DSXchange

We are attempting to justify a full-time DataStage Admin position in our company. We currently have 6 full time developers, plus several part time developers. Admin duties are shared among the developers. We support hundreds of DS jobs/sequences that run daily, weekly, and monthly (even a few that run hourly).

Some of the areas that we need help with include:
* Setup and support deployment of IBM Datastage V8.1/V8.5 on IBM-AIX environment.
* Experience migrating between 8.1 and 8.5.
* Install/upgrade Information Server product suite on different tiers (Server and Client). This includes DataStage, QualityStage
InfoAnalyzer. Post install configuration.
* Analyze existing Infrastrucutre and DataStage jobs, ensuring best practices are being followed, and recommending short term and long term
improvement roadmap
* Implement procedures for maintenance, monitoring, backup, and recovery operations for the ETL environment.
* Reporting (daily, weekly, and monthly) on health and performance of the ETL environment and jobs.
* Infrastructure optimization, troubleshooting, and debugging.
* Apply fixes, patches and Service Packs as required and provided, keeping the DS environment up-to-date.
* Maintain ownership of release activities which interact with ETL projects. Work with Prod Support to maintain and administer the ETL deployment environment.
* Strong knowledge of IBM-AIX operating systems and Websphere application servers.
* Provide off-hours support
* Provide technical expertise, direction, and development support for the ETL development team as well as support to the developers

We would like to know how other companies are handling the DS Admin role, and would be very grateful for any information you may be able to provide. Things such as:
Who does the DS Admin duties at your company?
What do these duties include?
Where in the organization does this role fit, i.e. is it on the same team as development?

Please note: This is not a job posting. We are just trying to understand how other shops are handling the DataStage Admin Role.

You have listed probably all the DS admin activities.

I would add coordinating with UNIX admins and DBAs. Need to escalate issues to other admins when issue outside of DataStage. Need to isolate issue to either DataStage or external products like databases.

I would also add:

• communicating with IBM support (or your official support provider if that's not IBM) and maintaining local records of support requests (and responses), APARs, quick fixes, patches, etc., that apply to your site
  
  periodically reviewing Fix Central to determine whether there are any patches, etc., that are applicable to your version
  
  liaison with your organization's data governance committee and data stewards
  
  awareness of future releases and recommendation to organization about the value and best timing for upgrade

I prefer having a dedicated DataStage Admin but it might not always be justified. But having a new datastage installation and/or a large team will increase the need of having one.

Not having a dedicated admin makes some of the duties mentioned above reactive instead of proactive for example installing patches.

Just go through each activity of admin mentioned above and think, how often you need that and you will get your answer.

My team currently have 5 dedicated admins and I still don't have enough.

How large is your team, Paul?

*point the the number 5 *

3 regulars and 2 contractors.

OK... wasn't asking how many admins you had but rather how large of a team of developers those five admins covered.

hmmm... not exactly sure how many developers we have. Hard to tell. I know how many registered user ids we have, but those guys come and go and don't let me know. I have 65ish projects in DEV, about 42 in PROD. 7000 or so jobs in PROD. We run about 12,000 jobs each day. 1800 per hour at our current noticed peek.

8.0.1, 8.1.2.1 and 8.5 environments set up.


If you're heading to IOD this year, swing by my session. I get to be a speaker this year.

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