January 9, 2010 at 8:33 am
I have been a DBA for about 10 years running many hundreds of DBs in very mission critical environments, with applications pushing high volumes of transactions. That being said, I have never really had the opportunity to evolve into an 'exceptional DBA'. I have usually been the only DBA on staff and the workload is typically so heavy that I don't have a lot of time to sharpen the saw as far as being the best DBA I can be.
In a month I will be starting with a new company that has DBs that are probably 10 times or more larger than what I have ever run. Every DB they own is what I would consider VLDB. Their main web app has something like 28 million users roughly, which is just one of the databases I would be responsible for.
This is the opportunity of a lifetime for me. I have roughly a month until I start the new job, and honestly last night I woke up in a panic wondering if I in fact am ready for such responsibility.
Has anyone been in my position? I have been brushing up on my VLDB strategies, and high availability knowledge and making sure my performance tuning workflow is solid.
I know that being a good DBA is really more of a science than an art, but I am about to really step my game up and I would like any advice as far as that goes. Any suggestions or areas you think I should really focus on in the month before I start would be greatly appreciated.
January 9, 2010 at 8:44 am
Read their standards and documentation to get an idea what is expecting you.
January 9, 2010 at 8:49 am
Yep - I printed out the job description. I have experience in everything they do minus one minor bullet point. My real fear is the volume of the transactions and the sizes of their DBs. I have managed huge unruly DBs on SQL Server in the past, but never really got them out of the 'huge and unruly' stage. After a point, things you do for smaller DBs don't work as well for VLDBs. At least that has been what my experience has been.
January 9, 2010 at 10:41 am
Every DBA job is different to some extent, but the majority of the skills, in my opinion, are transferable.
They must have found out what you are capable of through some sort of interview process and they shouldn't be expecting any miracles from you within the induction stage, which usually takes a number of weeks.
So don't worry 🙂 Show them that you want to learn about the business, read more about the job in your own time so it'll be easier to start.
Good luck
January 9, 2010 at 10:46 am
Thank you. I feel much the same. Just a tad bit nervous as this is probably the biggest gig I'll ever get, don't want to drop the ball.
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