Any production DBA's here? Need help

Dryst999

My employer has offered to train me to become their production DBA. The problem is that I have no SQL experience, I always wanted to move into an admin role but just thinking about learning something ENTIRELY new is intimidating. They know it will take 1yr+ for me to get acclimated and they are willing to give me more and more responsibility as I progress into the role, they know I work hard and am not a maverick who will screw up something by not taking my time and paying attention while working in the databases which is why they are interested in training me.

I'm debating on taking the opportunity, I never thought to pursue becoming a DBA because i've never been a fan of programming. As a production DBA I know I will be in charge of the backups/monitoring of the SQL servers and will not dive deep into the SQL language. It's still EXTREMELY scary to think of screwing up a database though, i'm in the healthcare field and databases are the bread and butter of our company.

Any of you have any insight or suggestions, i'm thinking I should take the opportunity since I know how hard it is to get into a DBA admin role with no experience... I just didn't see my career going down this path; not that it's a bad thing.

erpadmin

You will find that SQL administration is a JOY to administer. Unlike regular programming, T-SQL (or PL/SQL if you're administering Oracle, but the syntax differences are minor) is a CINCH to learn. If you can read English, you can write a SQL query.

I myself got into DBAing almost 8 years ago. You will find that you will still need to maintain servers (performance tuning is a must for a DBA). You will also want a separate environment for testing (which I'm sure you will have....that's practically mandatory) so that you can clone your prod DBs and do whatever testing you need to. But that's actually going to be done by your developers (the testing...you would do the cloning). There are some shops where the DBA is a developer too, but those are smaller shops....and that's a headache in and of itself.

If you were leaning more toward the system administration side, you will find this to be right up your alley. If you are more of a Cisco-junkie, you might not care for it so much. However, once you get good at it, it is a skillset that is very in demand. (Whether it's SQL or Oracle, but you will see more Oracle.)

Finally, there are a bunch of free SQL tutorials found throughout the web. You will see that it really is fun and not boring as programming/developing. You might even get a shot at being a hero...nothing says score like finding out why a financial aid department can't disburse $8 million to students. Especially when it was their f'up to begin with..... I got to earn some stripes for that one.

Dryst999

Well I just spoke to our current Sr. System Admin who also does all our DBA work about everything to expect in this new role...after a 2 hour conversation with him I now know that my original notion of what this job entails was entirely wrong. When I think of SQL I correlate it with "Programming" job.

From what I gather from him it's really just a specialized sys admin role.You need to know T-SQL but not to great depths, just enough to write queries to get the information you need out of a database to help you troubleshoot. Everything else is backups, performance tuning, and doing stuff with the SSMS.

I know it's still a TON of work and will take me a long time to learn how relational databases work but now that I know it's not a heavy programming job i'm pscyhed. From what I gather it's really hard to break into a DBA role and if I work my butt off for 2-3yr's at this position there will be immense opportunities that will open up for me.

Erpadmin, what's the stress level of your job? I know the hours can be crazy but just knowing that if I screw up a database it could bankrupt a company is pretty scary, even with backups. Was it nerve wracking when you first started?

erpadmin

Dryst999 wrote: »

Well I just spoke to our current Sr. System Admin who also does all our DBA work about everything to expect in this new role...after a 2 hour conversation with him I now know that my original notion of what this job entails was entirely wrong. When I think of SQL I correlate it with "Programming" job.

From what I gather from him it's really just a specialized sys admin role.You need to know T-SQL but not to great depths, just enough to write queries to get the information you need out of a database to help you troubleshoot. Everything else is backups, performance tuning, and doing stuff with the SSMS.

I know it's still a TON of work and will take me a long time to learn how relational databases work but now that I know it's not a heavy programming job i'm pscyhed. From what I gather it's really hard to break into a DBA role and if I work my butt off for 2-3yr's at this position there will be immense opportunities that will open up for me.

Erpadmin, what's the stress level of your job? I know the hours can be crazy but just knowing that if I screw up a database it could bankrupt a company is pretty scary, even with backups. Was it nerve wracking when you first started?

Exactly!! In fact, the only queries you're really expect to know are SELECT, UPDATE, INSERT, maybe a DELETE and then qualifiers (WHERE blah is NOT blah blah, for example). You are not going to be "developing" (programming).

The biggest part of the stress for you is going to be the learning curve, much like I experienced in 2003 (when I became a DBA/ERP Admin). Once you get past that (took me a good year, more or less), then the stresses tend to come from people complaining the "database is slow." This tends to come from a multitude of factors (size of the database, table/database locks, etc...then you have to find what's causing the locks....much fun). The one thing you NEVER want to do is run SQL Profiler against a Production database, unless you absolutely have to (if it's slow enough to begin with...). I do put in a lot of hours, but it's mostly due to the fact that we have upgrades/updates against production that require users to be off the system, and that has to be done after hours. I maintain not just the database (though that is the most important part), but the entire PeopleSoft application. That's why I'm more of an ERP admin than a DBA, but I can't administer the ERP without being a DBA. Because I am a DBA, I occasionally have to deal with other DBs in the Enterprise. But my bread and butter is PeopleSoft.

Trust me, you're Sr. Sys Admin was dead on about what you're going to be learning/doing. You will become more intimately involved with the servers that deal with not just your SQL databases, but the applications that call upon them as well. It can be challenging, fun, and exhausting...sometimes all of the above. But in the end, it is well worth it.

One other thing to note: If it was boring or dull...I would have stopped doing this years ago.


Edit: Oh, just FYI, there are times you will be required to be on call. I just got a call about one of our databases that acts as a warehouse for our POP3 mail web front end app (an application, btw, I would have NEVER bought, but we're supposed to be getting Exchange 2010 this fiscal, and OWA will replace this POS). In any event, this had to get escalated to one of our network guys as this issue is on the VAX, and I don't support VAX. But when I'm given a laptop and cellphone (and oncall pay) I have to respond.