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In part one, Nathan Koopmans, cloud platform engineer at OptimaData, showed how to create a simple plain PostgreSQL setup. Even though this works fine, you still want more data security. Therefore, in this second part, we look at the CloudNativePG operator for Kubernetes.

Several years ago now, colleague Craig wrote a three-part blog about PostgreSQL in combination with Docker. Technology has not stood still, so an update is in order, thought Nathan Koopmans, cloud platform engineer at OptimaData. Hence, How to Postgres on Kubernetes. 

The global tightening of laws and regulations around privacy is forcing organizations to take steps to ensure data privacy. In this blog, we zoom in on the function of the database in supporting data privacy and compliance. We discuss how technical mechanisms can be implemented in the database to protect personal information and enable consent management. Of course, we also look at the important role the Database Administrator (DBA) plays in ensuring data privacy and compliance.

You know the drill. Documentation. The underrated and severely underrated baby of automation. "The code is self-explanatory," "Read The Fine Manual" and "We'll do that later". Common comments. Good management is obviously about solid content knowledge. But also do not underestimate the recording of agreements, actions and the clear mapping of the database environment. Read: documentation. In this blog, Harry Splinter outlines a few practical focal points.

We frequently see within organizations that only a single database administrator is responsible for managing the oh-so-critical database environment. And that is still a luxury situation. Often the care for the database environment rests on the shoulders of an application or system administrator. That can be a good solution. As long as everything goes as it should and no exciting things happen. But what do you do if something goes wrong while your employee is on vacation? Hope he - or she - has the laptop with him? Or is there another way?

In this third and final blog in the series, Gerard Zuidweg, co-owner of OptimaData, discusses the importance of optimizing data modeling to effectively manage and reduce cloud costs. As companies migrate to the cloud, closely monitoring and controlling cloud spend is essential. Gerard shares seven practical techniques for taking a smart look at your data model. That way, you can optimize your database usage and reduce your cloud costs.

In this second blog of a series of three, Gerard Zuidweg, co-owner of OptimaData, discusses optimizing database usage to effectively reduce and control cloud costs. As companies migrate their IT environments to the cloud, cloud expenses can become an ever-increasing expense. Gerard shares six practical tips that will help organizations optimize their cloud costs from a database perspective and even potentially improve application and service performance at the same time.

Migrating business operations to the cloud is a trend that has been going on for some time. The cloud therefore offers the necessary advantages, but also requires a careful approach. In this first blog in a series of three, Gerard Zuidweg, co-owner of OptimaData, discusses the main concerns of cloud migration. He also introduces the concept of FinOps - the merging of Finance and DevOps - and provides five general tips for managing cloud costs, with a focus on database management.

At OptimaData, we regularly receive requests to investigate disappointing database performance. Often the organization has already had the conversation with the software vendor. A common response from the vendor is: the database server has insufficient CPU or memory. But how much processing power and memory is actually sufficient? And what can still be done if the application still responds slowly, even if the database server has sufficient hardware capacity? In this blog, Dimitri Choustov explains where possible improvements can be found.

At the end of 2022 we were pleased to welcome Harry Splinter to our team. The arrival of Harry with his years of experience as a DBA is a nice and solid reinforcement of our multi-platform database expertise. With a number of extensive migrations in the pipeline from Sybase and MSSQL, among others, to open source solutions, plus a number of complex (cloud) database issues, Harry can be of immediate added value. But above all, we are very happy that Harry has chosen us as his new work home. In this blog, Harry tells us what he thinks of his new employer.

Still, when we review our experiences in everyday work, the common denominator is often that a database environment was set up or maintained with the best of intentions, but with insufficient expertise. Yes, it has been made very easy these days to source a cloud database or spin up an open source database. But then... Unfortunately, it still happens too often that we get involved relatively late in the process. Fixing things then takes a relatively long time. Of course we like that, because we love complex puzzles, but whether it achieves the desired result?

'Hey neighbor, can I borrow your ladder for a minute?' Who doesn't know it? In our daily domestic life, we find such a question quite normal. As soon as we put on our business attire, the world suddenly seems to be structured differently. Then we want to do everything ourselves, keep everything to ourselves, and we start looking hard for that one specific expert whom we then want to employ permanently for forty hours a week. The current shortage in the labor market forces us to think more broadly and turn challenges into opportunities through a different approach. In this blog, Edco Wallet, co-owner of OptimaData, advocates knowledge sharing.

In the past, Harry Splinter, Database Reliability Engineer at OptimaData, wrote about SAP ASE backups under the title "Thoughts on backups," in which he also paid attention to recovery. During his career as a DBA, he encountered quite a few situations in which recovery was the last straw. This sometimes led to unpleasant surprises. In this blog he shares his experiences. To learn, but also to amuse.

At OptimaData, we didn't have a Cloud Platform Engineer on our team until this year. But yes, the cloud is totally hot, everything has to be in the cloud today. "In the cloud or you're out". No cloud? Then you don't belong these days. Fortunately, since December 2022 we have Nathan Koopmans as a Cloud Platform Engineer on our team, now we belong again. In this blog we ask Nathan about his role on the team.

We once attended a demo where a cloud database was deployed. Five minutes and it was there. That makes your mouth drop. Doesn't it? Or does this paint a slightly too simplistic picture of what is involved in the - proper and secure - deployment of a cloud database? In this blog, Mark van der Haar shares a number of points to keep in mind during an Azure SQL deployment.

When companies and organizations have a technical issue, they often look for resources. There is not enough specific knowledge, experience or technical skills in-house to solve the problem themselves. Unfortunately, especially within larger organizations, hiring capacity is seen as a generic HR procurement process. This too often results in the wrong person for the wrong price. In other words, a pedestal without a monkey. In this blog, we try to expose this problem.

Once upon a time there was a client with a request for help. For this customer, we do not do regular management and no active monitoring was set up for that purpose. The customer had noticed that two disks on a SQL Server instance were nearly full. Normally, the disk is then enlarged; after all, it is quite normal for databases to grow. But the customer saw that there might be more to it, as the transaction log files had also grown very large, and asked if we would investigate what was going on. In this blog, Cindy Beernink, database consultant at OptimaData, talks about the importance of monitoring.

We as OptimaData hope that all clients and other relations have been able to conclude 2022 nicely. It is time for a new chapter. In the year behind us, we received many questions about database consulting and were able to give just as much advice and implement solutions. So what were the most important and common issues we discovered and what lessons can you take into the new year?

If you have over thirty years of experience as a DBA, you would think that you have made all the mistakes at least once. But it's very easy to misunderstand, knows Thomas Spoelstra, Senior Database Reliability Engineer and DBA at OptimaData. In this blog, he talks about how missing one word can lead to an awkward situation. And how it can still turn into a success for all parties.

In previous blogs, we described how to select a database support partner, how to prepare your team and what the three phases of effective database support are. But how does it actually work? In this blog, Eric Gipon gives an example of how we worked at one of our customers.

When we think of sustainability, our IT systems is not the first thing that comes to mind. Yet digitalization also has an impact on the environment. In this blog, Cindy Beernink, database consultant at OptimaData, talks about what choices you can think about if you want to move more sustainably through database land.

On Oct. 13, PostgreSQL version 15 was released. Performance improvements, new features and capabilities for managing workloads in both onpremise and cloud environments make PostgreSQL 15 a valuable update. At the largest European PostgreSQL conference in Berlin, there was therefore a lot of attention for this new version. In this blog, we summarize the most important changes and new options.

Formula 1, never before has it been so popular. The fact that Max Verstappen is not doing undeserving business in the king class certainly contributes to that. Who doesn't remember last year's spectacular finale? His comfortable lead in the championship is, besides his talent, also due to the qualities of the car. Such a Formula 1 car is one big jumble of technology and the trick is to find the right configuration and setup to achieve maximum performance. In this blog, we make a comparison with the setup of databases.

In previous blogs, we described how to select a database support partner and how to prepare your team. Now the real work begins. You've chosen your partner, the QuickScan is done, there are clear agreements about hiring additional expertise, and your team is trained. You can get started. The following three phases can be distinguished.

Ola Hallengrens SQL Server Maintenance Solution is designed by Ola Hallengren, an MCITP database administrator and database developer, who has been working with SQL Server since 2001. The solution is specifically designed to perform maintenance tasks on any Microsoft SQL Server database and consists of backup, integrity check and maintenance of indexes and statistics. In this blog, we tell you what in our opinion are the seven benefits of this solution.

In a previous blog, we described how to select a database support partner. But before you can get started, there are a number of preparations you need to make. In this blog, we'll tell you what those preparations are and what to look out for.

Whether in Microsoft SQL Server or any other database environment, giving too many and too high permissions can pose security risks. The more people have all rights, the greater the risk becomes and the greater the chance that you will lose grip and control of your IT environment. Mark van der Haar describes a number of real-life situations in this blog.

The world of database management is changing rapidly and has a huge impact on the way we work and think. The traditional database administrator, dedicated to full-time management, will increasingly give way to a coordinating spider in the web. Infrastructure advice, scripting, applying best practices in the deployment of resources, thinking together about the most efficient way of working instead of regular, manual management tasks. Of course, you could bring in such a database expert as a permanent employee, but you might be better off spending your time on things that will benefit your business. How do you select a good database support partner?

The cloud is popular, very popular. But the cloud does not exist: there are different cloud models – public, private and hybrid – and there are roughly three main types of cloud computing: SaaS, IaaS and PaaS. Part of PaaS is DBaaS. What is DBaaS, what are the pros and cons, and does DBaaS make a DBA obsolete? We give you the answers in this blog.

Do you recognize this? You look back at your work and see that you've spent far too long doing repetitive, boring, manual tasks that are not very sustainable. Moreover, their number only increases as the environment grows. As a Product Owner or IT Manager, this is also hard to understand. You only see that a team does not get around to producing deliverables in the development sprints. You don’t see them drowning in putting out fires and making manual database changes. How beautiful the world would be if the DBA could lean forward in DevOps teams, speak the same language as the software and system engineers, empower team members and act as a trusted advisor. Everyone wants a DBA like that! In this blog, we go one step further in talking about useful redundancy and how you can create a stable and secure work environment with the shift to Database Reliability Engineering.

A common complaint from DBAs is that they are very busy with everyday business, processing tickets and putting out fires. They find little time for optimization, self-development and innovation. On the other hand, a common complaint about DBAs is that they lean back and are not in the ‘cooperative mode’. Could one have something to do with the other? How do you overcome this?

In recent years, ‘someone else's computer in a different place’ is no longer a sufficient explanation of what the cloud actually is. Cloud-native has become a way of working. That doesn't just mean working ín the cloud, but it's about making full use of the technology that the cloud can offer. Issues such as scalability, efficiency, agility and cost saving motivate organizations to develop and apply more and more cloud-native technology. Martijn Wallet gave an interview at the KubeCon & CloudNativeCon conference in Valencia about how we at OptimaData apply cloud-native technology when working with clients.

Edco Wallet, co-owner of OptimaData, and friend Sjoerd Oskam participated in the Baltic Sea Circle Rally Winter 2022 at the beginning of this year. From Hamburg via Denmark, Sweden, Norway to the North Cape and via Lapland, Finland and the Baltic States back again. Without a navigation system, it was a true expedition. Why did they do this and what are the parallels with entrepreneurship? Edco explains in this blog.

If a red light on your dashboard turns on, most people call the garage - or the roadside assistance - with lightning speed. But if an application suddenly slows down, few people are inclined to do anything about it. That’s a missed opportunity. In this blog Martijn Wallet explains the benefits of having your database regularly serviced.

What is the result when you put a banker, a techie and an aerospace engineer together with the right dose of inspiration? Right, you get OptimaData, the full-service multi-platform data(base) service provider. In this article, Gerard Zuidweg, Edco Wallet and Martijn Wallet reflect on five years of OptimaData.

Our partner EDB helps organizations to get the most out of PostgreSQL. Joost Wasser, Public Sector Account Executive at EDB, and his colleague Aret Aprahamian, Partner Account Executive Benelux, DACH and Nordics, talk about working with OptimaData.

The popularity and adoption of open source software and databases continues to grow. Even the government is catching on. Yet there are still concerns about the reliability of open source solutions. How reliable is a product that is developed in all openness? Can't malicious people just get hold of it? Or does transparency make things safer?

UpCloud is an European cloud provider based in Finland that focuses on companies that need reliable, fast cloud services. In addition to cloud servers, UpCloud also provides other services, such as object storage and managed databases for MySQL and PostgreSQL environments. Because UpCloud and OptimaData have joined forces, UpCloud can now also offer custom solutions to customers with complex database issues. Jasper Jonk, Business Development Manager, talks about the added value of our partnership in this blog.

The FD Gazellen Award is a prize that Het Financieele Dagblad has been awarding since 2004 to the fastest growing companies in the Netherlands. We at OptimaData are very proud to be able to call ourselves FD Gazelle for the second time in a row in our five years of existence. In this blog Gerard Zuidweg, OptimaData's Managing Partner, tells us why we are honoured.

When you're just starting out with your IT environment, everything is still very manageable. But once you're a few years down the road, you might find yourself with a tangle of databases. Centralizing can be the solution, Eric Gipon tells us how in this blog.

Craig is an experienced DBA consultant with years of experience in large experimental environments with complex hybrid designs. In fact not very different from what he did as a civil engineer, he thinks. In this blog, Craig tells Femke more about his work and about his special passion for medieval swordsmanship. He also makes the link between creating a future-proof database and flying an airplane.

What has always surprised Gerard Zuidweg, Managing Partner at OptimaData, is that the profession of database administrator is often somewhat undervalued. And that while a well-organized database is crucial to any IT solution. It may not be the sexiest profession in the world, but it is one that should be cherished. In this blog, Gerard explains why.

Tino Dudink is one of our DBA Consultants and Senior Database Reliability Engineers. Earlier we looked into Tino's backpack. In this blog, Tino tells us how it is possible that after 25 years he still enjoys plodding through the depths of the database world.

We regularly get staffing firms on the phone looking for a full-time DBA for - say - a year. That's quite a lot. Are you going to migrate the whole world, I then ask. When I then hear what the request for help is, I think: surely that can be done much more efficiently. Where does it go wrong?

For the past six months, Thomas Brinkman has been conducting a research assignment at OptimaData. During the assignment, he investigated how a company like OptimaData can deal with the development around databases in the cloud and how they can function efficiently. What are his conclusions?

Ransomware attacks. They are becoming more common and have an increasing impact. In this blog, our colleague Thomas Brinkman discusses three best practices for reducing data loss with a good database strategy.

In our work, we encounter many companies and organizations with a mission-critical database environment that is managed by a single database administrator or where care of the database environment rests with a single application or system administrator. In many cases, that can be an excellent solution. And as long as there are no exciting changes and everything is functioning normally, there are no worries. And yet ... it just so happens that something goes wrong while your employee is on vacation. Can your employee with all the knowledge of your database also go on vacation without a laptop?

In part 1 of this blog - Help! MySQL is spinning out of control - we wrote about performance challenges you may face when your database grows and which pitfalls you should take into account if you want to be well prepared. In short: what you need to think about beforehand to be able to grow flexibly along with your database. In this blog we want to give you the 6 most important parts you can pay attention to and which parameters are of influence.

Recently, we have been receiving regular consulting requests about MySQL or MariaDB environments. The industries where the problems arise vary and the type and size of the organization are very diverse. From large payment platforms, comparison sites, booking platforms, sporting events to crowd control and e-commerce or SaaS environments. However, the theme is the same in many cases: performance issues due to growth.

IT develops at the speed of light. Innovations and updates follow each other in rapid succession and one new tooling is presented after another. There is also a lot of movement in the field of open source databases. Staying abreast of all these developments is therefore quite a challenge. In this blog we will give you some tips and valuable resources.

Copying data seems to have become almost a daily requirement. And, I'll admit it, when asked to automate this, I'm happy to work with you. Automating data and database copies to exits for development, test and acceptance environments is a daily occurrence and often has a valid business case. The simplicity and power of an automated procedure immediately presents a major pitfall. Storage is expensive, especially flash storage in an enterprise computing environment, such as HyperConverged Infrastructure (HCI). Our data usage keeps growing and sometimes seems to become unmanageable. In this blog Tino Dudink, DBA Consultant and Senior Database Reliability Engineer, talks about his vision on data usage.

The culture within a company largely determines how much employees enjoy their work. This is true even among database experts. Talking about more than just work – e.g. family, tv-series – creates a common energy that sets off a chain reaction, leading to more job satisfaction and better results. After all, work shouldn't become too much like work, right?

Performance tuning is a much-discussed topic. In many cases it is the first issue brought up by new customers. The question or complaint is usually about the speed of the database. It would be a logical step to take action. In order to achieve visible improvement ad hoc and on a short-term basis, expanding resources is often seen as the solution. And, with databases in the cloud and auto-scale, or “fully managed”, these resources are scaled up for you entirely automatically. The only thing that is not managed are the costs. Because that is, after all, the revenue model of today's popular DBaaS solutions. All the more reason to take a pro-active look at database performance.

PostgreSQL 13 has been released over a month ago. The most important changes and new features have already been announced in various ways and (online) stages, mostly by well-known contributors or influential Postgres community players. In this blog we take a look at those who have allready mentioned the new features, changes and handy facts about PostgreSQL 13. We give an overview of interesting articles, webinars and blogs about the important major but also perhaps neglected non-major changes.

There is a growing interest in Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS). At the same time we only seem to be at the forefront with regard to quality and possibilities. Countless variations are now available from different cloud providers. Databases can be deployed in the cloud with seeming simplicity. If you believe the marketing stories, you no longer need a database administrator. Developers with ready-to-use building blocks - containers - can get started right away. But did they really take a good look at DBaaS?

In the previous blog Gerard Zuidweg explained why we at OptimaData find it very important to offer internships. In this way we can contribute to the level of knowledge of a new generation of professionals. But finding an internship is not easy these days. For that reason Minister for Education Ingrid van Engelshoven and chairman Jacco Vonhof of entrepreneurial organization MKB-Nederland are calling on schools and businesses to deploy creative solutions. As a recognized apprenticeship company for MBO trainees, we are happy to do our part. In August Jeroen Versteeg started as an MBO trainee at OptimaData. What are his experiences?

IT is developing rapidly. The rise of the cloud and the changing way organizations develop, monitor and manage applications can lead to the gradual disappearance of in-depth IT knowledge and expertise within organizations. Before you know it, we have become managers of the cloud instead of craftsmen within IT. An impoverishment, according to Gerard Zuidweg. In this blog he explains why and what OptimaData is doing to turn the tide in their world of databases.

Eric Gipon spent many years as a DBA mainly working on one platform at one company at a time. Then he switched to OptimaData, a service and consultancy organization with multiple customers and multiple platforms. In this blog he describes how he liked the first month.

Lately we've been writing regularly about cloud solutions and points of consideration of different variants of cloud solutions lately. But what exactly is the difference between all those variants? With which form are you the most carefree and with which model do you mainly have control over the performance? Can you still see the wood for the trees?

In this blog Martijn Wallet, our Manager Consultancy and Training, discusses what containerization is, what the pros and cons are and when it's better to stay away from it.

In this blog, Edco Wallet shares a summary of the Cloud Report 2020, in which the three best-known cloud providers are compared by CockroachLabs. Which one is the best?

The transition to the cloud is in full swing. Private, public, hybrid, IaaS, PaaS, DbaaS; the cloud has countless forms and applications. But which cloud provider and which machines match best with your environment, and especially with your database? CockroachLabs - the company behind CockroachDB - recently published their annual Cloud Report. They have conducted an extensive and thorough benchmark with the three most well-known cloud providers: AWS, Azure and GCP. The benchmark is about a database instance on a cloud server and not DbaaS. In this blog Edco Wallet shares a summary of the Cloud Report 2020.

We wrote earlier that there is nothing wrong with managing databases in a somewhat older environment. But there is also nothing wrong with more mature database administrators. Thomas Spoelstra - yes, the guy from the man cave - is one of those. He knows better than anyone how to set up a database as efficiently as possible, because 'before' there simply wasn't any more disk space or memory. Now that we are massively switching to the cloud, with all its space and possibilities for scaling up, those efficiency skills no longer seem that important. Until the costs get out of hand. Then you need someone who can assess and fine-tune the content of the data model to reduce your cloud costs. So someone like Thomas...

I ran into the challenge to determine the best partitioning key on an Amazon RDS Postgres database. Normal approach would be to start a project trying to implement this on a development environment. But in most cases, like during a QuickScan, the customer expects an educated guess in as little time as possible. It concerns running production environments where you would rather not release all kinds of scripts and analysis tooling to avoid disrupting the primary process. Which then also takes up unnecessary extra time.

Voiceworks devises and develops innovative communication and collaboration solutions for the business market. A healthy database environment is crucial in this respect. Because database management just is not their core business, Voiceworks has decided to outsource this to OptimaData. Bas Roos, Infrastructure Engineer at Voiceworks, explains why.

Thomas Spoelstra, senior database administrator at OptimaData, looks back on almost two months of home working from his man cave. About virtual office doors, webcams still on, nice beer packages and wishes for the future.

One of the most popular open source databases is PostgreSQL, in 2018 even declared DBMS of the Year. In this blog Martijn Wallet shares the most important advantages of using Supported PostgreSQL such as EDB Postgres Platform as compared to native PostgreSQL.

At OptimaData we are regularly asked to investigate disappointing performance of database environments (such as SQL Server, MySQL or PostgreSQL). Due to all possible variations and combinations in environments, there is not one specific or directly identifiable cause for such a performance issue. In this blog Dimitri Choustov explains how to get your database fit and healthy again.

Because of the coronavirus, we're all working remotely all of a sudden. In order to be able to work remotely there are sufficient tools available. But to work well and enjoyably from a distance and to really make contact with colleagues, employees and customers, some extra attention is needed. We are very happy with co-creative entrepreneurship. Pieter Groenendijk, our staffing and recruitment specialist, explains in this blog what we mean by this and why we care about the extra bit of vitamin A (attention).

My first experience of a Postgres day, where people talk postgreSQL all day. My day started very early – I left home at 05:15 and arrived in Brussels at 09:10. Unfortunately, due to the train schedules (where trains seem to wake up later than I do) I arrived a bit late for the opening talk by Magnus Hagander. Magnus is one of the core members of the PostgreSQL infrastructure team, developer and comitter in the Global development group. And then, straight into the sessions in a packed room, fortunately there was a seat available.

There is nothing wrong with the management of databases in somewhat older environments. On the contrary, these are applications that keep a lot of companies afloat. But there are a number of things you need to pay attention to. Roland van Veen, OptimaData DBA and Database Reliability Engineer, explains in this blog what those things are.

In a previous post I deployed a PostgreSQL database in a container from a standard image. Now I’m going to look at deploying a PostgreSQL cluster. Well, kind of. PostgreSQL uses the term cluster to refer to “a collection of databases managed by a single PostgreSQL server instance”. I’m using it in the more general sense, to refer to High Availability.

In my previous blog post, I quickly ran through how to set up PostgreSQL inside a Docker container, up to the point where you could administer the database with psql or pgAdmin. What I didn’t do was explain how any of it worked. If you’re trying to anything even slightly different, or if you encounter errors running it as I outlined, then you’re going to need to know what all of those commands actually do.  In this blogpost I will explain some Docker basics.

As a multi-platform DBA, I spend a lot of time learning about the latest features available on a variety of open-source and proprietary databases. I usually use VirtualBox images to create my sandbox databases, but they can take up quite a bit a disk space and resources. Especially if I’m playing around with things like database clustering solutions, when I need multiple databases running together. So the other day, I thought about using Docker containers.

Open Source Database Management Systems are on the rise. Not only among newtech companies, but now also in banks, government departments and multinationals. Recent research among CIOs has shown that more than 60 percent want to drastically reduce licensing costs. Opting for more open source software helps, if well-considered choices are made. The most important points to consider are shown below.

Each year there a new version of PostgreSQL is released. That’s the moment in which many new features and improvements become available for all users. During the last PostgreSQL meetup in Amsterdam, Devrim Gündüz, major contributor and passionate PostgreSQL consultant, explained the upcoming release of PostgreSQL 12. In this blog we list the most important changes in PostgreSQL 12 for everyone who does not closely follows all the commits in Github or who did’nt have the opportunity to visit the PostgreSQL Usergroup NL meetup.

In addition to the well-known databases such as Oracle, MySQL or MS SQL, Open Source databases are developing at lightning speed. In fact, they’re developing so quickly that more and more companies will be using open source databases such as PostgreSQL or MongoDB in their IT infrastructure, and an increasing number of IT brokerage and recruitment agencies will start working with open source professionals. On one hand, that is a nice compliment for the Open Source Community, but on the other, there is also a danger: market forces threaten to undermine the principle of Open Source.

On October 1st I’ve attended a pre-conference workshop for the Techorama conference in the Netherlands. The workshop was called “Developer’s Guide to SQL Server Performance” and was presented by Brent Ozar. If you have ever managed SQL server databases and have searched for anything regarding SQL server, you must have come across the name Brent Ozar. If you haven’t, look him up!

OEM is designed to allow you to administrate large numbers of databases, and it benefits greatly from a consistent and well-thought-out strategy that enables you to apply the same process automatically to groups of servers and databases. If you only have a few Standard Edition databases, then OEM is going to be overkill, and there are better third-party solutions available. But if you have hundreds of Enterprise Edition databases to monitor, backup and patch then it becomes cost effective.

As a partner of MongoDB we have unlimited access to the MongoDB University (on demand). What does unlimited mean in this case? If you don't have this kind of access to the MongoDB university, then you can still do the courses for free, but the only limitation is that you can't do the courses on your own pace. New course subjects will be available on a per week basis. This means that if you've done one course subject, that you have to wait a week for the next subject to become available.

I recently started as a multiplatform DBA. Two weeks before I actually started working at the company where I work now, I already got an invite to go to PG day UK, with a few other DBA's. As I had no prior experience with PostgreSQL, I did not know what to expect. The first few weeks there I've looked into both MongoDB and PostgreSQL, just to get to know the products my colleagues were already supporting. So I started my first PG day with very little knowledge of PostgreSQL.

PostgreSQL is an advanced SQL database server, which is available on a wide range of platforms. It has an enviable reputation for performance, stability, and a wide range of advanced features, which have been developed over the course of more than 20 years. With that, PostgreSQL is one of the oldest open source projects in existence, completely free to use, and developed by a very diverse, worldwide community. And best of all, it just works!

A few months ago I came across a job opening that stated "multiplatform DBA". Immediately I was intrigued. What would this multiplatform DBA job require, is this something I would like to do, am I able to let go of my notion of "one database platform is better than other database platforms", what other database platforms should I have knowledge of? I had lots of questions, but no answers. So I decided to apply for the job. Talking about this job and being assessed about my Oracle and MS SQL knowledge made me realize that I have picked up more on the SQL server platform than I realized, the company was really happy to have me. I've had multiple opportunities to expand my IT knowledge to other areas in IT like storage, operating systems, and network but never had I the chance to expand my knowledge on multiple databases.