InstantForum.NET v2.9.0SQLServerCentralhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/notifications@sqlservercentral.comSun, 26 May 2013 00:04:00 GMT20http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic809063-263-1.aspxThis works well with Tony's DBW editorial on tuning.The less you write good code, the more DBAs needed.We will never get away from admins. We might have less / GB of data, but we will always need DBAs to manage things.Sun, 01 Nov 2009 10:55:22 GMTSteve Jones - SSC Editorhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic809063-263-1.aspx[quote][b]GSquared (10/29/2009)[/b][hr]Also, the number of servers per DBA will vary depending on what they are used for. A server that is purely overnight ETL and reporting is much easier to manage and maintain (in my experience) than one that's getting hit by thousands of transactions per second of OLTP activity from a dozen applications.[/quote]Heh... I used to believe in that very same thing. However, the reporting and ETL methods used in the last 2 companies have been absolute server crushing PITA POS's. Users asking for the "last year" or even the "last 3 years" worth of report using code that can barely handle a month... ETL that was constructed by presentation layer experts... Ton's of embedded SQL made by those same folks. On the other hand, it has been fun to fix those things and it has cause me a fair amount of good employment. :-DFri, 30 Oct 2009 22:18:20 GMTJeff Modenhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic809063-263-1.aspx[quote][b]jjarupan (10/27/2009)[/b][hr]Backup, Update stats,DBCC, shrink the file, restart service etc, all done by jobs by the server itself or from monitoring server.All can be done by set one computer as monitoring server.All update can be done automatically by the network process.[u]IMHO, reply to the question, How many DBAs Does it take to manage infrastructure? It should be 0 (zero) in nearly future.[/u][b]No need DBA for infrastructure in the future.[/b](Some Company still needs Database Developer for the future).It is possible, let Network guy install server and SQL server. Monitoring Server can detect the new server, install all jobs automatically by itself.[/quote]Yes, and COBOL is the wave of the programming future, because it will eliminate the need for businesses to hire programmers, since the managers will be able to do it all themselves!Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:36:29 GMTGSquaredhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic809063-263-1.aspx[quote][b]skelly-806234 (10/27/2009)[/b][hr]There's no way you can come up with even a ballpark number of DBA's per server. With the right tools, a well set up infrastructure, reliable networks and well written applications, a single DBA could support a very large number. But if the network is flaky and the apps are dodgy, and there's no investment in monitoring and response tools, even a single server can become a handful.I think a better question would be to ask what a DBA needs to be able to manage a large number of servers well?[/quote]Gotta agree with this one.Also, the number of servers per DBA will vary depending on what they are used for. A server that is purely overnight ETL and reporting is much easier to manage and maintain (in my experience) than one that's getting hit by thousands of transactions per second of OLTP activity from a dozen applications.Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:32:55 GMTGSquaredhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic809063-263-1.aspx[quote][b]Tim Mitchell (10/28/2009)[/b][hr][quote][b]jjarupan (10/27/2009)[/b][hr][u]IMHO, reply to the question, How many DBAs Does it take to manage infrastructure? It should be 0 (zero) in nearly future.[/u][b]No need DBA for infrastructure in the future.[/b](Some Company still needs Database Developer for the future).It is possible, let Network guy install server and SQL server. Monitoring Server can detect the new server, install all jobs automatically by itself.[/quote]Sure, in a perfect world, database systems would administer themselves, install themselves, optimize themselves, and secure themselves. It is true that these tasks have been made easier, to the point that one database engineer can administer more instances than he/she could a decade ago, but I don't believe they will ever completely replace the need for database folks.[/quote]I agree absolutely Tim, Database Administration in the REAL world is never just as simple as your first sentence states, and anyone that thinks so is just being a little naive...There will always be a need for production DBA's...years of knowledge and experience is never an automated thing...Thu, 29 Oct 2009 05:49:36 GMTTravisDBAhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic809063-263-1.aspxBWAA-HAAA... I didn't read the quote in your response, Tim... I just read your response and thought you misunderstood me. It's funny how all that worked out. Me? I've got to start reading the entire post before I respond. Please pass the coffee... :-DWed, 28 Oct 2009 22:35:04 GMTJeff Modenhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic809063-263-1.aspxHey Jeff, I was on to your sarcasm :) I was aiming a little further north of your reply. There was a previous post that appeared to seriously suggest that, in the future, the network guy would install SQL Server, after which the databases would apparently manifest and monitor themselves. Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:30:12 GMTTim Mitchellhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic809063-263-1.aspxHeh... sorry, Tim... my post was meant to be a wee bit ironic (ok... I really mean sarcastic to the max :-D). ;-) There are so many companies with a lot of servers in desperate need of attention yet these companies think a bunch of well meaning Java or C programmers can handle it because the companies know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:18:06 GMTJeff Modenhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic809063-263-1.aspx[quote][b]jjarupan (10/27/2009)[/b][hr][u]IMHO, reply to the question, How many DBAs Does it take to manage infrastructure? It should be 0 (zero) in nearly future.[/u][b]No need DBA for infrastructure in the future.[/b](Some Company still needs Database Developer for the future).It is possible, let Network guy install server and SQL server. Monitoring Server can detect the new server, install all jobs automatically by itself.[/quote]Sure, in a perfect world, database systems would administer themselves, install themselves, optimize themselves, and secure themselves. It is true that these tasks have been made easier, to the point that one database engineer can administer more instances than he/she could a decade ago, but I don't believe they will ever completely replace the need for database folks.Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:05:51 GMTTim Mitchellhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic809063-263-1.aspxHeh... if the infrastructure is setup correctly, the correct answer is.... none.... the servers will take care of themselves and on the rare occasion that they can't, they'll call someone who can. ;-)Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:28:25 GMTJeff Modenhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic809063-263-1.aspx[quote][b]crookj (10/28/2009)[/b][hr]I am also in agreement that you cannot put numbers to it. I would say that you need enough to get the job done without burning out the DBAs that work on it. A point that some managers fail to comprehend is that DBAs are human too. A well rested and happy DBA is worth -IMHO- at least 2 or 3 burnt out versions. Just so readers do not get the wrong opinion - I am extremely happy with my current situation, but, I have been on the other side of the fence in my career.Joe[/quote]I definitely agree, but I would also add that when database emergencies happen in most shops, realistically most department managers don't even think about this. All they care about is getting the site back online as soon as possible, and if that means the DBA has to work all night to make that happen then they are not concerned about the human factor or burning out a DBA at that point. They are primarily concerned with not getting their tails chewed out from the CIO or CEO above them...Been there done that many times....Managers don't tend to think DBA's are that important until they don't have access to their data anymore...You don't tend to see them until an emergency happens. Then the DBA is the most important person in the company at that point..... :)Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:37:15 GMTTravisDBAhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic809063-263-1.aspxI am also in agreement that you cannot put numbers to it. I would say that you need enough to get the job done without burning out the DBAs that work on it. A point that some managers fail to comprehend is that DBAs are human too. A well rested and happy DBA is worth -IMHO- at least 2 or 3 burnt out versions. Just so readers do not get the wrong opinion - I am extremely happy with my current situation, but, I have been on the other side of the fence in my career.JoeWed, 28 Oct 2009 12:25:57 GMTcrookjhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic809063-263-1.aspxthe last post was a very succinct and accurate analysis of what a lot of DBAs face. I know I came into a SQL infrastructure left by the previous DBA. His last day was Friday and my first day was Monday after. There was little doucmentation, a mix of third party and internally developed applications, no standard monitoring and many dev teams all deploying code in different and non-standard ways. Space was a constant issue and still is in many ways because there was little capacity planning. When you take it all in, the DBA may not have the ultimate say on how changes will be implemented. They can offer advise, code review, standards and best practices but often, unless coming from higher up, it falls on deaf ears. Many SQL developers do not want DBAs to review their code. Many do however, and it ultimately ends up at that, a team effort where everyone offers their knowledge to the betterment of the processes and people that you see everyday. The alternative is to be a consultant I presume. I don't know if I want that. Too much dang travel.Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:22:50 GMTRodney Landrumhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic809063-263-1.aspx[quote][b]skelly-806234 (10/27/2009)[/b][hr]There's no way you can come up with even a ballpark number of DBA's per server. With the right tools, a well set up infrastructure, reliable networks and well written applications, a single DBA could support a very large number. But if the network is flaky and the apps are dodgy, and there's no investment in monitoring and response tools, even a single server can become a handful.I think a better question would be to ask what a DBA needs to be able to manage a large number of servers well?[/quote]I absolutely agree. It all depends on the factors you state....Even one critical db server can be a constant handful if it is just a design nightmare...A lot depends on what you as the dba inherit when you take on the new job and the environment...and a lot of times the people that created the entire mess in the first place are long gone anyway so you are stuck with cleanng it all up and getting it organized and automated...So the sooner you get started the better your daily life is going to be in the long run...Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:00:21 GMTTravisDBAhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic809063-263-1.aspx[quote][b]skelly-806234 (10/27/2009)[/b][hr]There's no way you can come up with even a ballpark number of DBA's per server. With the right tools, a well set up infrastructure, reliable networks and well written applications, a single DBA could support a very large number. But if the network is flaky and the apps are dodgy, and there's no investment in monitoring and response tools, even a single server can become a handful.I think a better question would be to ask what a DBA needs to be able to manage a large number of servers well?[/quote]I think you might have a point there..CEWIITue, 27 Oct 2009 18:48:11 GMTElliott Whitlowhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic809063-263-1.aspxThere's no way you can come up with even a ballpark number of DBA's per server. With the right tools, a well set up infrastructure, reliable networks and well written applications, a single DBA could support a very large number. But if the network is flaky and the apps are dodgy, and there's no investment in monitoring and response tools, even a single server can become a handful.I think a better question would be to ask what a DBA needs to be able to manage a large number of servers well?Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:06:00 GMTskelly-806234http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic809063-263-1.aspxI am the DBA for about 25 servers which are a combination of production and test systems some of which are physical machines and some are in a virtual environment. Seven of these servers are Oracle database servers and four are used in two SQL Server clusters. I was the first, and have been the only DBA here and learned everything I know over the last ten years from the 'school of hard knocks' and through Oracle and Microsoft training classes. I was hired as a systems analyst and took the DBA postilion when the position was created. Fortunately, all of our applications are 'canned' so I do very little developer related work and perform mostly production DBA tasks. I could use some help 'cause I don't always get to check all my servers every day, but there is no way they will hire another DBA here (we are a local government). It is not all that bad, while I am on call 24/7, I have gotten things to the point where I don't get called much at all and as long as I stay on top of things I get very few 'surprises'.Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:43:00 GMTkwitzellhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic809063-263-1.aspxI read one person suggest having one server monitor them all, which in general is good, BUT, you still need to have something monitor the monitor server, at least a little bit. I mean if you regularly get notified of things and then all of a sudden don't, you might not notice it for a while, even if the secondary monitoring is just are the services running and responding should be probably good enough..I keep reading this in the posts.. Bad/poor/no infrastructure and change control = Lots of DBA bad days..CEWIITue, 27 Oct 2009 09:22:31 GMTElliott Whitlowhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic809063-263-1.aspxWe only have 8 sql servers and 2 dba's. We would be better off with only 1 dba and 1 database developer. I am a little bored with so little to maintain. I came from a shop with 50 sql servers with 2 dba's and 4 database developers, this was much better. Right now my biggest challenge is to stay busy and keep learning new stuff.Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:13:37 GMTPatrick Cahillhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic809063-263-1.aspxWe had a similar setup to AJs when I was at JD Edwards. Production instances, almost all 1 instance / physical server, were in the 200-300 range. Two DBAs.We also helped support some development environments at times as well. We weren't slammed most of the time, but it was constant tinkering, monitoring, making sure that the stuff we'd set up to alert us ahead of time was working. And of course, something is always broken with 100s of instances.Tue, 27 Oct 2009 07:31:48 GMTSteve Jones - SSC Editorhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic809063-263-1.aspxIt is depending on the company.My past experience was monitoring 40 servers by myself(in Healthcare Industry), now ~ 300 servers all over US (in Financial service) by only 2 DBAs but mainly all maintenance job monitors by myself the other is senior DBA ( mainly in Application).For monitor ~300 servers, it is very easy by a script and let it pages us when it has the problem.Big problem always comes from a disk problem, need to change server and pretty much we have all backup files and some database files to recover.Backup, Update stats,DBCC, shrink the file, restart service etc, all done by jobs by the server itself or from monitoring server.All can be done by set one computer as monitoring server.All update can be done automatically by the network process.[u]IMHO, reply to the question, How many DBAs Does it take to manage infrastructure? It should be 0 (zero) in nearly future.[/u][b]No need DBA for infrastructure in the future.[/b](Some Company still needs Database Developer for the future).It is possible, let Network guy install server and SQL server. Monitoring Server can detect the new server, install all jobs automatically by itself.Tue, 27 Oct 2009 07:16:14 GMTjjarupanhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic809063-263-1.aspxIn my post I'm referring to physical servers. We only ever install 1 instance of SQL Server per server. Oracle is a little different.Another thing I must mention is that many of these servers are DR servers. All of our live servers are mirrored between sites either through using Database mirroring, log shipping or running LIVE/LIVE.Tue, 27 Oct 2009 06:28:28 GMTSQL_EXPAThttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic809063-263-1.aspxI assume you're counting a server as an instance of sql server? Thus one physical computer might have several sql servers?Tue, 27 Oct 2009 06:05:20 GMTWayneShttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic809063-263-1.aspxI have a team of 4 DBAs - 2 SQL and 2 Oracle. We manage administer: 270 SQL Servers -dev, test, UAT and production70 Oracle on Linux servers - dev, test, UAT and productionSo, thats 135 servers/SQL DBA and 35/Oracle DBA.The only we we can achieve this is by working 24x7 and not taking any sick days or vacation :-D.But, seriously, we achieve this through standardising on builds, monitoring scripts and alerting. Most of our servers are exactly the same in configuration. When we perform tasks we always do it on server groups not individual servers. Strict change management also helps here.We're helped to a degree by a seperate infrastructure team who builds the servers and a tier 1 support team who respond to alerts. Also, many of our servers are commodity, 'scale-out' servers so even the databases are exactly the same.Oracle DBAs perform secondary support to SQL and Vice Versa.Its pretty tough and we could do with a couple more DBAs but the budget aint there. Its the 'new normal' i.e. doing more with less.In a previous post at a gaming company who solely used SQL Server the ratio was 10:1 - we had 10 DBAs and about 120 servers to manage. In hindsight this was overkill and I only realise now how much you can save by standardisng kit and unifying your processes instead of adding more and more DBAs.Tue, 27 Oct 2009 05:31:13 GMTSQL_EXPAThttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic809063-263-1.aspx[quote][b]Elliott W (10/26/2009)[/b][hr]I think this depends greatly on the infrastructure you have in place. If you don't have a good infrstructure the number of servers that any single DBA can handle is greatly diminished. Just think about patching, how many servers can you patch at once manually? I can think of all kinds of monitoring that you might need.. But just off the of my head..1. Services running, SQL and Agent.2. Services active, SQL responds to logins, Agent is running jobs.3. Errorlog is monitored for issues.Any other thoughts?CEWII[/quote]I agree, this does tend to depend in what shape your infrastructure is in to begin with. Automated morning reporting on nightly backup routine status, errorlog checking, failed jobs, blocked or blocking processes, phyical disk alerts, etc. goes along way here to extend this number of servers a DBA can easily handle, at least it does for me anyway. Also, now with the release of SQL 2008 the DBA now has at his disposal two new features known as CMS (Central Management Servers) and PBM (Policy Based Management) that allow the DBA to deal with and maintain multiple db servers as a collective unit or group. Instead of having to deal with each of them individually. But of course, you need to get all of this in place first, and that can take some time to do. Not to mention that you might have to put out some major fires beforehand and get your infrastructure under control even before implementing automation and central management. However, the nice thing about this needed front work though is once you got it setup and organized once, then you are golden. Your daily admiistrator life immediately starts to get better, trust me. Adding servers to this mix after that point is a piece of cake. It is definitely worth the effort IMHO. It just all depends on what shape your production db servers are in and this tends to varies widely from company to company in my past experience. :) I have seen some DBA's that have not got the 10 db servers that they are reponsible for organized and automated, and they end up chasing their tails all day long never really getting much accomplished. Then I have seen other DBA's that got 50+ db servers nice and automated, centralized, and organized and manage them quite well, with plenty of time to spare....and not to mention what your boss will think come evaluation time...Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:37:46 GMTTravisDBAhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic809063-263-1.aspxI think this depends greatly on the infrastructure you have in place. If you don't have a good infrstructure the number of servers that any single DBA can handle is greatly diminished. Just think about patching, how many servers can you patch at once manually? I can think of all kinds of monitoring that you might need.. But just off the of my head..1. Services running, SQL and Agent.2. Services active, SQL responds to logins, Agent is running jobs.3. Errorlog is monitored for issues.Any other thoughts?CEWIIMon, 26 Oct 2009 23:21:11 GMTElliott Whitlowhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic809063-263-1.aspxComments posted to this topic are about the item [B]<A HREF="/articles/Editorial/68578/">The DBA Dilemma: How Many DBAs Does It Take to Manage an Infrastructure?</A>[/B]Mon, 26 Oct 2009 21:00:02 GMTRodney Landrum