Migrating to the cloud is a pretty nebulous description. I think more
companies are implementing virtualization and private clouds. I dont see
any big movement to the public cloud in industries with privacy concerns or
financial data.
On Sat, Dec 17, 2016 at 2:26 PM, Jeremiah Cetlin Wilton <
jcwilton93@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
There's a bright future for top DBAs in the cloud world. Managed cloud
database services like Amazon RDS automate database deployment, backups,
recovery, HA, DR, upgrades, patching and cloning. All of these things
should be more or less automated anyway if a DBA has been in their position
for a while and is doing their job fairly well. The benefit of using the
cloud's automation over your own is that it has been produced as a
commercial service, subjected to the standards of such a service, and
perfected by having to run correctly every time on tens of thousands of
systems for many years.
DBAs with responsibilities for managed cloud databases still need to be
architects, designers, tuning experts and leaders to software development
groups, so that their organization makes use of database technology wisely
and effectively. The cloud is a net positive to high-value IT contributors
by relieving the organization and its employees of the undifferentiated
heavy lifting of routine tasks. It elevates DBAs and makes them more
influential.
I think DBAs today should become experts in architecture, design, tuning,
and multiple database engines and types. Oracle DBAs should probably move
in the PostgreSQL direction, as that engine has become a favorite of
enterprises moving off Oracle. You won't find PostgreSQL as wonderful as
Oracle in every way (except one - price), but it has been improving
rapidly, and suits many use cases already. The flip side of PostgreSQL's
smaller feature set is that it makes it relatively easy to learn. Some
companies like AWS (with the new edition of Aurora) and EnterpriseDB are
making a concerted effort to build enterprise features onto PostgreSQL.
Not all clouds are the same. Some boast only one managed database type,
and as soon as you want to use another type, you have to go deploy and
manage it yourself on a VM. Some clouds have ten years of maturity, while
others were openly mocking the concept up until eighteen months ago. Some
have huge geographical presence, orders of magnitude higher adoption, broad
and deep service ecosystems.
And also some have me and Kyle :-)
Please let me know if you have questions about clouds or AWS in general.
I'm in the belly of the beast and happy to be a resource.
Jeremiah
------------------------------
*From: *"Tim Gorman" <tim.evdbt@xxxxxxxxx>
*To: *"Oracle Mailing List" <oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
*Sent: *Friday, December 16, 2016 9:09:16 AM
*Subject: *Re: Oracle DBA to PostGreSQL DBA?
Bear in mind that the "cloud" has three layers: IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.
SaaS (software as a service) involves complete IT solutions (i.e.
Salesforce, Google Calendar, NetSuite, etc), so it means the elimination of
most IT roles.
PaaS (platform as a service) basically means tools like databases, with
AWS RDS as a classic example. With PaaS migration, the cloud company is
supporting a limited set of database choices, and companies are developing
solutions with those tools.
IaaS (infrastructure as a service) basically means "servers" and
"storage", with AWS EC2 and S3 being classic examples, respectively. With
IaaS, the SysAdmin role along with the datacenter has largely been
eliminated, and DBAs, developers, and application admins are allocating
virtual machines in IaaS. Migrating to IaaS is largely no different than
migrating to different servers. The major gotcha is the OS platform, as
most IaaS vendors only support x86 servers running Linux and Windows.
Solaris, AIX, and HP-UX are largely supported only be vendor IaaS
offerings, and they will soon be extinct. With IaaS migration, databases
and applications are not "supported" by the cloud company unless such a
service is purchased additionally.
So while "most companies" are indeed migrating to the "cloud", sometimes
they are migrating to IaaS (a.k.a. someone else's servers), sometimes they
are migrating to PaaS (a.k.a. someone else's tools), and sometimes they are
migrating to SaaS (i.e. someone else's IT department).
The driving factor isn't necessarily lower cost, but more agility. As
such, production systems are certain to migrate last, but non-production
environments are certain to migrate first into what is called "hybrid data
center".
Understand which choice your company is making, and plan accordingly.
If someone says "my company isn't migrating to the cloud", then someone is
swimming in de Nile.
On 12/16/16 09:44, Mike Killough wrote:
That's a good point. I think that once there are no more premises
databases, I will hit the retirement finish line anyway.
Mike
------------------------------
*From:* Dennis Williams <oracledba.williams@xxxxxxxxx>
<oracledba.williams@xxxxxxxxx>
*Sent:* Friday, December 16, 2016 10:39 AM
*To:* tim.evdbt@xxxxxxxxx
*Cc:* mwkillough@xxxxxxxxxxx; oracle-l-freelists
*Subject:* Re: Oracle DBA to PostGreSQL DBA?
All - I just saw an article stating that most companies are migrating to
the cloud, so using the databases easily available and supported by the
cloud company.
Dennis Williams
