SkyDBA On Your Side

With the introduction of our SkySQL cloud database offering, we’ve launched SkyDBA to build on the success of the Remote DBA (RDBA) program that MariaDB has operated since the early days of the company. The RDBA service, and now SkyDBA, extend the capabilities of your in-house DBAs with the backing from a global team of expert MariaDB database administrators, available 24/7 for the most severe (S1) issues.

MariaDB’s SkyDBA program is unique in the industry both because of the depth of database experience and the breadth of the services offered – from day to day operational help to consultative support and planning for the future. Your SkyDBA team functions as virtual members of your team who know your application, data, and environment allowing them to provide a cost-effective extension to your in-house team. SkyDBAs are more than just experts that you call in when there is a crisis (although they excel at that too). You won’t find this level of support and expertise from any other database-as-a-service (DBaaS).

SkyDBAs work in a close partnership with our customers. With a SkyDBA subscription you acquire a team of database experts available around the clock to handle not only immediate issues but to help with implementation, upgrades, indexes, capacity planning, performance tuning and more.

SkyDBAs for SkySQL do more than provide support when problems arise. They provide consultative service such as:

  • Monthly security audits
  • Tailored backup and restore planning and implementation
  • Real time growth advisement
  • Reading MariaDB Server, ColumnStore, and smart transaction logs to advise on configuration or workload changes
  • Advice and methodology on migrating data
  • Spinning up a new replica to handle expected load increase

Rigorous Standards

MariaDB SkyDBAs have deep specialized knowledge, self-sufficiency, and the ability to solve complex problems. “We’re passionate about what we do. This isn’t for everybody,” said Wagner Bianchi, Team Lead for SkyDBA.

We’re proud of the technical proficiency of our SkyDBA team and their commitment to our customers. We require a minimum of 5 years DBA experience and most of our SkyDBAs have closer to 10 years supporting complex and high pressure database environments. Unlike support from other DBaaS, every SkyDBA is MariaDB certified and has deep database expertise.

Our SkyDBA team maintains certification in adjacent technologies like Google Cloud, AWS, Ansible and Kubernetes (and they are consistently working to add more). Since the SkyDBAs consult with each other, SkyDBA subscribers benefit from the whole team’s expertise. And, if additional resources are needed, SkyDBAs have full access to engineering and MariaDB Support to help resolve problems.

Available Support Options

All SkySQL subscriptions come with Standard support, including 24×5 support. Enterprise and Platinum support levels extend the coverage to 24×7 for S1 issues, and add consultative support. SkyDBA is an optional extension to Enterprise and Platinum support.

MariaDB SkySQL DBaaS removes much of the complexity of configuring and provisioning a database, but we all know that administrative needs don’t stop with provisioning. Users need management, backup and restore strategies need to be customized and implemented, workloads need monitoring, security needs auditing, performance needs to be optimized, the list goes on and on. SkyDBA can be there to help with that.

For SkyDBA subscribers, an on-boarding call is conducted to gather the additional information for the MariaDB SkyDBA team to document information about your application architecture and general workflows. Once the required information has been collected, monitoring software will be updated in your environment to alert you and the SkyDBA team of issues. Certain alerts such as server availability, replication health, and others will be configured to automatically open issues in the Customer Support Portal (linked from the SkySQL portal) and trigger proactive responses from the SkyDBA team.

Consultation

Though they excel at keeping your environment operational, SkyDBAs aren’t only meant to be called in when there is a crisis. In addition to assisting with day-to-day operations, SkyDBAs are consultants who can help you assess your needs and prevent issues. This may include things like performance tuning and indexing. For example, we recently helped a customer with a very large and rapidly growing table to implement a horizontal partition and data archive strategy to resolve overall performance issues.

With a Platinum SkyDBA subscription, your customer success manager can schedule quarterly business reviews with someone from the SkyDBA team to review items such as:

  • Historical usage focusing on peak
  • Future Growth/Capacity Planning
  • Recovery Time (RTO) and Recovery Point (RPO) Objectives
  • Escalation Points
  • Business Continuity

MariaDB From The Source

MariaDB SkySQL is the first DBaaS to unlock the full power of MariaDB Platform in the cloud. Engineered for mission-critical applications and enterprise governance, SkySQL is focused on features that make life better for the developer, the DBA, and the operator – extending powerful enterprise features with unrivaled ease of use and first-in-class innovation. With the addition of SkyDBA, you will have a team of database specialists backing you up 24/7.

Ready to give it a spin? Get started with SkySQL or ask about a SkyDBA subscription!