The future of the database administrator in a cloud computing world

Grazed from ITWeb. Author: Jaroslav Cerny.

One of the many areas where services are beginning to move towards the cloud is in the database, as cloud providers, either public or private, can remove many of the time-consuming tasks around installing, configuring and provisioning the database. These roles are typically assigned to the database administrator (DBA), and one of the questions this raises is around the future of DBAs and their role in a cloud environment.

While cloud providers may take on a large proportion of the mundane tasks associated with the database, this by no means negates the position of the DBA. Instead, it allows the DBA to move from a tactical position to more of a strategic role, focusing on tasks that will add value to the business rather than being exclusively assigned to the day-to-day maintenance and running of infrastructure. For many reasons, the role of the DBA will continue to be an important one in the cloud environment, but DBAs need to be prepared for a shift from a highly technical role, to one that adds greater business value down the line, says Jaroslav Cerny, CEO at RDB Consulting…

The typical role of the DBA generally revolves around planning, designing, configuring and implementing databases and database platforms, as well as high availability and disaster recovery for each database. It also includes maintenance and monitoring of databases and platforms, performance tuning, workload balancing and security. In the cloud environment, all of these duties are transferred to the cloud service provider. However, this does not mean the role of the DBA will become obsolete in a cloud environment…

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