A cloud vendor guarantees you this by assuming the control of the entire database ecosystem. The vendor doesn’t let your remote desktop into your database instance to apply patches. It doesn’t involve you in DR and HA failovers and when things break, the vendor takes full responsibility.
If a vendor does all these, why would you need a DBA consultant? Wouldn’t you save lots of money by relying on a cloud vendor for all your database needs?
The Changing Roles Of a DBA Consultant
Traditionally, you would approach a DBA expert consultant when you want to acquire a new database server. With the help of a DBA, you get a database server that meets the demands of your new application. The more functions your application becomes, the more functionalities your database needs to handle and conversely, it becomes harder to configure the database correctly.Once the installation is complete, the DBA consultant proceeds to monitor the performance of the database, manage query operations and keep the installation secure.
When you move your database to the cloud, everything gets turned on its head. Depending on the infrastructure you choose, several new variables come into play. For instance, choosing the infrastructure cloud (Iaas) gives you complete control of the database.
IaaS gives you the same level of control you would enjoy when you own the server hardware. It also gives you some of the advantages of the cloud. An IaaS option for instance, let’s you scale exponentially depending on the demands of your application. You can start with one virtual server and upgrade as demand increases.
When scaling up your IaaS instance, the help of a DBA expert consultant is indispensable. A DBA helps tune the configuration to allow for multiprocessing, increased memory demands, and the configuration of extra processors.
However, running your database from the cloud relieves your DBA consultants from some of the daily routines of database administration. But there’s still plenty of work that needs doing. The consultants for instance stop dealing with hardware related issues and engage fulltime in system analysis and support.
That makes your infrastructure more responsive to demands as well as efficient because your DBA consultant is not bogged down by mundane tasks of swapping out drives.
If you decide to host your database on the cloud and you realize your in-house DBAs are not doing much, you may venture into hiring a remote DBA expert consultant. Hiring a remote consultant you only call in when there is an emergency saves you a lot of overhead.
For starters, you are not paying a fulltime employee. That saves you a couple of thousand dollars every month. Second, a remote consultant is available on call. You can rely on him or her to fix any glitches with your database any time of the day or night.
