DBRE – The DBA evolution

As technologies evolve, professions also need to evolve to keep up with innovation, new architectures, new database engines, languages and the adoption of cloud computing.

Some time ago, traditional database administrators (DBAs) used to work by looking inside the database. Thus, a DBA became an expert in a given database and worked only with that technology, performing routine tasks manually and without much automation.

Even within a specific database technology there were some divisions: DBA backup specialist, a professional focused on performance evaluation, among others.

However, in the current scenario, such specialized role is no longer possible. Companies are using several databases simultaneously, in a hybrid environment (on premise and cloud), integrated with other replication and data sharing technologies. Environments are much more complex; therefore, database management professionals had to adapt, keeping an out-of-the-box look, supporting and proposing solutions that serve the business with better agility, automation, security and high availability.

Below, I list the main differences between a traditional DBA and a Database Reliability Engineer (DBRE), a professional that we, at ilegra, consider to be the evolution of the database administrator and who is better able to deal with the complexity of the scenario.

In order to really be able to contribute with their knowledge, the DBRE professional must belong to the devops culture, participate in project alignments from the beginning, indicating best practices, supporting a productive environment and business continuity planning. The focus of their contribution is to think about database growth, capacity, and high availability.

 Are you interested? Then get to know our DBRE as a Service offer