Re: 1 DBA in a company

  • From: "Mark Brinsmead" <pythianbrinsmead@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: howard.latham@xxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 31 Aug 2008 11:40:47 -0400

I've really been trying to avoid responding to this thread, as some will
doubtless find such a shameless plug as the one I am about to provide to be
in poor taste.

<brazen-promotion>
There are many companies out there that provide services for people in just
such situations (one which I too have found myself in in the past).  My own
employer, The Pythian Group (http://www.pythian.com), is quite happy to
provide exactly this kind of service -- "backup" and on-call support for
shops with only one or two in-house DBAs.  Or Sysadmins.

Working a solo act?  Want to be able to sleep a night?  Or have a vacation
that takes you more than a 1-hour travel radius from the office?  Like to
put your pager away for at least a few hours a week?  Rent-a-DBA services
can be exactly the right answer.

Nobody (that I know of) offers services like this for free, of course.  But
they don't have to be outrageously expensive, either.  Pythian, for example,
operates on a pay-as-you-go model (based on hourly rates; no per-database or
per-server fees) with minimum commitments of as little as 16 hours per
month.  (Be careful with those minima, though.  That's only two person days
per month; how much work can *you* accomplish, and how many pages can
*you*resolve in only two working days?)

I'm sure that if you shop around, you'll likely find other providers, too.
But none, I am sure, are as good as we are.  ;-)

The Pythian Group happens to support Oracle, SQL Server, and MySQL
databases, and we provide Linux (UNIX) sysadmin.  Heck. I think we might
even do (shudder) Windows, although happily I do not.  :-)   We also provide
24x7 pager support.
</brazen-promotion>

Seriously folks, if you find yourself working as a solo act, you really *
should* consider a backup service.  Not all are created equal, so choose
carefully.  But when you choose a good one you *can* get many of the things
that people posting on this thread find they lack when working solo:

   - Somebody to mind the pager at night (and on weekends).
   - Somebody to bounce ideas off of, or who you can go to for second
   opinions.
   - Somebody to cover your (real!) vacation.
   - Somebody to help cover the occasional gap in your experience.  (And
   let's be realistic; *nobody* knows *everything* about Oracle!)


On Sun, Aug 31, 2008 at 6:16 AM, Howard Latham <howard.latham@xxxxxxxxx>wrote:

> Course I forgot _ i'm also the only Linux SYSADMIN - I do have nightmares!
>
>
> On 25/08/2008, BHoff@xxxxxxxx <BHoff@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> That's basically where I am - I can usually manage everything, but it
>> would be great to have at least one other DBA here to just bounce things
>> off of and get someone to challenge my ideas - that's how I get better
>>
>> I try to replace that with lists like this one, but the one problem with
>> being subscribed to a handful of lists like these is the sheer volume of
>> e-mails that I just do not have the time to sort through until the
>> weekend... which usually means I do not benefit from the conversation at
>> hand at the moment.
>>
>> Does anyone else use the lists like that? Are there any good forums that
>> you would recommend?
>>
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Brad
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>
>> [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Dwayne Cox
>> Sent: Friday, August 22, 2008 10:15 AM
>> To: jeremiah@xxxxxxxxxxx
>> Cc: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>
>> Subject: Re: 1 DBA in a company
>>
>>
>>
>> > Being the only DBA in an organization is difficult for more reasons
>> than just time off.  Most people learn by collaboration, and bounce
>> ideas off each other.  With no exchange, you can often find yourself
>> with nobody to provide a sanity check, especially in critical
>> situations.
>> >
>> I have learned to deal with being the lone DBA but not having someone to
>>
>> bounce ideas off has been the biggest disadvantage for me.
>>
>> dwayne
>>
>>
>> --
>> //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l
>>
>>
>> --
>> //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Howard A. Latham
>



-- 
Cheers,
-- Mark Brinsmead
Senior DBA,
The Pythian Group
http://www.pythian.com/blogs

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