September 10, 2009 at 3:18 am
Hi,
At my current company I'm one of those 'involuntary DBAs'. Someone who has be thrust into the role as there was a need for it...any they didn't want to spend anymore money hiring someone knew!!
I enjoy the role, but want to bench mark myself against the rest of the industry.
What constitutes a small/medium/large sql server infrastructure? No. of servers, size of databases, no of users?
Could I have examples of what you support?
Thanks in advance, Paul
September 10, 2009 at 4:04 am
Paul Monaghan (9/10/2009)
Hi,At my current company I'm one of those 'involuntary DBAs'. Someone who has be thrust into the role as there was a need for it...any they didn't want to spend anymore money hiring someone knew!!
I enjoy the role, but want to bench mark myself against the rest of the industry.
What constitutes a small/medium/large sql server infrastructure? No. of servers, size of databases, no of users?
Could I have examples of what you support?
Thanks in advance, Paul
Quite an interesting topic. I can only say what I have done in the past.
based on number of servers
1-100 small
101-500 medium
501+ large
size of databases is irrelevant in my opinion but normally between 1GB and 1TB
you missed out on number of databases or number of databases per server, but on average 30 databases per server at some roles.
I have worked in a team of 4 supporting about 600 servers with just only 50 production servers alone hosting about 1500 databases between them, not counting the other 550 servers.
users from about 100 to about 5k+
It is all relative basically, just had to argue the point with one of my collegues :-P, what some would consider large, others would consider small. I have been a sole DBA before looking after about 65 servers before and that is managable. but once you introduce mirroring/clustering/replication for example a small estate could be extremely complex to manage and be the cornerstone of the business. most companies I have worked for have about 50-100ish servers, split between test/dev/production and I think that is probably the average in the uk, unless you are talking about big blue chip companies.
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September 10, 2009 at 9:01 am
Silverfox (9/10/2009)
Paul Monaghan (9/10/2009)
Hi,At my current company I'm one of those 'involuntary DBAs'. Someone who has be thrust into the role as there was a need for it...any they didn't want to spend anymore money hiring someone knew!!
I enjoy the role, but want to bench mark myself against the rest of the industry.
What constitutes a small/medium/large sql server infrastructure? No. of servers, size of databases, no of users?
Could I have examples of what you support?
Thanks in advance, Paul
Quite an interesting topic. I can only say what I have done in the past.
based on number of servers
1-100 small
101-500 medium
501+ large
size of databases is irrelevant in my opinion but normally between 1GB and 1TB
I generally agree with you, but I think there's a cutoff somewhere (call it >1 TB, since that's the number I usually see for "VLDB" status) where size of the DB starts being particularly noteworthy. Or, perhaps, once you get into table sizes such that the number of rows exceeds the size of the key hash space, so you're guaranteed to get primary key collisions...
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Twitter: @Control_Group
September 10, 2009 at 10:45 am
Interesting question, and based on the intial response I am interested in what others say about this because their numbers are higher than i would have guess (I guess I am a smaller fish than I hoped :-D).
I would have said if you have over a 100 servers you are in an enormous sql shop. I have been doing this 10 years and I have never talked to anyone with that many sql servers, and have never personally worked with that many. Most may not even of had that many servers in total let alone sql specific. I would have said a break down for sql server count to be more like
50 = large
As far as the database quantity, it varies based on the style of the server and such. I have one cluster that we went over the 100 db count last week. I have another more critical server that has a single database. The quantity of dbs on a given server is usually dependent on the sla, transaction volume, etc. I would agree that an average is probably around the 30db or less size.
I also agree with the point of the complexity of the setup with clustering, mirroring, etc also affects the quality of dba. Having a bunch of sql express installs or dev boxes is usually less stress than a cluster with mirroring and a witness thats processing millions of transactions.
September 11, 2009 at 8:47 am
Thanks for your responses. I feel like a tiny fish in comparison!:-)
The license cost of the 500+ must be phenomenal. We are per processor licensing with Standard edition. Even the cost of that drew sharp intakes of breath.
September 11, 2009 at 8:57 am
I think you also need to add complexity into the mix.
Managing a large number of servers that do nothing but respond to client applications is comparatively easy.
Add replication, clustering, database mirroring, Service Broker, reporting services, Analysis Services, CLR, SSIS, SANS (have I missed anything?) and things become more complex even with a lot fewer servers.
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