I think you'll need two people which are good unix and dba administrator and a third one who can manage the 'usual things'

This will give more security and flexibility plus the chance to evolve the IT,and keep up with the news.

Regards
Rainer

Btw. the beer is not forgotten !!!!!

[Alexander M. Ermes]

Hi.
Just some answers.
Tom, we have a team of approx. 15 developers working on the different system.
V-class estimated 350 users
N-cluster estimeated 300 users
K460 estimated 350 users

Setup on all systems nearly same standard.
Rgds
Alexander M. Ermes

[Alexander M. Ermes]

Hi everybody.
You gave mme a lot of opinions.
I will work through it and make my resumee.
Thank you all for help.
Alexander M. Ermes

[Tim D Fulford · Accepted solution]

Hi

I can't realistically give a number of people because however may you get it will probably not be enough. At a guess, 2-3 with mixed skill sets would be ideal. However, if the business moves forwards quickly & there is raplid development & deployment this will probably not be enough you may need 10 people! I've a few comments though

You talk about sysadmin & DBA, but what about
o Storage planning/implementation
o Business continuity plans
o Disaster recovery
o Backup/restore
o Test/development environment
o Code development & implementation
o Networking/communications infrastructure & panning
o Management of the HP contracts
o Management of the Oracle contracts
o Management of the code contracts (if any)

All of the above can get shoved into the sysadmin/DBA role & I've NOT MENTIONED admin work. I feel that it is better to have people with a mix of skills so cover is possible. I'm very much a fan of verticle suport (i.e. people who support things from the platform all the way to the application & everything between).

Regards

Tim

[Alexander M. Ermes]

Good answers from all of you.
Thank you