OptimaData is a full-service, multi-platform data(base) service provider

Martijn Wallet

The benefits of database maintenance

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.

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Edco Wallet

When you grow from your strength and passion, it's real and lasting

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.

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Joost Wasser, Aret Aprahamian

The power of working together: EDB and 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.

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Gerard Zuidweg

As reliable as open source

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?

More about open source and security

Jasper Jonk

Databases in the Cloud, without downsides

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.

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Gerard Zuidweg

Without databases no Jaap van Dissel or Elon Musk

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.

Why databases and Jaap van Dissel

Thomas Brinkman

Pros and cons of Database-as-a-Service

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?

More about DBaaS

Martijn Wallet

Native PostgreSQL or Supported PostgreSQL

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.

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Edco Wallet

Profit from performance tuning

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.

Performance tuning in DBaaS

Edco Wallet

Full throttle with MySQL - part 2

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.

Performance tuning MySQL

Thomas Spoelstra

DBA - Old but Gold vs DbaaS

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...

More about DBaaS

Edco Wallet

Surfing the open source waves

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.

more about open source resources

Tino Dudink

Cloning and Cleansing: Master or Disaster

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.

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Edco Wallet

A closer look at DBaaS

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?

a closer look at DBaaS

Edco Wallet

Can you still see the wood for the cloud trees?

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?

Cloud databases overview

Martijn Wallet

The how, why and when of databases in containers

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.

Databases in containers

Edco Wallet

What you need to know about PostgreSQL 13

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.

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Edco Wallet

Database performance, CloudReport 2020

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.

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Martijn Wallet

Determine better indexing and partitioning with hypopg

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.

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Dimitri Choustov

Get your database fit and healthy again

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.

Read more about HealthChecks

Craig Healey

How to run Postgres on Docker part 3

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.

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Craig Healey

How to run Postgres on Docker (part 2)

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.

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Via the link "read more database blogs" you will find our blog section. Blogs about databases, open source DBMS like PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, CochroachDB. Great stories how to and also general stuff about data and management.

read more database blogs

Via the link "read more database blogs" you will find our blog section. Blogs about databases, open source DBMS like PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, CochroachDB. Great stories how to and also general stuff about data and management.

read more database blogs

Gerard Zuidweg

Open Source DBMS Feel free to choose but choose wisely

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.

Points to consider Open Source DBMS

Roland van Veen

Nothing wrong with experienced databases

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.

More about legacy databases

Eric Gipon

How to centralize MySQL databases

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.

More about MySQL clustering

Craig Healey

How to run Postgres on Docker (part 1)

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.

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