As businesses around the world see their IT budgets rising due to ever-growing server numbers and running costs, many are looking for innovative ways to freeze or shrink their expenses.
One of the most often overlooked expenses for any business is staff inefficiency. This doesn’t necessarily mean having too many staff, or letting some go, but finding ways to make them more productive in the office so that more work can be done in a shorter time.
Database management and monitoring tools are a great way to achieve this with DBAs and IT teams. In this article, we’ll take a look at a few ways that the right database tools can enable DBAs to do a better job and be more productive.
Automating Workflows
One of the most simple ways to reduce the amount of work that needs doing by DBAs is to automate parts of their workflow. Automating routine tasks like maintenance and backups, monitoring with real-time alerts, and automatic report production can be handled by database tools to allow DBAs to focus on other jobs.
With DBAs relieved from handling simple repetitive tasks, like regular server maintenance and monitoring, they can spend their time on more productive and valuable jobs. Any job that can be automated to save time can lead to lower staffing costs as teams can be smaller and urgent jobs completed quicker.
Time-Saving Tools
A common complaint by many DBAs is that expanding server platforms, versions and numbers means learning to use a large number of tools and software suites to help manage them. The growth in the amount of software needed not only complicates the server management process, slowing down a DBA’s workflow, but also means more time is needed for regular training.
Database management and monitoring tools designed to work specifically with multiple platforms and scalable server infrastructures can help with this. By providing one clear view that displays all of a business’s servers and gives all of the relevant information at a glance can dramatically speed up the way that DBAs work.
With a complete overview of their system’s resources, DBA’s can make use of management solutions to work much more efficiently. By seeing at-a-glance the resourcing, server load, upcoming tasks, and other information, DBAs can better prioritize their workloads to provide the best results and savings .
Unified Systems
Many enterprises find themselves operating a wide range of server platforms and software versions, either as a result of their needs or their infrastructure’s gradual evolution.
While making use of multiple platforms can be useful for businesses, it can have drawbacks when it comes to staffing. Not all DBAs will have expertise in every available platform, meaning some members of your team may be unable to help out at crucial times, or some DBAs could be in higher demand than others.
Many database management tools now provide a unified cross-platform interface to DBAs. This interface allows staff to monitor and manage servers regardless of their platform or software all from the same tool. Not only does this mean that every DBA on the team can work with every aspect of your business’s server cluster, but it’ll help to make your team much more efficient too.
Ultimately, saving money on staffing comes down to being efficient with how staff are used.
With the right management tools in place, you can ensure that your DBAs waste as little time as possible on menial tasks thanks to automation, that they have access to the tools they need to do their jobs, and that the platforms you manage don’t hold your business back.
