Remote DBA Experts explain the job of a DBA

Two administrators, male and female, at server room. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

Now a day’s all websites, web pages are dynamic. It means that it’s not just a page where in you read the data. You have multiple options on the page. Multiple tabs, check boxes, buttons that lead to some other data not already on the screen. All of this data shown and possibly shown on the website is basically stored in a data base. So whenever someone types in a website’s name in the address bar, the data base server pushes the home screen data. When you write a simple blog, that blog is stored in the database. When someone wants to read the blog, the blog is retrieved from the database. The comments posted on the blog are also stored in the database, only to be retrieved later on.

A database administrator (DBA) is an IT professional responsible for the installation, configuration, upgrading, administration, monitoring, maintenance, and security of databases in an organization. We ask our panelist what the job of a DBA entails and how the career as remote DBA expert looks like.

People who are looking to make a career as remote DBA expert must know one thing for a fact that it’s not a simple task to do. It’s a continuous learning. As new and newer technologies keep emerging, a DBA needs to adapt update and modify itself according to the new platforms, servers and engines.

Installation, configuration, upgrade, and migration

These are the routine task of a DBA. Although a company may have hired a systems admin for some of these jobs. If not then it’s the DBA’s responsibility in order to maintain the database up to date and to avoid any glitches in the information in the database, the routine checkups and upgrades are necessary. The more critical information if specified is then migrated onto the more secured servers during this inspection and analysis.

Back up and security

For a website, the most important information is stored on its database servers. Security and privacy of the same is of utmost importance. As a DBA regular backup of the database is a routine yet extremely critical task. Back up of certain months or years of data as specified by client is supposed to be kept by the DBA. DBA also must routinely perform the security checks for any virus, bugs, or any other elements that may cause loss of data.

Prepare for high volume day

There are certain days in a year when the website expects very high volume. These could be extreme discount sales day or days like Valentine’s Day. Many companies do more business only on these days than all the other days combined together. Hence if a website crashes on one of these days, it can cause losses of millions of dollars. Hence a DBA has to make sure that the adequate and sufficient space on the database is available to handle such a large volume of people during that timeline.

Troubleshooting

People who are looking to make a career as remote DBA expert at http://remotedba.com must have analytical blend of mind with problem solving capacity. Whenever something goes wrong with the server or the database, at that point of time it is DBA’s responsibility to act fast and act efficiently so as to reduce the damage caused by the break down. Keep the loss of data to as minimum as possible. DBA should put the database back on the grid only after the problem has been resolved to avoid any more potential loss of data. But he must also make sure that this is done in as less time as possible.

Author Bio: Jack Dawson is a free lance content writer. He has written many articles on different topics like technology, health, travel, career etc. Recently, he has written some articles on database and hosting. To know more about database, visit the URL http://remotedba.com/