A few years ago I worked for a company and we had 2 DBA's. We both did other things and it was about half time work for each of us. As a saving the company decided to make one of us redundant and have only one DBA.

This was fine until the one DBA was sick or on holiday. We always planned our holidays so only one of us was off at any one time.

It came to a crisis when the DBA who was left, I was made redundant actually decided to leave and they had no DBA. He actually went back to Australia at two weeks notice.

Part of the vacation dilemma is companies are trying to save money all the time and hence cut what they see as an unnecessary overhead. Staff on the whole want to do a good job and work extra time to ensure that they do.

In my current role I am the only SQL specialist and if I am not available there is a big issue. Management do not seem to want to spend the money on staff or for that matter DR. There seems to be an attitude of do I need that just to keep going. The service we provide is business critical but this is still not seen as worth protecting. I am sure someone gets a bigger bonus because of this saving but it is not me.