April 10, 2012 at 3:49 pm
Hi,
I am currently working to win a project for development of an application that will use SQL Server 2008 as the back-end. The application will be used 9-5 Mon-Fri by approx 10 concurrent users (in Ireland). There would be approximately 1000 - 2000 new entries/ updates per day. What level of administrative support would be needed for this? I would guess that the most important thing would be to ensure that back-ups are done regularly (and tested)?
Do you think the system is large/ busy enough to warrant some contract admin support? If so, how many hours per month would be reasonable? Any idea of cost for this in Ireland (Dublin)? I am (relatively) proficient using T-SQL/ setting up Users/ Granting Permissions/ creating Tables, SPs, Views etc. Is it something I could manage myself? What would the main items that would require doing?
April 10, 2012 at 10:00 pm
I think you can try with yourself as all maintenance configurationcan be easily done by maintenance plan wizard.
April 11, 2012 at 3:02 pm
That really depends on SO many things... I would say that database administration "could be" minimal if the application uses SQL Server correctly. You say you are proficient in SQL, but I don't know what that means. Does that mean you can get a query to return the proper results? Does that mean you can get a query to return the proper results quickly? Doe that mean you can get the query to return the proper results quickly without blowing up the tempdb? Do you know how to manage the transaction log? Is the database set up in full recovery or simple recovery mode? Do you know what the difference is? What are the business requirements for disaster recovery? Do they need to have a mirror for immediate and point in time failover, or can they do without a days worth of data and the possibility of a day's down time? Will the application be handling the users, or will they all be handled through SQL Server?
I could keep going... but I think you get the idea. We would need a LOT more information about your product and the company's needs before even approaching an estimate.
Jared
CE - Microsoft
April 11, 2012 at 4:17 pm
SQLKnowItAll (4/11/2012)
That really depends on SO many things... I would say that database administration "could be" minimal if the application uses SQL Server correctly. You say you are proficient in SQL, but I don't know what that means. Does that mean you can get a query to return the proper results? Does that mean you can get a query to return the proper results quickly? Doe that mean you can get the query to return the proper results quickly without blowing up the tempdb? Do you know how to manage the transaction log? Is the database set up in full recovery or simple recovery mode? Do you know what the difference is? What are the business requirements for disaster recovery? Do they need to have a mirror for immediate and point in time failover, or can they do without a days worth of data and the possibility of a day's down time? Will the application be handling the users, or will they all be handled through SQL Server?I could keep going... but I think you get the idea. We would need a LOT more information about your product and the company's needs before even approaching an estimate.
To answer some of your questions:
Query to return proper results: Yes
Proper results quickly: Yes (but no expert in optimisation)
Tempdb: don't know
Transaction Log Management: No, I don't
Recovery Model: Full
Disaster Recovery: 1 day data loss/ 1 day recovery would probably be sufficient
Application will be handling Users
In general:
Stored Procedures will be used for all Data select, insert, update, delete operations
Cursors, Temporary tables etc. will not be used
April 11, 2012 at 4:47 pm
dec_obrien (4/11/2012)
SQLKnowItAll (4/11/2012)
That really depends on SO many things... I would say that database administration "could be" minimal if the application uses SQL Server correctly. You say you are proficient in SQL, but I don't know what that means. Does that mean you can get a query to return the proper results? Does that mean you can get a query to return the proper results quickly? Doe that mean you can get the query to return the proper results quickly without blowing up the tempdb? Do you know how to manage the transaction log? Is the database set up in full recovery or simple recovery mode? Do you know what the difference is? What are the business requirements for disaster recovery? Do they need to have a mirror for immediate and point in time failover, or can they do without a days worth of data and the possibility of a day's down time? Will the application be handling the users, or will they all be handled through SQL Server?I could keep going... but I think you get the idea. We would need a LOT more information about your product and the company's needs before even approaching an estimate.
To answer some of your questions:
Query to return proper results: Yes
Proper results quickly: Yes (but no expert in optimisation)
Tempdb: don't know
Transaction Log Management: No, I don't
Recovery Model: Full
Disaster Recovery: 1 day data loss/ 1 day recovery would probably be sufficient
Application will be handling Users
In general:
Stored Procedures will be used for all Data select, insert, update, delete operations
Cursors, Temporary tables etc. will not be used
From "my experience" it seems to be a similar load to what I managed as a simple business analyst at my previous company. We ran MS Great Plains and had a minimal amount of transactions per day. Since we could not directly alter the functionality of the application, we just maintained full daily backups and the normal maintenance plan created through the Maintenance Plan Wizard. Once everything was operational, I spent little to no time maintaining the databases. If a backup failed, I ran the job again and it either failed again and I debugged... Or it magically completed the second time. Occasionally we had to shrink the transaction log because of some large imports of data. I now know that there were more appropriate ways to handle it, but I'm pretty sure they still do that and it did not cause performance issues for the 3 years I was working with it. I would say no more than 1 hour a month (if that) if all they are doing is maintaining the backups and the application does not grow the t-log unpredictably. It will really depend on how well your application uses the database engine.
Jared
CE - Microsoft
April 11, 2012 at 4:52 pm
Don't ask me why but around a couple of hours a month was my gut feeling!
Any interest in doing this remotely?? (for a small fee of course:-))
April 11, 2012 at 4:55 pm
dec_obrien (4/11/2012)
Don't ask me why but around a couple of hours a month was my gut feeling!Any interest in doing this remotely?? (for a small fee of course:-))
I'm in Chicago, but absolutely! Go ahead and private message me if you are serious 🙂
Jared
CE - Microsoft
April 11, 2012 at 6:09 pm
SQLKnowItAll (4/11/2012)
dec_obrien (4/11/2012)
Don't ask me why but around a couple of hours a month was my gut feeling!Any interest in doing this remotely?? (for a small fee of course:-))
I'm in Chicago, but absolutely! Go ahead and private message me if you are serious 🙂
If you need a backup, I'm in Colorado Springs, I'll help out when needed. Just drop me a PM also.
April 12, 2012 at 2:48 am
Thanks Lynn
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