Bagit AIRLANGGA

Q: If we buy consulting services from vendors, is preventive maintenance more needed than corrective maintenance?

A: In general it is really important to have preventive maintenance to question to some extendence who owns it And what role vendors are playing to help provide that. It depends of what kind of in house expertise you have but in another regards it is I would say that probably co-equal, on the certain level is that the preventive maintenance is not only helps to prevent the problem but it also makes sure the vendors is in the loop as far as the source of setup in sort of problem that you like to run into. So when you run into a situation where you need corrective maintenance the preventive maintenance itself can shorten the response time even if it doesn't prevent any possible problems.

EQUNIX: Actually, Consulting service is different when compared to Maintenance Services or Managed Services. Consulting is on the Expert Level while Maintenance Service covers Principal, Expert up to Technical Level including Preventive and Corrective, Managed Service is a Maintenance Service plus Remote Operation Support. So, if you buy only Consulting, you don’t get a preventive or corrective one.

Bagit AIRLANGGA

Q: What should be considered before buying vendor services for database maintenance? we have a mix of databases from postgre, mysql, oracle, etc

A: Especially in the name of hardness of the database, a lot of different databases, I think it is very helpful to do your own risk assessment, so you already kind of know what your exposure is if things go wrong and also what your strategy is. If relating to all your different databases that you have, the chances are they are not all as business critical as other ones are, so maybe PostgreSQL and Oracle are running operational or ERP kind, or maybe the MySQL Database running for a website. Maybe if you have 8 hours downtime on the MySQL database, that is really bad but if it's only the Oracle and PostgreSQL side, it is worth, or maybe there is other way around depending on your business. Understanding where the impacts like the data loss scenario are very critical to understand where you want to focus and what kind of services you want to buy for which environment. The other thing I would say is that, it is hopeful to make sure that if you buy services according to how you treat systems to run development or paging things differently with your production services. I think most, but not all vendors, respect the differences.

EQUNIX: From Vendor’s perspective in Indonesia, there are not many companies that build expertise across different types of database, usually you may get mixed expertise from personal. While personal service is hard to account for, some companies are happy to do that. Equnix does not recommend that.

Mashum Abdul JABBAR

Q: If we are using a vendor do we still need to hire a DBA that is in charge to communicate with the vendors or what positions are most epyc for that matter?

Budi HERTANTO

Q: Should we ask for transfer-knowledge from our vendor on a regular basis?

A: I think it is always good to follow up on every instance and every project with as Much knowledge as you can that relevant to what was that, so making sure that if there was a incident that you get as much information from the vendors about what happened and what you can do about it and if it a more routine sort of task like reviewing backup scenario or something like that, I'm not sure it was mean to be regular basis but my thinking is all about anytime something complete you want to get as much you could get transferred as possible and keep in mind that you would never know much as the vendors does because a lot of those heavy postgresql expertise, so this how you could build your expertise by follow up on the activities.

EQUNIX: It depends on the situation and context you want to get from the vendors. It is best to require the vendors to report any changes done on your system and you have documented it in your notes. It is not necessary to ask for regular transfer-knowledge if there are no changes happening.

Rendy RINALDI

Q: Is the scope of work from the vendor included up to network investigation or only up to database?

A: That depends very much on vendors, there will always be something out of scope on all things but they are able to identify and show that particular problem, so you can just follow up to tell them to find and fix it.

Yong Ong

Q: Sometimes in SMB companies an IT become full stack developer that handles front and backend programs. So it is difficult to become a DBA expert, at this point can we use vendors or just train IT people to become expert DBA?

A: DBA is a role that people grow into, it is not something that you expect people to do full time since college. One of the best DBA that I've ever worked with is a full stack developer. What I would say here once you are working with the vendor is a full stack developer who stuck with database vendor is a great opportunity to learn a lot more and to pay attention to build expertise with the database issues.

Sigit NUGROHO

Q: What is the biggest challenge in getting a DBA in a company?

A: Biggest challenge I have always had is that typically it is different in other companies, because of the fact that expertise depends on PostgreSQL, is very hard to find people able to work at junior level who did a very good job in other companies.

Aireen Visakha SUTANDANG

Q: Is a Hybrid approach mean vendor and DBA's managing the same database?

A: I would say no, we want DBA to have the primary management of the same databases and they would use the vendors to expand their expertise and be able to solve problems if they don’t have answers immediately.

Egi Adhitia PRADANA

Q: Should we give limitations to vendors when buying their service?

A: My view on this is you probably want to pay close attention to contract and terms, when I work as a software developer, especially for a critical system as a contracted vendor, I typically want there to be limitations because as a database vendor it is better to avoid them. Because we have to really look at what the risks are, if you are doing a assessment to their accounting software. We don't really want to access a Customer production accounting. If you do, you made a mistake and you have caused a major problem for the customers On the other hand we use in database services we really need to make sure that the vendors can actually fix the problem when they have one, it is not going to be uncommon to say vendors should have access to the database and things like that. Probably not on demand, because that is in house security ……. but in emergency maybe you probably you can give them the access

Budi HERTANTO

Q: How we can measure the expertise of the vendor, because sometimes the certificate is not enough?

A: Typically what i would be looking at is not just expertise that important but expertise is very important. What kind of expertise that I would expect of the vendor. So we have 3 measurement:

1. I would suggest how vendors make money out of the process. A company like Equnix has a different business model in enterprise, and consequently the sort of expertise that you would expect to get is standard support call would be very different. If somebody is mostly interested in some sort of selling license or support subscription, even if they have a lot of in-house expertise, the chance of getting that quickly when you need it is a bit lower. On the other hand if a company is focusing very heavily on providing support and consulting services, then it would be a little better of choosing those to start with.
2. How much expertise they have, based on the circumstances, is the key thing that should be paid for very close attention, to sort of what kind of work that they were doing. You can see if they are supporting some instances that are similar to your own, that is a very good sign that a vendor is being able to provide expertise and experience based upon a larger shared client that has expertise in-house with the vendors. Also the fact that they have already seen more things based upon their customers.
3. They are advertising what they have. If they can show some other community participation, whether it is things like development or setting up conferences in the PostgreSQL world, it makes a pretty good sign of vendors that they are well dedicated and put in resources and expertise to build up.

Dery DARMAWAN

Q: Hi Chris, nice to meet you. In my company, the main business is financial services. From the security side we have a policy that DBA must use internal resources, if we plan to use remote DBA / managed services DBA, do you have experience to overcome this ?

A: I have seen financial services use sort of managed cloud services and with in-house DBA who worked with vendors. I think if you are particularly offering financial services where data is very high risk, I would very strongly recommend having a strategy which is both build in-house expertise and leveraging vendors to extend those expertise. Making sure you have good partners to back you up and who you can discuss things with before you do something if necessary, but you probably want to have some in-house database expertise because otherwise it is not only security perspective but also business perspective you are going to find a serious disadvantage. My advice would be, don’t use vendors exclusively for DBA, have somebody internal who is owning it and if you are using contract or remote DBA via vendor, have them overseen by somebody in-house.

Raditya ARIYANTO

Q: What is the next trend for DBA, are they focusing on micro focus now?

A: From what I have seen the next trend for DBA is moving toward being able to understand database in relation to cloud. I don’t necessarily mean cloud service offerings, it could be docker or kubernetes.

Mohammad LATIF

Q: What is needed for someone to become a DBA for someone who never directly involved in the world of databases?

A: Nobody goes to school to become a DBA. This is a role that people grow into. People usually start in software engineering or platform engineering or system administrator and then go to the role of database administrator by taking on task after task.

Mohammad LATIF

Q: Is certification needed to be DBA or can we just learn by doing and taking many risks that might happen due to lack of experience?

A: Certification needed to provide an opportunity for some pieces of knowledge to be double checked. But I think in most cases certification is most useful for junior level database administrators.

Mohammad LATIF

Q: How to see if someone is right to be a DBA or not?

A: I would look for somebody who is very good at the mathematical side, what other job function they have and somebody who is good at taking tasks and being able to do them repeatedly and consistently.

Ardyanto HERMAWAN

Q: What are the DBA Vendor's responsibilities if the company has implemented ISO 27001/Information Security Management System?

A: ISO 27001 tends to require risk assessment and documented structures, so this would be much up to the company risk assessment working with their auditor. But I don't really expect any particular distraction on the relationship there.

Denny RIZKY

Q: Is hiring a DBA is more effective than training in-house human resources?

A: If you hire somebody from outside who has experience on this, you may get a different perspective, but I would say that it depends on what kind of candidates you’re possibly looking at as well as what kind of people you have in-house. Everybody starts somewhere, if you don’t have somebody from outside, you’re missing out on something. Similarly, if you’re not helping people grow into that role then you may end up missing out on some of the opportunities for collaboration in terms of software engineers, database engineers, and platform engineers. I don’t think there’s a right answer to that choice. It depends on who you have as options on both sides.

Zenfrison Butarbutar

Q: What are the challenges for hiring vendors? What is the best success story that you ever experienced?

A: I think the biggest challenge is to choose the right vendor and find the right team to work with. Some of them local and some of them global, and trying to figure out who is the best fit for you is very difficult. As far as the best success story that I ever experienced is on the vendor side, I once worked with a company that was doing medical testing software. They were having all kinds of terrible problems all the time and after about 3-4 weeks working on those problems, I started showing them that they could get rid of half of their expensive infrastructure. We are dramatically able to reduce their monthly cost. That was a great success.

Nanang HARIJANTO

Q: How do I answer DBA interview questions?

A: It depends on what kind of database administrators you want to be and what kind of person that they (interviewer) looking for. But one of the most critical is willing to admit the limit of your knowledge. When you don’t know the answer and tell the other solution that might work, be willing to talk about what kind of resources you look for.

Nanang HARIJANTO

Q: What skills would you look for when hiring a DBA?

A: I will look for somebody who is able to maintain perspective when underpressure because a database is a critical asset to business. Somebody who is able to Research problems very quickly and come up with the answers and finish pieces of work completely.

Nanang HARIJANTO

Q: What is the most challenging task for you as a DBA?

A: We had some database work in Denmark, there were funny cases where jobs for generic processing were being run twice and kind of getting why this was the case and what’s the condition was and how we were creating a risk condition and use of the database, I think that was the hardest one. It requires deep knowledge of how PostgreSQL maintain consistency within queries and what we were doing that was causing the case.

Arvis AGUNG

Q: In your experience, if a DBA is also in the scope of DevOps what is your opinion on it?

A: Today there are a lot of DBA scope of work that moves out to software engineers, So software engineers gain a lot more operation kinds of roles. Long time ago DBA designed the database but today it has actually become the task of software engineers. At the same time on performance areas that could be the scope of DevOps or operation scope depending on the organization that set up.

Yanuar NURDIANSYAH

Q: Untuk mahasiswa apa saja yg harus disiapkan untuk bekerja di bidang ini?

A: Bagi para mahasiswa, harus dibekali dengan pemahaman dasar konsep, bukan hanya mengenai database saja, tetapi juga mengenai bagaimana komputer bekerja. Karena pada dasarnya, DBA nantinya juga memiliki peranan penting bukan hanya dalam mengoperasikan atau mengelola obyek-obyek database saja, melainkan juga bagaimana melakukan tuning. Untuk dapat melakukan tuning, diperlukan pemahaman yang cukup dalam mengenai hardware, OS, selain daripada pemahaman dari sisi query.

Yanuar NURDIANSYAH

Q: Untuk memotivasi mahasiswa saya apa saja yang diperlukan lbh dalam untuk menjadi expert dba dan diakui oleh industri

A: Mahasiswa perlu diberikan exposure terhadap pentingnya peranan tersebut, khususnya di dunia bisnis. Equnix sendiri memberikan beberapa Campus Campaign yang bisa dilihat pada link berikut https://youtu.be/4dlQqYTMLaY, untuk memberikan pemahaman dan pengalaman kepada mahasiswa mengenai Technopreneurship, khususnya di bidang Open Source mengenai bagaimana peranan database serta expertise sangat penting di dunia industri. Selain itu juga, perlunya input terhadap kurikulum yang diajarkan di perkuliahan, sebagai feedback dari sisi industri untuk pembangunan sumber daya manusia yang lebih tepat.