PaaS taking over the world! Are dba’s a dying breed?

PaaS vs IaaS

 

It's easter weekend, or as the dutch say 'PaaS weekend'. So, it might be a good idea to talk a bit about PaaS. What is it and what does this mean for you as a Database administrator? Are Dba's a dying breed. Will they just shift over to more complex or broader tasks or are they here to stay. It all depends on the company and the software they are running.

 

 

 

What is #Iaas? in short, it's a VM. Your database is running in a data center. As a Dba you have the same job requirements as when running a database on-premise. Update, backup, patches, tuning, security and account control.

But #PaaS is a different story, it runs the database as a service, so there is no need for a dba. At least that's what they tell you. But does PaaS solve all your performance and tuning needs, is that faulty query when moved to PaaS suddely solved? Nope. Machine learning is doing a great job so far, but it isn't the magical quick fix, yet.

In all honesty most companies don't care about tuning a database, not all applications have complex queries and tasks running on their SQL server, most are fine running an express edition. They don't even bother having a Dba. The database is taken care of by a system engineer, if being looked at, at all.

Where does this put you as a Dba? Don't sob, we still need you! It's a big relief that the market, which is still flooded with old school high maintenance MS SQL driven apps. How nice if these could be taken care of with PaaS. The only good thing coming out of these high maintenance, splintered databases, is the data itself. Do you really want to spend your time updating, patching and granting rights to users and saying no to SA account requests? No, you don't!

But second, in the real world, companies don't evolve as fast as the IT world itself. Most applications, lots outdated or not are not being replaced overnight and not all the vendors are quite ready for PaaS environments with their applications. So you just have to decide on which side you want to be, fast IT or slow IT. There is still a big playground available for both for the coming years.

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