How do you know if you have the right number of database administrators (DBAs) on staff to properly take care of your environment? All your organization’s databases need to be kept operational and properly tuned, which probably requires around the clock operations. Yet with today’s budgets, fewer on-staff database administrators means lower budget costs, so many organizations run with a minimal number of DBAs on staff.
How many DBAs you need, I can’t tell you, though I’ve been asked many times. Each organization is different, with different policies, procedures, and politics. Each database platform is different, with different learning curves, abilities, strengths, tools, and, shall we say, attitudes. Each managed database environment is different in terms of number of databases, platforms, users, applications, database size, availability commitments, consequences of downtime, and performance obligations.
Most, if not all, organizations have multiple database platforms to support, which requires either few staff with multiple expertise or multiple staff with unique expertise.
You need to ask yourself if an overworked, unprepared or shorthanded DBA staff will make mistakes or not have the time to address things that might cause downtime, poor performance, lack of ample 24×7 coverage, delayed response to issues, or other problems. How much does any downtime cost your business in relation to the DBAs’ salary portion of the budget? I guess that’s what you really need to ask.
Depending on your specific requirements, maybe what you need to ensure you have enough DBAs doesn’t need to be the addition of full-time staff DBAs. Since 1999, the Virtual-DBA remote database administration service from XTIVIA has been successfully helping organizations in your predicament meet their DBA staffing needs while also saving money. We can provide a team of DBAs that has access and familiarity with your environment and that is available when you need them so you may not need to add full-time resources. We currently provide services for Virtual-DBA for Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, IBM DB2 UDB, MySQL and Informix.
Perhaps you can offload the mundane tasks of checking logs, monitoring resources and keeping a watch on the systems around the clock to our Virtual-DBA team and let your staff focus on growing your business. Maybe you can have our Virtual-DBA team available when you need some extra hands on deck to respond to issues, handle new projects, be available when your team isn’t (vacation, training, illness), or provide some expertise on that database platform that no one on your staff knows so well or wants to touch.
Since every organization is different, how we fit into every organization is unique. That’s why one of the first things we do with any new client is sit down and understand what our team’s role is going to be in their organization. The service is customizable in regards to monitoring and support levels so you pay only for those services you want or need.
Contact us and we will go over all the details with you so you can decide if we can meet your needs and save you some money.