July 8, 2014 at 9:48 am
Based on the description below on average how many hours a month would it take to monitor and maintain the MSSQL Server databases?
Desciption of IT infrastructure.
All Windows Servers and MSSQL Servers are up to date on patches and best practices.
Corporate site with 3 remote sites.
All remote sites have one DC and one MSSQL Server.
The corporate site has one MSSQL Server.
Replication is performed between the remote MSSQL databases and the corporate office MSSQL database.
There is no in-house DBA. All DBA services will have to be outsourced. I am trying to determine what is reasonable in budgeting for time involved for this service.
There is one project written in MS Access using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) with the backend residing on these databases. Any comments about the pros and cons of the programming languages used will be appreciated.
The question is on average approximately how many hours a month would it take to monitor and maintain the health of the MSSQL Servers database by a MSSQL DBA. The DBA will not have to create any user reporting, queries, etc. Just maintain the existing MSSQL Servers database.
Thank you in advance for any response.
July 8, 2014 at 10:47 am
I'd say it depends on what else you expect from the individual or company providing you with the offsite monitoring services. Monitoring is just one aspect of what is needed. There is also the reporting requirements of the individual or company. What do you expect them to do if alerts fire. What type of response time will the individual or company have to respond to those alerts? What actions are the to take? Do they simply report them to you and you deal with the issue(s) or do they respond and deal with the issues?
Giving you a SWAG, if I were to make a very generic offer, maybe 2 hours per day, and that would actually be 7 days a week not 5 unless you don't care what happens over the weekend.
That doesn't cover responding to issues, nor include any response time to alerts.
July 8, 2014 at 11:05 am
Lynn:
Thank you for the fast response.
Here are the answers to your questions:
What do you expect them to do if alerts fire?
Resolve the issue.
What type of response time will the individual or company have to respond to those alerts?
There is no defined response time other than what is considered reasonable.
What actions are they to take?
Do they simply report them to you and you deal with the issue(s) or do they respond and deal with the issues?
They will be responsible to fix all issues that come up, apply patches, and keep best practices.
You said maybe 2 hours per day. Could you provide me with some idea as to what they would do during the two hours and why they would have to spend this time each day?
Thanks
July 8, 2014 at 11:11 am
In addition to what Lynn has shared, the answer depends on:
how good the DBA is at automating things
are you willing to put into place and pay for a third-party monitoring package.
Do you expect the DBA to analyze and fix code if deadlocks are occurring?
Do you expect to the DBA to performance tune queries
Frankly, if all you expect is the DBA to keep things up and running, once monitoring is in place and tasks are automated I'd say less than 2 hours a day because for the most part they should be checking a dashboard in the morning that has no issues and then answering SSC questions the rest of the day.
Jack Corbett
Consultant - Straight Path Solutions
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July 8, 2014 at 11:36 am
Jack
Here are the answers to your questions.
How good is the DBA is at automating things?
Unknown at this point but supposedly very good.
Are you willing to put into place and pay for a third-party monitoring package.
A third party monitoring package is in place for the Windows Network but not specifically for SQL databases.
Do you expect the DBA to analyze and fix code if deadlocks are occurring?
No, the code if from a third party. Just notification that deadlocks are an issue.
Do you expect to the DBA to performance tune queries
No, this would be up to the third party that provides the application software.
What do you mean by "SSC questions"?
Could you provide me with some idea as to what the DBA would do during the day and why they would have to spend this time each day?
I noticed that you are an application developer. Do you have comments on the pros or cons of an application written in Access and Visual Basic for Applications using MSSQL as the backend database?
Thanks
July 8, 2014 at 11:55 am
hmbtx (7/8/2014)
What do you mean by "SSC questions"?
Questions posted on SQLServerCentral
Could you provide me with some idea as to what the DBA would do during the day and why they would have to spend this time each day?
Based on what you have answered they wouldn't have to do a whole lot to keep 4 SQL Servers running. A DBA could be checking current performance against baselines, but that isn't something you'd do constantly. As I said in my first response. The DBA would come in the morning, check the dashboard they'd built to verify jobs ran successfully, backups are good (assuming automated restore processes are in place), and that there are no outstanding alerts. I'd be looking at longest running queries and tuning them, but you said those duties don't apply. They could research ways to speed up backups and reduce space.
I noticed that you are an application developer. Do you have comments on the pros or cons of an application written in Access and Visual Basic for Applications using MSSQL as the backend database?
It's been about 15 years since I worked with Access and VBA as a front end to SQL Server. It works, but I think you can get more flexibility and functionality by using a true development language like C# or VB.NET. Also you don't have to have a license for Access for every user if you use a .NET language. As with any application the way it is architected matters more than the actual platform used. You can write a really poorly performing application on any platform.
Jack Corbett
Consultant - Straight Path Solutions
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July 8, 2014 at 12:00 pm
Jack:
Based on the updated information how many hours per day and how many days per week do you believe the DBA would have to spend in maintaining the databases?
Thanks
July 8, 2014 at 12:42 pm
It sounds as if you are considering outsourcing your DBA activities, and are trying to determine if their estimate / proposal is a fair one.
A few things to think about:
Almost any outsourcing has a minimum time proposal. It's simply not worth their time to enter into a contract for 2 hours a week. So, if they are proposing 20 hours per server per month, that is probably not out of line.
You should not be comparing the amount of work vs. the time estimate provided. The comparison is how much would a full time employee DBA cost vs. the outsourced DBA.
They should have also provided a "menu" of what they are going to do on an ongoing basis. For example, there may be a 24/7 monitoring department with a 15 minute response time when certain types of events occur. There is some real value to this, and if this what is offered, it is worth a bit more.
Also, you typically do not get a single DBA when you outsource. You get a team of DBA's, each with separate sets of expertise. Again, the comparison needs to be a full time DBA vs. the outsourced DBA. A single DBA cannot be an "expert" on every possible subject that may arise.
Good luck!
Michael L John
If you assassinate a DBA, would you pull a trigger?
To properly post on a forum:
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/61537/
July 8, 2014 at 12:53 pm
Michael:
Thank you for your response.
You are correct in that I am trying to determine if their estimate / proposal is a fair one. I should have been clearer in my initial posting.
You said that they should have also provided a "menu" of what they are going to do on an ongoing basis.
Do you have any suggestions as to what should be on their "menu"?
Thanks
July 8, 2014 at 1:22 pm
The questions are:
What EXACTLY are they going to do in this time?
Do you get an initial assessment?
Do they provide ongoing metrics about your servers?
Do they make recommendations based upon their findings without you asking for help?
If they simply say "we monitor", then you need to ask what they monitor, and what they do when something appears wrong.
You can probably just read it here.
These folks are a DBA outsourcing firm.
Michael L John
If you assassinate a DBA, would you pull a trigger?
To properly post on a forum:
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/61537/
July 8, 2014 at 3:26 pm
Thank you to everyone who took the time to respond to my questions.
July 8, 2014 at 6:53 pm
As an employee of a company that does exactly this sort of service (remote outsourced DBA) I can tell you the things you should be looking for are:
1.) A thorough description of what the service entails - what monitoring will be put in place (scripts/programs/queries), what those things will be monitoring - i.e. what critical/error/warning conditions will they be looking for.
2.) How will it be monitored - will they just respond to automated alerts or will they spend time on a daily/weekly basis on your server performing manual checks in addition to the automated ones.
3.) How often will it be monitored - which checks will be weekly/daily/monthly etc.
4.) Will they provide you with any regular reporting (monthly/quarterly etc) detailing what issues were found during the period, how they were addressed and what additional preventative action was taken to ensure no recurrences.
5.) The credentials of the employees who will be monitoring your server - if you were employing someone in-house you would go over their resume thoroughly and whilst it's nice to trust the judgement of another organization that you are employing it's better to know that you have qualified and experienced people covering infrastructure that your business relies on.
In terms of the quote - remember it has to take into account not just how long it will take to run a query to check, but how long it takes to log into your systems in the first place, how long it takes to record details of what was found/what actions were taken, and time allocated to the periodic reporting. Typically our base monitoring package is 4 hours per server per week plus an additional fixed fee if the client expects out-of-hours response to alerts (otherwise they are dealt with next business day) and we find that adequate for ongoing monitoring. Generally we add some additional hours at the start to cater for time setting up/testing access, setting up the monitoring, incorporating it into our monthly reporting procedures etc.
[For the record I am in Australia, and based on your timezone you are not, so I am not trying to sell you my service - just trying to give you information from personal experience on what you should be looking for.]
July 9, 2014 at 8:37 am
Thank you for taking the time in providing me with an excellent and detailed response. This was very helpful.
Do you have a description of the services, monitoring, reports, etc. that your company provides that you could share?
July 9, 2014 at 12:18 pm
So far, I haven't seen much in this thread insofar as a "Business Continutiy Plan". Shoot... I don't even see anything about backups.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
July 10, 2014 at 2:45 am
Hi,
I'm not a DBA, but I manage the monitoring our 4 DB servers.
To do so, we invest in some monitoring tool (we use 'Red Gate SQL Monitor' as the pricing 'per server' was better for us than 'per instance').
Such a tool allows us to automate notification:
- jobs, long running query, deadlocks => get redirected directly to the team by email
- in addition, we have a dashboard
I know I do not answer your question, getting such a 'dashboard' is not the biggest part of the job. Fixing issue is and requires a more skilled DBA.
Hope this contribute to the discussion.
Regards,
Gilles
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