The advent and rise of DevOps is no news. The plethora of business benefits associated with the platform has made it the preferred choice of organizations around the globe. To achieve successful DevOps implementation, every manual process in the delivery pipeline must be evaluated to assess whether it can be automated.
As per the Redgate 2019 State of SQL Server Monitoring Report, 73% of organizations now deploy database changes multiple times per month, and 15% deploy multiple times per day, driven by DevOps Being a tedious process, database changes are no exception and should be considered in your DevOps implementation.
DevOps has played a crucial role in bringing database administrators (DBAs) and application developers closer to ensure faster software delivery.
Managing Database in a DevOps World
With the database emerging to be a core part of DevOps, it is essential for DBAs to better collaborate and work with developers, adopt new tools and technologies to achieve business success.
DBAs must focus on the following:
Adopting standardized processes
The above-mentioned monitoring report reveals human error (22%) biggest challenge in managing databases. While developers and DBA teams work together on databases, it is essential to standardize approaches across DevOps processes to ensure the early flagging of issues before it gets converted into a business crisis. Irrespective of who is writing, reviewing or editing code, a consistent approach and performance can be ensured by providing your entire team industry-standard coding tools.
Achieve Speed and Consistency with Automation
Automated processes such as continuous integration, continuous delivery, and continuous deployment provide great value in the DevOps process. Automation comes with scores of benefits including faster development, reduced manual error, eliminating monotonous and laborious work and also providing an entire audit trail for regulatory compliance.
Extending this to the database can bring stunning results for the already hard-pressed DBAs. For e.g., the continuous integration process can be used to test and detect bugs in the database code. Further, the bugs can be eliminated and the code can be reviewed again before it is passed onto the next stage.
Automation can significantly reduce the time to market but organizations must use the appropriate tools and processes for it to be truly effective.
Popular Database automation tools
Drive Continual Improvement
An integral component of the DevOps process is a continual improvement. Monitoring is a key aspect of this. Applying this to database DevOps can help DBAs identify potential disruptive performance issues. In addition, critical insights help organizations optimize their operations.
Safeguarding Personal Data and Implementing Regulatory Compliance
With the recent developments and stringent legislation present in the data privacy regulations across the globe, organizations must realize they are data guardians, not data owners.
On the other hand, developers need realistic information to create and test new code successfully. This usher in a need to adopt data masking and anonymization tools to protect personal information at the same time provide developers with usable data.
Changing the mindset and work culture
An important aspect of the success of DevOps for databases is the change in the work culture and mindset of your team members. For e.g, reviewing database changes at the end of the workflow is not a good sign. It is indicative of improper adoption of DevOps practices and poor communication between different teams.
Gone are the days when DBAs reviewed the changes in the final phase. What they need to do is incorporating testing as early as possible in the process.
The Bottomline
To thrive in a DevOps world, DBAs must adopt new technology and collaborate better with the developer.
