August 22, 2010 at 9:07 am
I am sure there is "it all depends" We have about 20 instance DEV,QA,Prod
and only 2 database half way big the other are very small. one is 200 gig and the other is about 350 gigs.
I am looking for average recommendation. I just started a new DBA position and it seems like we have to many!
If I remember there was a general # out there somewhere?
THANKS
August 22, 2010 at 10:02 am
FYI..I did find this study after some searching
August 22, 2010 at 10:23 am
456789psw (8/22/2010)
I just started a new DBA position and it seems like we have to many!
Too many DBAs or too many instances?
From what I recall from the bank, we had about 200 databases(that's Dev, UAT, Prod and DR), with the biggest database just hitting 1 TB and a team of 9 DBAs (well, 8 administrators and 1 DB developer). Most of those took very little to no time to manage. One took easily a third of the entire team's time.
It depends how well you automate the work. The more you automate, the more you can manage per person. The question was asked at a PASS session a couple years ago, and two people put their hands up for the question of 'Over 1000 databases per DBA'
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
August 22, 2010 at 10:40 am
Too many DBA's
The study said about 32 DB per dba. If I took you number and dropped the Tb server and the 3 needed to support it. That would be about 30 which sounds close the study. We have 60 for 3 DBA's and 10 are less then 5 gigs
THANKS
August 22, 2010 at 10:43 am
It is going to depend upon what the organization expects from the DBA's. If all you are doing is production support, then a single DBA could handle all of those servers very easily.
However, I haven't seen an organization that expects a DBA to only do production support. There is also development support, application support, project work, etc...
If a system is a vendor supplied system and you only have to worry about backing it up and general maintenance, once the system is up and running a DBA's support is minimal (e.g. verifying backups have run, maintenance has run, performance is acceptable, space utilization, etc...).
Other systems require more involvement - especially if you have in house developers, report writers and ad-hoc users.
Jeffrey Williams
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August 22, 2010 at 4:52 pm
456789psw (8/22/2010)
I am sure there is "it all depends" We have about 20 instance DEV,QA,Prodand only 2 database half way big the other are very small. one is 200 gig and the other is about 350 gigs.
I am looking for average recommendation. I just started a new DBA position and it seems like we have to many!
Too many? How many DBAs in the shop? Remembe that you have to have a backup when going on vacation, etc.
Having said that, twenty small to medium size databases is a pretty low number; probably a couple of DBAs will take care of them and have spare time for "research" 😉
Moreover, small databases are usually easily kept in good health; the fun begins with very large databases supporting business critical applications with stringent SLAs.
_____________________________________
Pablo (Paul) Berzukov
Author of Understanding Database Administration available at Amazon and other bookstores.
Disclaimer: Advice is provided to the best of my knowledge but no implicit or explicit warranties are provided. Since the advisor explicitly encourages testing any and all suggestions on a test non-production environment advisor should not held liable or responsible for any actions taken based on the given advice.August 22, 2010 at 5:06 pm
PaulB-TheOneAndOnly (8/22/2010)
the fun begins with very large databases supporting business critical applications with stringent SLAs.
I'll say. That 1TB mission-critical DB with 0 downtime allowances in business hours could be quite entertaining. Especially before we upgraded to 2005 when it was running on a not-so-stable IA64 version of SQL 2000.
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
August 22, 2010 at 5:09 pm
GilaMonster (8/22/2010)
PaulB-TheOneAndOnly (8/22/2010)
the fun begins with very large databases supporting business critical applications with stringent SLAs.I'll say. That 1TB mission-critical DB with 0 downtime allowances in business hours could be quite entertaining. Especially before we upgraded to 2005 when it was running on a not-so-stable IA64 version of SQL 2000.
...and, that's a perfect example of it 😀
_____________________________________
Pablo (Paul) Berzukov
Author of Understanding Database Administration available at Amazon and other bookstores.
Disclaimer: Advice is provided to the best of my knowledge but no implicit or explicit warranties are provided. Since the advisor explicitly encourages testing any and all suggestions on a test non-production environment advisor should not held liable or responsible for any actions taken based on the given advice.August 23, 2010 at 7:59 am
All factors lie within Mgmt. expectations of there data operations!
August 24, 2010 at 1:40 pm
Agree with a lot of what has been said.
As #DB's/DBA increase, the service "offering" the DBA provide decreases. I moved from a team of 7 "DBA's" (4 DBa's, 3 people who where more data alaysts, but did some 1st line things like checking backups, etc), supporting 40 production databases, 160 or so DEV, TEST & QA databases raning for 1 GB up to 7 TB. Most of them high-volume 24x7 retail internet facing - and that team was moderately busy, but did have time to do things like get involved in performance testing in the testing area, and QA ... and during the 15 minths of stringent code QA, the QA DBA's raised more defect's against DB code that the 40 stron test team, and improved the quality of production DB deployments to the stage where it became "Oh, was a production deployment done, I didn't realise" ... because there was no impact to service.
Now I'm in a very different environment. 28 DBA's support (nominally) 30,000 databases, with 9,222 of those being production databases. That's across an estate of over 2,500 SQL Instances. Think we do any QA? Think we even have a clue about what any of those databases look like? This role is almost at a SQL Server Administrator level - lot's of server level admin, very litle at the database level, unless people really squeal, and escalate. And we have a lot of automation tools, and practiced rollback techniques, because the role cannot cater for review of code, even for the most basic "you forgot a go between end of stored procedure, and your GRANT statement".
But then there are other interesting chalenges, like having many data centre's globally, and planning DR tests, automation, trying to find processes and code that REALLY scales to organisations of this size, server consolidations (who know, maybe we will get back below 2,000 SQL Instances again 🙂 ) and other ihnteresting "opportunities"....
August 24, 2010 at 3:08 pm
Twinsoft SME (8/23/2010)
All factors lie within Mgmt. expectations of there data operations!
... meaning? :blink:
_____________________________________
Pablo (Paul) Berzukov
Author of Understanding Database Administration available at Amazon and other bookstores.
Disclaimer: Advice is provided to the best of my knowledge but no implicit or explicit warranties are provided. Since the advisor explicitly encourages testing any and all suggestions on a test non-production environment advisor should not held liable or responsible for any actions taken based on the given advice.August 24, 2010 at 10:52 pm
I just came from an environment where I administrated over 100 instances by myself. Like Gail mentioned it really just depends on the level of automation you put into place. I took advantage of CMS and Policy-Based Management to keep everything in check. In the case of many servers PowerShell is also your friend 😉
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October 13, 2010 at 12:23 pm
I am a SQL Server DBA for last 11 years. At my current job, I am managing nearly 250 SQL Servers with versions 2000, 2005 and 2008 versions. Each server has nearly minimum of 20 databases with 150 as max on few server. I am the only SQL Server DBA in the shop and also time to time manage Oracle and DB2 databases in the company. The size of the database are upto 3 TB on nearly 10 databases. 7 X 24 support does not leave any time for my family. It is been two years since I have received any raise. My boss expect me to take on Oracle and DB2 totally too and application support. My job responsibilties include, SQL server security, auditing, server installation, patches, setting up and monitoring replication, mirroring, clustering, including high availabilty, performance monitoring and tuning, backup and recovery, code walk thru's, database maintenance, space monitoring and disaster recovery and many more that you can imagine. So I guess you can imagine, how many DBA you need in your shop.:-)
October 13, 2010 at 2:20 pm
nirmal jain (10/13/2010)
I am a SQL Server DBA for last 11 years. At my current job, I am managing nearly 250 SQL Servers with versions 2000, 2005 and 2008 versions. Each server has nearly minimum of 20 databases with 150 as max on few server. I am the only SQL Server DBA in the shop and also time to time manage Oracle and DB2 databases in the company. The size of the database are upto 3 TB on nearly 10 databases. 7 X 24 support does not leave any time for my family. It is been two years since I have received any raise. My boss expect me to take on Oracle and DB2 totally too and application support. My job responsibilties include, SQL server security, auditing, server installation, patches, setting up and monitoring replication, mirroring, clustering, including high availabilty, performance monitoring and tuning, backup and recovery, code walk thru's, database maintenance, space monitoring and disaster recovery and many more that you can imagine. So I guess you can imagine, how many DBA you need in your shop.:-)
You should take a three week vacation. Be sure to shut off your cell phone.
October 13, 2010 at 2:27 pm
Hmmmm. At this location I am the only DBA, but also am a .NET developer about 1/3 of the time as well.
We have about 20 front line SQL servers, 3 of them with 80+ databases the rest with fewer but larger and more transactional databases (biggest is maybe 100GB). One SQL2000 box, the rest 2005 and a few 2008.
Then there is the DR-site servers (5 of them currently) in warm standby logship mode. I have built most of the management and production support and auditing tools I use.
The probability of survival is inversely proportional to the angle of arrival.
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