Originally posted by marist89
I have three DBAs I rotate a month at a time. One month you are "duty" (on-call), the next you are "backup", and the third you are "off".

The "duty" DBA gets a pager and is available 24x7 for the whole month. He/she is responsible for all instances. He is responsible for co-ordinating the problem resolution if other resources (Oracle Support, sysadmins, physical plant, etc.) need to get involved. The "duty" DBA doesn't schedule vacation for the month.

The "backup" DBA is the first person the duty DBA calls if there is a problem he/she can't handle. The backup DBA will let the duty DBA know if he has plans to go out of town and and provide alternate contact information (ie. cell phone). The backup DBA is by no means responsible for resolving problems, but can be available should the need arise.

The "off" DBA leaves the office at 05:00 and can go on vacation. THE OFF DBA WILL NOT BE CALLED UNLESS A DISASTER CRITICAL TO BUSINESS IS UNDERWAY.

This works in my environment because everybody knows about all instances and we have standards in place. One person may know more about database X, but when database Y fills up the log_archive_dest, every DBA knows what to do to get it going again.
Tha't's very good. But assuming all DBAs have the same knowledge level.

Usually a DBA should try to help if there are business critical problem.